... Udipi essentially is famous for ‘Sri Krishna Matt’ and the ‘Udipi Cuisine’ (Apparently this is supposed to be the birth place for ‘Masala Dosa’) ... 5 mins of walk from the main bus depot of Udipi is the famous ‘Sri Krishna Matt’, founded by the Vaishnavite saint Shri Madhvacharya in the 13th century.
Even in that blazing sun, there was quite a long queue to enter the matt. Surrounding the temple were series of chariots dedicated to lord Krishna. Apart from the wooden chariots the matt has exclusive ‘Golden chariot’ and ‘Navgraha Chariot’ kept under high security and only a window left to have a look at them.
The temple has its uniqueness in its orientation of deity and administrative structure.
As with the religious stories, Lord Krishna in this temple faces towards the Kanakana Kindli (named after devotee Kanakdasa who used to see Lord Krishna from here) To this day, the deity of Lord Krishna faces its back to the temple towards the Kanakana Kindi. All Hindu temples have their Vigraha (Deity) facing the entrance of the temple, except Krishna Mutt.
As for the administrative structure, Shri Madhvacharya, the founder of this matha handed over the puja and administration of Krishna Mutt to his 8 disciples. Each of them set up their Mathas around Krishna Mutt, known as the Ashta Mathas. Since then, the daily sevas (offerings to god) and administration of the Krishna Mutt are managed by the Ashta Mathas, each of these perform temple management activities for two years in a cyclical order. During the Paryaya festival, held every two years, the temple management is handed over to the next Matha.
After the simple and special prasad at Temple Bhajanalaya, we visited two other temples in the same complex. As we came out of temple, the town of Udipi was already enjoying afternoon nap and we decided to make a move towards city life of Mangalore... journey to Mangalore through KSRTC Volvo full of young crowd from Manipal Institute was a serious change from spiritual, quite setting to the city culture and movie schedules ;)
As we landed in one of the hotspots of Mangalore city, Bharat Mall, we were back to Pantaloons and Pizza Huts... Manish finally got chance to enjoy some pizza after being trapped in the village for a month ;) ... we had no time in our hand to look at Mangalore sights so we just decided to hang around in this mall till the time we both had our buses ready to pick us up to drop to our daily destinations... Quite an exhaustive trip I must say but for sure was a good change and now I was all set for even challenging journey to Bangalore being on the last seat of KSRTC Rajahansa ;)
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