Temples in Karnataka

Karnataka's karavali — the coastal strip where the Western Ghats fall to the Arabian Sea — carries an unbroken thread of devotion, and its heart is Udupi. Madhvacharya, the thirteenth-century founder of Dvaita Vedanta, established the Sri Krishna Matha here and enshrined the Bala Krishna image that tradition says came by sea from Dwarka, hidden in a lump of gopichandana clay. Here too belongs the katha this coast still lives by: when the saint Kanakadasa was not allowed in, tradition holds that the Lord himself turned, and a window opened in the western wall — the Kanakana Kindi, through which every devotee takes darshan to this day. The Matha's worship is kept by the Ashta Mathas, the eight monasteries of Madhva's disciples, and every second year the Paryaya festival hands charge of the worship from one matha to the next; at Sri Krishna Janmashtami the Vittla Pindi procession fills Udupi's streets, curd-pots broken high over the crowds.

Northward the coast tells the katha of the Atma-linga. At Gokarna, the linga won by Ravana's fierce tapasya was set upon the earth by Ganesha in the form of a cowherd boy, and for all his strength Ravana could not lift it — so Shiva abides there as Mahabaleshwar, the lord of great might, with the Koti Tirtha tank beside him and Maha Shivaratri as the great observance. Where the cloth that covered the linga fell, tradition names Mrideshwara — today's Murudeshwar — whose ancient shrine on Kanduka Hill, the sea on three sides, now rises beside a towering modern Shiva murti and a twenty-storey Raja Gopura: new construction, old sanctity, for the holiness here is the Atma-linga tradition itself. Inland, at the foot of the ghats on the Kumaradhara river, Kartikeya reigns at Kukke as Subrahmanya, lord of serpents, in whose refuge Vasuki sheltered; the living rites for sarpa-dosha — Sarpa Samskara and Ashlesha Bali — are kept here with quiet dignity beneath the peak of Kumara Parvata, and Champa Shashthi on Margashirsha Shukla Shashthi is the temple's great day. The Konkan Railway strings the karavali together — Udupi, Murdeshwar and Gokarna Road are stations on one line — and Mangaluru, with the coast's international airport, is the natural gateway; Kukke lies about 100 kilometres inland from it, with Subrahmanya Road its railhead.