Bhubaneshwar is often called the city of temples . It is impossible to know exactly how many temples there are, but it has been estimated that there might be over 700 temples in the city. This number, while impressive, is just a fraction of the original number, which, sometime in the 13 th century, would have been about 7000. Wikipedia has a page dedicated to the Hindu temples of Bhubaneshwar , where 93 temples are listed. All these are ancient temples, built between the 7 th and 13 th centuries CE. Bhubaneshwar was once known as Ekamra Kshetra , the sacred mango grove. We know this name from an inscription at the Ananta Vasudeva temple, which mentions the name of the place, and the main temple (that we now know as the Lingaraja temple) in the mango grove. Ananta Vasudeva Temple, with a sculpture of Trivikrama in the niche It is extremely interesting to note that the Ananta Vasudeva temple is the only temple to Lord Vishnu in this city. Varaha, Ananta Vasudeva Temple Located v...
There is no counting the number of temples in the vicinity of Tirupati, but the TTD maintains some of them, and they also run buses to these temples in an attempt to popularize them. While some are just small temples about which not much information is available, some of them are really beautiful and worth a visit. We took the TTD bus to make a visit to all these temples in a day. It happened to be Diwali, so we had the added satisfaction of spending the festival in a memorable manner. Here are the temples we visited. Karvetinagaram Narayanavanam Nagari Bugga Nagalapuram Surutapalli Appalayagunta Tallapakka Chennakesava Swamy Temple Karvetinagaram Karvetinagaram , located about 48 Km from Tirupati, traces its origins back to the era of the Chalukyas, who had their capital at Narayanavanam. At some point, a forest was cleared and their new capital (Nagaram) was built here. Since the capital was built by cutting down a forest, this place came to be known as ‘Kadu vetti...