Weekend Trip to Male Mahadeshwara Temple
Had an amazing impromptu weekend trip to this virtually unknown (to urban non-Kannadigas, at least) temple known as Male Mahadeshwara, nestled amidst the wilds of Dakshina Karnataka.
Shiva, known as Madappa here, is said to have incarnated as a rishi around 500-600 years ago and helped the people of these hills performing various miracles after clearing out the evil king ruling this forest.
Figure 1: View of the Male Mahadeshwara Hills
But, let me start at the beginning. To tell the story properly, we need to go back to a mesmerizing song sung by the Ananya Bhat. No, that is not right, we need to go all the way back to the Shetty gang of Kannada Film Industry (KFI).
Rakshit Shetty, Rishab Shetty and Raj Shetty are three outstanding Kannada film makers - writers, directors, actors all combined into one. The trio, friends and collaboraters on various projects, believe in bringing alive compelling Indic stories rooted in Hindu culture and values.
Go see these films if you haven't already! Now, the other thing that the Shetty gang excels in, is the music in their films. If you haven't heard "Varaha Roopam", drop everything and go listen to it. Now!
GGVV (2021) has this almost haunting music, which I will let you experience for yourself:
Now, setting aside the mood of this version, there is a much more devotional rendition of the same song, by the wonderful Ananya Bhat in Sadhguru's Shivratri event.
The song, part of Kannada folk tradition known as Janapada, points to the practice of yearly temple fairs and the faith in Shiva. While we knew that this is common in the entire Konkan-Tulu region, from Goa to Mangalore, we were curious which particular Shiva and temple this particular song referred to. We have a single clue to go from, "Madappa", but that turned out to be enough.
A few months later, it seems Madappa wished us to come visit him - since we just don't do impromptu trips. This time, there was no planning, we just left hoping for the best.
Figure 2: Standard depiction of Madappa
Male Mahadeshwara is a group of 77 hills (of which 7 are named), south of Bangalore, between Kaveri and Palar, close to the Tamil Nadu broder. It is on the Karnataka side of Hogenakkal Falls and only around 45 kms north of Mettur Dam. By road from Bangalore, it is around 230 km, via Maddur - Shivanasamudram - Kollegal.
The last 60km of that stretch is remote, with the last 20 km real ghat road - no street lights, no lane markings (2-way path) or reflectors, potholes here and there and nothing more than a poorly maintined 2 feet stone barrier between the road and wilds around. We reached that portion by 6 pm, the world was dark and lit only by an almost full moon and a ridiculously fun drive.
Almost forgot to mention, the last 30 km of road had devotees, saffron towels on their head or shoulder and walking in the dark into the forest with sticks in their hand. Why the sticks? Well, for walking through the foot pathway, which is not demarcated with any sort of lights or proper stairs - just a random path through the hills. But also, to protect themselves from wild animals like tigers and elephants.
Yeah - this place has had repeated sightings of tigers and elephants. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your point of view, we didn't see any. What we did see was boars - all over the place, both in the foothills and in the valley itself.
Middle of the 77 hills, through the forest, is the valley itself with almost no cell reception - housing the temple and the sprawl of various lodgings for devotees.
We stayed at JSS Guest House, the only option for the more urban crowd. It is a hotel run by Sri Suttur Matt which we should take a moment to appreciate. This Matt predates Male Mahadeshwara himself by 400-500 years.
Figure 3: View of the Sri Suttur Matt from the guesthouse, with other lodgings in the valley
Figure 4: View of the JSS Guesthouse Lobby
Figure 5: View from the room
The guest house, perched on a hill of its own, itself was extremely clean and well maintained, for the very reasonable rate they charge. You are recommended to call and book in advance - we almost didn't get any rooms, but thanks to Shiva's grace, someone cancelled and we got the last two rooms. Also, if you do book in advance, ask for rooms facing the parking lot - the view is absolutely breathtaking.
Figure 6: View of the temple complex itself in the early morning mists
Figure 7: Towards the east, is a 100 foot statue of Madappa being built. Just before sunrise.
Figure 8: Male Mahadeshwara at sunrise.
