Bidar, and on to Bijapur
There were a few more interesting things we explored in Bidar other than the Bidri work, the fort and the tombs:
Biryani : A large percentage of the population in Bidar are muslims and there are quite a few small hotels on the main road serving biryani. We asked for a recommendation from a automobile spares vendor where we bought some engine oil and ended up having delicious biryani for lunch in a jam-packed(!) hotel.
The Jharani temple : This temple is inside a cave(looked man-made) but the unique thing is that you have to walk through about 50ft of waist-deep water to get to the sanctum where there is a statue of Narasimha and a Shiva linga. We were asked to visit this place by one of the guys at the hotel we stayed in; water sprouts out of the cave year round and it is considered holy to have a bath here. There are lockers and towels outside for rent and it is better to take a change of clothes if you plan to walk inside the cave wading through the water.
Gurudwara: Supposedly Guru Nanak came here and pushed aside a rock from where water sprouted for the water starved people living here and according to a local this is the second most important place for the Sikhs after the Golden temple at Amritsar. Free lunch is provided to people visiting the place and we were there at around lunch time.
To Bijapur: We started early the next day and took the route to Homnabad. Asking a couple of people at the junction where we had tea, we found that the shorter route to Bijapur via Gulbarga was not quite in very good shape while the NH to Sholapur and then another NH to Bijapur from there was in excellent condition though it was a bit longer; we decided to take the later route going through a bit of Maharastra and reaching Bijapur late in the evening. The clothes people wear did not change much across the different state: all whites to make the summer heat bearable.
North-Karnataka, January, 2008
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deepsan) wrote,
