it is Monday... my train is booked at 9.10PM sholapur Exp YPR-BDM(badami)...
we had planned to see some places around we had in mind 1. badami, aihole pattadkal, almatti, koodalsangama.....
5.30PM in office i am still looking into one silly issue, somehow i took help of my senior expert he fixed in 10 min, whereas i was seeing since 5hrs. ;-) thank god for him uploaded fix and somehow i managed to leave off by 7.. reached home by 8 and as railway stn is near my house it wont take 10 min to catch train frm my home so i was bit confident on my schedule.. had bhelpuri on the way and entered the station , same time kishora also arrived.. 20 min before departure, checked the train Platform it was already standing on #2, and as usual indian style when we entered the bogie our seats occupied by some aunty and ajji, there were discussing some serious family story, so thought of not disturbing them and i came out holding my bhelpuri cover, whereas kiddu was sitting inside train only(guess why?? as he had Nikon D40 in his bag) he is so lazy that he cant lift and bring out also.. anyway even i dint wanted him to come out otherwise i had to share my bhelpuri.. hahhaa... (dnt mistake kishora i knw tht u wd hav had dinner @ home itself... Its 9.10 there is no sign of train leaving still as per the rules of IST(ind streachable time) train left 10 more min late, but i consider this as on time itself, bcz lng lng ago when we went to shimoga trip our train came 3-4 hrs late,, 10PM train we boarded @ 2Am..
coming back As usual kishora started discussing about his team mgr not sending to US(he is telling this since ages) and pinky's LWD was on last week, he pointed out her and said: See how many times my mgr sent her US but wht she did even i will do it . but i know kishora u cant do it till you get onsite once.. ;-) and started story about his so called friend who is girl,,, and he says as GF.. anyway its his personal matter.... started her story she was lik that lik this,, n once we had fight, n she called me to abu-dhabi, now a days she is not chatting wid me blah blah... after half an hour i think we slept early before tumkur itself thanks to aunties...
Tue morning 6.Am: i got up lazily saw through the window . were in Dharwad stn, there was lot of noise as ppl were getting down frm our train ,, i closed window and sept again, within few mins kishora started to wake me up. we were in hubli already i scolded him and tried to sleep again.. I had very good sleep,, after som time we reached Gadag where train stopped for long time, later we realised that the moving direction changed train is going back... i thought of brushing teeth and asked kishora for toothpaste, as a co-incidende both were confident that other fellow will bring, so ultimately there was no toothpaste to brush, so we had to wait till we get down stn.. meanwhile i enquired one guy abt the places to see around badami and reach belgaum, he suggested to see badami, aihole pattadkal mahakoota shivasangama banashankari..stepped in badami station took 1 paste and decided to paste once we reach first destination as in stn there was no water at all..... As stn is in outskirts of badami we took one auto 5rs each and reached inside badami, inquired with riksha guy for auto he told u can see only 4 places and come back to this place to catch belgaum and he wil charge 500rs, we thiught it was lil costly so we thought we will see only what is nearby and took a walk to main basti which is just 2km away.. the place is very ancient and very small house, looks like our tourism de
pt has not taken any steps to improve the place for its neatness at all, though we could see the hill of caves from the place we were standing we had to walk 2 kms round, and the way seemd to me like i was walking in some village towards place where we carry on our morning duties,,,,, overall the roads were good but no cleanliness.. somehow we reached the place, i was shocked to see the view as the main place around the caves/mountain. It is very neatly maintained it is entirely contrasting view till had... they had maintained with nice lawn made gardens,. All in all Badami showcases four ancient rock-cut cave temples, the largest of them dedicated to Lord Vishnu.
took 2 tickets and climbed to see , there were 4 cave temples. for details abt these temple google ;-) But one thing i noticed was all temples shiva ling as the god inside except the one at last thich was mahaveer's temple, and in some of the temples there was no
main idol at all.. 2 possibilities.. either it is looted if it was metal one or it is taken inside museum which was on opposite mountain to where we were standing just 0.5 km apart.. and as usual took some snaps in front of it. meanwhile i had washed my face only so that it will not be seen in photos tht i m going to take.. hahaha as we could see there was a big lake separating both mountains, and ppl living around it are washing clothes in it. we decided instead of going back straight we will visit the museum to
o and may be we will get some water to wash face, so we enquired one lady and she guided us to reach there.. finally we reached there, we brished and washed our face then we went inside museum and we left the place... we left towards Badami main bustand, we had to cross the small streets inside.. it was totally a mesmarising that "IS THIS THE SAME CAPITAL CITY OF Chalukyas RULED THE DYNASTY..??!!!!!!!!" i mean i just cant understand the logic here.. and why is our state dept not at all showing intereset in such places which potrays our heritage... Anyway there are lot of things to blame in india, but whatever it is "Oh Darling E-hai India"... 
