Exploring Murdeshwar

I took a small break from blogging for 2 days to visit a nearby place from Mangalore- Murdeshwar. My parents had come to Mangalore, so we planned a weekend trip. We started from Mangalore a little late than planned at 10.00 am on Saturday. We had our breakfast from Suratkal.

Murdeshwar is around 160 kms from Mangalore. The roads near the Suratkal stretch was really in a pathetic condition as 4 lane work was going on. It took me some time to get over this stretch. We passed Udupi and Kundapura and reached a marvelous place called Marvanthe. The beauty of Marvanthe lies in the fact that road (NH 17) is only 100 meters from the sea shore and this stretch of road has Arabian sea on one side and a river named Souparnika on the other side. Its really a unique view having sea and river on either side of a road.

We resumed our journey again after a 15 minutes break at Marvanthe. It was raining heavily on the way to Murdeshwar as monsoon season is in its best during this period. By around 2.00 pm we reached Murdeshwar. Once we got down from the car, we could see the huge statue of Lord Shiva.

Murdeshwar is situated on the coast of Arabian sea, around 12 kms from Bhatkal on NH17. The major attractions of this place are;

Murudeshwara Temple: This temple is built on the Kanduka Hill which is surrounded on three sides by the waters of the Arabian Sea. 20-storied Gopura (Tower structure) is being constructed in front of this Shiva temple. Two life-size elephants in concrete stand guard at the steps leading to the temple.

Statue of Lord Shiva: A huge towering statue of Lord Shiva is present near the temple complex. It is said to be the tallest statue of Shiva in the world. The statue is 123 feet (37 m) in height, and took about 2 years to build. The statue was built at a cost of approximately 10 million Rs. The idol is designed such that it gets the sun light directly and thus appears sparkling.

The Shiva statue has 4 hands and the hand which is having the small drum, behind the left hand was hit by lightning and had crashed down. The construction work on this hand is currently progressing and because of this, we were not able to go near the statue.

The statue and the complete area around is not a govt owned property, but owned by a private party who recently renovated the years old temple. The place is well maintained with greenery all around and lot of other small sculptures.

View of the Arabian Sea.

We had our lunch from a beach restaurant and started out journey back to Mangalore by 4.30pm. We reached back Mangalore around 9.00pm, bad roads and heavy rains prevented us from reaching early. It was really an enjoyable trip.

How to reach Murdeshwar:

By Road: Murdeshwar is one km deviated from the NH17, around 160 kms from Mangalore and 220 kms from Goa.

By Train: Murdeshwar lies in the Konkan stretch and many trains stop at this station, including express trains.

By Air: Nearest airport is Mangalore or Goa.