In the temple itself, we saw several other devotees singing other folk songs like Sojugada Sojumalle, using small jalra and dumru like instruments. In front of the garbha graha, the archakars anoint everyone with pattais using slightly wet viboothi that solidifies into nice marks. The effect is divine - everyone looks like a parama shaivite in the temple!
The main chant heard in the temple crowd was: "Jai Madappa Ughe Ughe!". The last word "Ughe" needs some explanation. We think it is the Kannada equivalent of "Jai", but this is a bit difficult to ascertain with the information online.
A little bit later, we drove to the starting point of the trekking route to Nagamale betta - a trek of 4-6 kms as we understood it. The location is on the other end of the valley - from the road that gets you into the valley. The road goes through the temple outskirts, crosses an helipad, climbs up a hill to the other side and just abpruptly stops. Beyond this point are villages and a stone filled pathway that only jeeps can take through to the starting point. We didn't venture beyond this point on this trip though.
Figure 9: The helipad being used as a cricket ground!
There, down a slope nearly 70 degree in angle, on a road that barely existed, jeeps went down in boldly, every seat packed to the brim. But, that wasn't the fun part. The fun part was that every jeep had 5 more people stuffed on top of it (in the luggage carrier) holding on with one hand, while they had a phone in the other capturing videos. One jeep even had a man sitting on the bumper, holding onto the windshield behind him with one hand.
Note that only Kannada flies in the entire valley - there are no signboards or people that understand any other language - not even Tamil, though the border to Tamil Nadu is very close by.
On the way back, we were surprised by this unique way of making tea at Hanur known as Tandoori Chai. We later learnt that this is available in several places in Bangalore, but it was surprising to see 2 shops built around this concept on the road between Kollegal and Male Mahadeshwarar hills. Do try this somewhere if you get a chance!
Figure 10: Tandoori Chai at Hanur
1. Unexplainable event on Mysore-Bangalore expressway
On the way back, something happened - something that we still can't explain. We drove on the newly constructed Expressway from Maddur to Bangalore, at minimum speeds of 100 kmph, marvelling at the convenience of this new magnificient 6 lane roadway.
A few kilometers after Bidadi, something went wrong. On the left most lane, a few bikes came on the wrong direction. Considering that we have seen such stupid behaviour before on Indian roads, we didn't think it anything special. Until in around 15 seconds, we saw cars coming in the left most lane in the wrong direction.
In the next 30 seconds something magical happened. Cars slowed down to a stop on both lanes, forward and backward. Without a single person getting to inquire what was happening, everybody started turning their cars around and by end of that minute, the entire highway was moving in the opposite direction.
We responded in pure groupthink - there was no reason or logic - just had to go with the flow. The message was being passed down the road at the speed of light with no words being spoken. Down was now up.
What then? We were all going in the wrong direction at speeds of 80kmph! Hundreds of cars - the entire highway turned around, going in the wrong direction. I would like to see self driving cars try to deal with this situation!
But, to where? No one knew. The way this Expressway is designed, there is no exit at random places - only at 5-6 predefined locations in the entire stretch from Mysore to Bangalore, not even locations to U-Turn. So, we were all stuck going the wrong way to the next exit, which was Bidadi maybe 5-10 kms away.
We got to the exit at Bidadi where, luckily, police had barricaded the incoming traffic and allowed all of us "inverted" traffic onto the service road, back into the right direction. Fearing more traffic, we took inner roads exiting near Wonderla, through to catch the main road from Magadi to Bangalore, which joins back into the NICE road. On the way, we stumbled upon the Dodda Alada Mara, which I am sure we would never have known about in our entire life if not for this little bit of detour.
But why did the traffic get inverted, like some scene out of Tenet? We don't know that to this date. No amount of searching in the news from papers to Twitter showed any reasonable explanation of why this happened. Did the police turn us around? Or, did a few selfish law-breakers see the traffic ahead and caused an entire section of traffic to follow them blindly. Only Madappa knows for sure.
Even after all this adventure, we managed to come back to Bangalore faster than we ever have on a Sunday!
Jai Madappa Ughe Ughe!