We reached Bus stand enquired how to reach Pattadkal which is 20 kms away, took a tempo traveller and paid him 12 each and reached there in some 30 mins.. It was so hot (luckily the humidity is not much in karnataka as compared to neighbouring states) the bus stopped right in front of the temple and we hardly had to walk for 300 mts to take main entrance.. it was around 10.30 and we did not had Break fast still, so we decided to see the temple first as it was small campus and then we will come out and have it, later it will be ideal time to have lunch at 4PM... I enquird a boy as how much time we need to see this and wher do we get bus to Aihole and where do we get food and all... 
took an entrance tickt of 10rs and entered the campus, again as un-usual the campus is maintained so neatly fully with full Lawn etc which is contrasting to the pattadkal taluk(which was one of the main city of the kingdom..) anyway we watched all the ruined temples some were in good shape and rest not so good.. one common thing we found was all the heads of Nandi was chopped off and in all temples only shiv-linga was the only god here.. But there was one surprise for us when we were about to enter the last temple Virupaksha temple, both the temple from inside and the nandi sculpture outside is totally un-touched it is still so sharp and shining which looks as if it is brand new.... Hats off to the architecturer and thank god to invaders who left atleast this one for us 
All in all Pattadakal is a World Heritage Site, which stands testimony to the richness of Chalukya kings....There was a surprise waiting behind the back gate (i.e behind this nandi in pic.) just 100mts from here there was a river (malaprabha) flowing, full of water so all plans delayed by half an hour, we Quickly went inside the temple and had darshan of viroopaksha swami and rushed towards the river water was clean so we jumped in no time... after some play, we came out of temple and had north karnataka style lunch then left for Aihole..
Hired one auto for 40 rs to reach Aihole which is 13kms away, it takes 20 min journey..
The auto driver was explaining few things about the aihole , this is the place i think which was used for teaching the store art/ building temples, as there are so many temples, even now its no wonder that people live in temples also.
The names of the temples are based on recent usage, and do not reflect their original dedications.
Auto driver described aihole like "ಗುಡಿಗಳ ಊರು, ಗುಡಿಯೊಳಗೆ ಮನೆ" .. city of temples & house in temple...
We saw the Aihole within half an hour and left towards Badami back, Here we faced problem with the transportation service.. while coming we some how managed to get the auto by paying more, and we told him to stay for half-one hour so that we will come in his auto itself, but when we came out and saw he was not there, so we waited there for abt half hour there was not even a single auto towards badami, and the public transport bus comes only twice a day.
forgot to mention, when we entered the aihole temple campus some ppl thought me as photographer and asked me the rate per copy as i was holding kishora's SLR camera, i ignored them when they asked me second time i scolded them...actually they were tourist from other state, this incident happened twice with different ppl, in same group.
Why i told this story was, when we were waiting for bus there was only 1 bus and it was the same tourist bus with whom i behaved like that.. So we were forced to ask the bus driver and somehow managed to convince him and agreed on paying him 15rs per head to Pattadkal...
Some how we reached pattadkal and from there we got the tempo to badami.. Now the only place left according to our plan was Banashankari temple. we took immediately one auto after reaching to badami to the temple which is just 5 kms and he charged 5 rs per head.. it was 4PM.
Visited the temple and came back by 5 PM to badami main bus stand, and the bus to bagalkot was waiting o leave we boarded it, and reached there by 6.30 to catch our next bus to Belgaum..
according to the information we got there were so many bus, but when we reached there it was different scene. we have to wait for more than 45 min... some how we took some items to eat and bus came then we got into.. Belgaum was 140 KMS with 5 hour journey @192rs.
Finally we reached Belgaum with lot of hopes, that we will enjoy for next day atleast and we can take rest in hotel room which sukale has booked, we will go to him and speak for some time and then we will leave to hotel. this was the actual plan.Till now everything was moving according to my plan.
