Travel time

This weekend, when mom proposed to visit Kotilingeshwara Temple, I did not hesitate. The temple is located around 100 Km from Bangalore on its east side. Around 25 Km from Kolar towards Bangarpet. You need to take old Madras Road (NH-4) towards Kolar and from there take a diversion to this place. The road is very good all along. One thing drivers should be wary of is this road (NH-4) does not have a median. Most of the overtaking vehicles do not follow basic road safety measures. They try to come over you and force you to leave the road. This is bad and you should be extremely cautious on this. Do not go on a ‘lets see who wins!’ campaign at all. OK, barring that, the drive should be cool. Sunday was pleasant with clouds coming on and off without any downpour.

What’s special with the temple? Well, as the name suggests, it has one crore shiva lingas. Wait, that’s what they want to achieve. They don’t have that many already. The temple currently has 84 lacs of lingas. It aims to complete one crore. So, it’s a treat to your eyes to see the lingas all over the place. Initially they have installed with in the temple and then extended to a huge site (few acres) where you find a 108 feet shiva linga and lacs of smaller ones. They have them primarily in three sizes, small, medium and big. One can install a linga with their name, with a fee of 1750 rupees for the smallest one. The belief is your wishes will be fulfilled if you do so.

The temple’s entrance fee is five rupees. There are three main temples within it viz Manjunath temple, Brahma Vishnu Shiva temple and Venkateshwara temple. There are very few places in India where Brahma is worshipped. This is one of them. The priest briefs about the puranas. Because of Bhrugu Maharshi’s curse, Brahma is not worshipped. So, the pooja is done to Saraswathi, wife of Brahma but not to himself.

There is good parking facility available for your vehicles. Parking fee is 10 rupees for a four wheeler. There are no good hotels in and around. So, carry your food.