Lepakshi Veerabadhra Temple, Andhra Pradesh

Having exhausted list of places to visit near Bengaluru, I realized that Lepakshi was one of the places I’d not been to. Noticing that it is just about 120kms from Blr, I decided to check it out. This post explains my short trip to Lepakshi from Blr.

We managed to leave city limits by 6 AM. Stopped by at Hebbal lake for a few moments- last time I could see beautiful sunrise [see here],  but this time, thanks to clouds, there was no sunrise to be seen. Drove further on Hyderabad road. There are 2 toll booths that collect Rs 115 each, one more was under construction. If you don’t have change of Rs 5, be ready to receive a biscuit packet!

Road was empty and I could max out the 85PS duster on multiple occasions. By 7 we had reached Kamat restaurant, almost close to AP border. Thankfully it was just open. After a 30 min breakfast stop we proceeded further. Soon we crossed into Andhra Pradesh and took left turn towards Lepakshi.

 

This left turn comes right after RTO checkpost. You will see lots of trucks lined up at the check post, slow down and soon after it, there’s a left turn to Lepakshi. Lepakshi is another 10 kms from here.

At about 8.15 we reached Lepakshi. Spent a few minutes around the giant bull (Nandi) and then proceeded towards main temple.  Main temple is a pretty large campus, with multiple rounds of walls.  There were paintings on the roof, carvings on the pillars typical to all Indian temples. The outer pheriphery had super long corridors with well carved pillars.

A Shiva lingam with kalinga sarpa (snake head) and few other interesting structures were on the back side of the temples.

Our exploration of the temple ended in about an hour and we headed back. Drove around a village randomly to check if there’re any birds. I guess we came at wrong season or were searching in wrong place- no luck with birds. 

 

 

My original thought was to go to Tumkur (100kms from Lepakshi), explore few places around it and then return to Blr by night. But some of the relative with us had a 6PM train to catch, hence preferred to skip Tumkuru side. Another possibility is to drive to Horsley hills (about 100kms from Lepakshi) and then return to Bengaluru)

Next we headed back to Bangalore, with one deviation to visit Nandi hills and another to visit remains of the Tipu Sultan fort, back in city by 4PM, end of our quick trip.