“For temple architecture, Aihole is the primary school, Badami high school and Pattadakal a college.” This is what every guide would tell you in these three temple towns, which are located not too far from each other.

Aihole, in Karnataka, used to be a place of teaching for the art of sculpture. Interestingly, most of the temples here are not places of worship, as they were built by the students as part of their training in chiselling the stone. The Durga temple has an uncanny resemblance to the Parliament House in New Delhi and another interesting temple is the Ladkhan one, a Hindu temple named after a Muslim, which has a wooden look carved in stone.

 

Everywhere there are unfinished pieces of work lying around, giving an idea of how the training used to be done. Aihole was also the laboratory where a new style of temple architecture was created by combining Nagar style (North Indian) and Dravidian style (South Indian).

Badami is about 40 kilometres from Aihole; it was the capital of the Chalukyas Empire, and it flourished in the sixth century AD. At the centre of Badami is Agastya Tirtha Lake, surrounded by cave temples, a fort, a mosque and the Bhutanatha temple. It is said that in the ancient times the water of this lake had healing powers and could cure any type of skin disease. Today, on the steps of this lake, all you can see are women washing clothes.

The cave temples of Badami have been chiselled out of a single monolithic rock of a reddish brown colour resembling the colour of almonds, which are called Badam in local language; it's from the almond coloured rock that the town of Badami gets its name. These high caves host three Hindu and one Jain temple. There is also an unfinished cave which was probably intended to be a Buddhist cave temple.

The Hindu temples are dedicated to Shiva and Vishnu, their incarnations and their families, and have their depictions on walls, pillars and ceilings. Interestingly, there are also some puzzles carved in stone, some of them solvable and some them yet to be solved. A unique carving at Badami is also that of a Nataraj (dancing form of Lord Shiva) with 18 arms, which in a single sculpture depicts 81 different dance poses through combination of hand gestures.

Across the lake is the fort, built around 52 natural rocks. From the watch tower of the fort there is an interesting view over both ancient and new Badami, co-existing as the modern town lives amidst these monuments. Facing the lake is Bhutanatha temple complex, containing many temples and some unfinished pieces of stone art. The temple looks beautiful as the background of this green lake.

About 10 kilometres from Aihole, on the banks of the river Malprabha, is the world heritage site of Pattadakal. It is a temple complex containing many temples, some in Dravidian style, some in Nagar style and some in a fusion of the two styles. This place was also Chalukya’s capital for some time, and this complex is said to have been used for royal functions like the coronation of kings. It is difficult to imagine how big functions could have been organized in this complex since the temples are very close to each other. Out of all these temples, only the Virupaksha temple is still a functioning one, and all the others have been destroyed inside, so they are no longer places of worship.

All the three places have lot of similarities; most stone carvings are repeated, with only one or two exclusive pieces in each of the locations. There also is a lot of erotica on the outer walls of the temples here.

All these places leave you with a feeling of having spent some time with the rich cultural past and reading stories carved in stone from that era. It is almost like someone from those times came to tell you the stories that you need to pass on to the generations to come.