Isha Foundation - Chikkaballapur

While in Bengaluru, we decided to visit Isha Foundation at Chikkaballapur. It is founded by Sadhguru. We started from home by around 5 pm. It was 60kms away, roughly an hour and a half's drive. Once we were out of the city traffic, we took the highway towards Hyderabad. It was scenic view all through the way. We munched on the way and played a few games of Sudoku. We reached our destination by around 6:45pm. Isha Foundation houses a 112 foot Adiyogi(Shiva) statue. 

There's a huge mahashula temple and naga temple as well at the entrance. Footwears need to be removed at the collection centre near the entrance which are then transferred to the other centre inside for easy collection. There's no entry fee to the foundation or for the light & sound show.

We wanted to have tea. There were 2 restaurants inside. Only one of them was providing boiled tea. We finished our share of tea before settling down for the light and sound show.  

There's mantra chanting for a few minutes followed by the lights & sound show for 30 minutes. It was an amazing show on the bust of Shiva explaining the saptarishi and Adiyogi. The Adiyogi statue and the mahashula are in a straight line. The lights from Adiyogi went straight through to the mahashula to lighten it up with different patterns at night. 

After a wonderful show, we got up and climbed the stairs to the Adiyogi statue and then to the temple below. There was a long queue for the temple darshan.

However, under the open sky and with the cool breeze blowing, it was easy. The queue kept moving making the process faster. Post the darshan, we collected our footwears and exited the Isha Foundation. There were a few souvenir shops on the way from where we bought souvenirs. It was now time to figure out a place for dinner. As we were far away from the city, no one had any idea about restaurants. That's where Google came to our rescue. A few restaurants were shortlisted based on the required cuisine and the de-tour needed. After some analysis one restaurant was finally selected. We reached the selected restaurant "Green Planet" in around 40 mins. We relished our food there and then started for home. By 11:30pm we reached home. But again that wasn't the end of the day. We reached home to again play some games followed by our regular chit chat sessions!!

P.S.: There is open seating on the ground for the light and sound show. You can consider taking a mat to sit on, though it's not necessarily important.