On last weekend I went for a short drive to Kotilingeshwara temple which is not very far from Bangalore. Though it was a short drive but the longest one for me after owning a car. We started late in morning at around nine and we took the Malur village road rather than Kolar highway. Driving on village road is always soothing. It was a single lane road but driving was still easy as there was very minimal traffic. We passed the towns of Malur and Bangarpet. The distance of 75 kms was covered in two hours without taking any break. This place is very near to famous Kolar gold field mines which is closed now.
The temple premises has good shaded parking area where we parked our Grand i10. We took the entrance ticket to enter the temple. Ticket for camera including mobiles was costly as hundred bucks and no-one was buying it. Temple authority should reduce the cost.
In Kannada, and Hindi too; koti means crore so Kotilingeshwara means one crore Shivalingas. The priest claimed that there are ninety lakhs shivalingas in the temple premises but I guess it was in few lakhs only. I am not very religious person and always want to avoid very crowded places but entered in main temple where there was a long queue of devotees. After the darshan, we took some photos while kids were busy playing in midst of shivalingas. After coming out of temple we sat at a small eatery and had our lunch which we brought from home. Then we started back for Bangalore and in next three hours we were back to our home. In between we stopped our car to a village haat to buy vegetables and few other stuffs. Driving was fun as usual. This short drive was just the beginning of many long drives in near future !