Actually this is the turning point of our trip i guess.. everything bounced back to us since now on, nothing was happening according to our plan.... As soon as we reached the place we called sukale and he sent his marriage vehicle for us..
As we reached the wedding hall Mr Huliraya / sukale is sitting on stage all set to get wet in turmeric... there was some background music going on by one of his family elder grand mother...
Sukale waved his hands sitting on stage itself, he was as much thrilled as we were after seeing him...
this prog went on for about 1 hr or so, later they made both the couples to come out for having hot showers by their close relatives, they do it in a closed box k
ind of thing where in the line of control would be of thread of 7/9 rounds something like that. here after pouring some water they give them new make them wear new dress outside itself and they had put a topi which is of north karnataka style, nation wide you can call it as freedom fighters dress(lal bahudur shastri
's topi and kurta pajama) and the girl would wear yellow coloured saree...So this was the end of their today;s programme and it all ended with one last photo on stage..
It was exactly 12.30Am when sukale came to us
we all 3 of us started discussing about todays travel and some office stuffs, and blah blah..till 1am we spoke some nonsense stuffs which would yield nothihng to both of us, meanwhile we were in mindset that we would be going to some lodge from here so that we need not worry about our rest, and we can come lil late tomorow..
but then sukale suddenly came of with a surprise for us, "Hey guys please adjust here itself in choultry i couldn't arrange any rooms as i came so late to belgaum" we were like stunned for few minutes, and then the sukale's sala came up with one big bedspread and put in front of us, so we thought this guy is arranging these things instead of lodge... we were lil confused as wht is happening so after some small discussion he picked that and went to his room and we were totally stunned there.(so this was the initial shock and we lost our 2 hopes here).
thanks that we travelled by train so we carried some bedspreads for us, we used that to manage somehow for tonight as it is only 5-6 hrs left for morning.slept off immediately cursing pradeep for making us to sleep in choultry itself, atleast if he had said that th
ere is no arrangement done we would have arranged some room @ busstand itself where we wasted almost 45min waiting for his cab...Morning it was 6am taperecorder started playing and everybody who slept next to us were not there, they had already left frm there,, we slowly got up and we were sitting for a while one guy came and took off the sheet below us, so we only had effectively 5+ hrs of sleep.
and we put all our luggage on the chair which is in in the image, and till we leave the place we have managed to keep our luggage on chairs itself only for some 5-10 mins we kept in sukale's room which was getting locked every now and then due to security reasons which was very obvious....
So though we got up so early pradeepa came in frustrating mood saying that there is only one/2 toilets with 2 bathrooms available and there is such a big queue for it. somehow he was suppose to be ready as early as possible and so he from somewhere got the facility arranged apart from these common places. but for us it was till 9am we were like idiots waiting by then some people were already having breakfast, meanwhile i managed brush my teeth and had breakfast there itself.. but at that time the crowd was less so i ran up to have bath but later i came to know why the crowd was less, NO WATER... :-( we were hopelessly left there witho no option to just change dress and go and attend marriage..
so everything here was going not according to plan at all, we went to marriage hall with our luggage kept in one corner..
somehow marriage was over happily.. where the girls mom was crying sitting in front of us.. while doing kanyadaan. .and after some time sukale finally the couple were standing on stage.
i dont know what happened to those photographer idiot when we went there he didn't even captured the video and took his camera outside, we were busy wishing sukale, i turned to main stage, he was carelessly sitting, so we gave him our camera itself to capture our snaps...
we had lunch and it was 2pm atlast its time to say bye bye to sukale, and leave the place
After we leave the place, we left straight to VTU,,, my god what a campus it was,, i never thought that far away from city such a campus could exist with such a good maintainance,,,,
some of the pics i have taken with out notice of security personals..
And we spent 1 hour seeing the campus, then left back to railway station. it was around 6PM when we were suppose to board the rani-chennamma express, asu usual the trains in india wont arrive on time, it was 1 hour late.....
and that marked the end of our journey to Belgaum and Pradeep Sukale's marriage...
Happy married life dude, may life is filled with joy and full of happiness....
Sorry to bore all you guys by elaborating small small things. this is my first blog writing exp, may be i will get better in coming days
Thanks for reading.
