Sculptures of Halebid Hoyasaleswar Temple

Halebid is famous for the beautiful Hoyasaleswar temple.
Hoyasaleswar temple was built in 11^th century. It is the largest
existing structure in Hoyasaleswar style. Hoyasaleswar is another name of Lord
Shiva. The Hoyasaleswar temple is guarded by two Nandi statues in the front.
These Nandi statues are more than 8 feet tall in height.

The carving on the temple wall shows many animals, birds,
dieties, sages etc. depicting the lifestyle during Hoyasala age. There are many
sculptures which depicts stories from Ramayana and Bhagavad Geeta. All the
walls of the temple are filled with stone sculptures without leaving any blank
space. There is an archaeological museum in the temple campus consisting of
large number of stone crafts. Although many of the images are broken, they
still describe the architectural height of the Hoyasala period.

Halebid is about 17 kms from Belur, 27 kms from Hassan and
215 kms from Bangalore. We first visited Belur and went to Halebid on the next
day. Apart from Hoyasaleswar temple there are other interesting places like
Kedareswar temple, Shantinath Basadi and Pushpagiri etc. which are shown in
separate videos.