This is an account of a journey made to the temple town of Sringeri in the state of Karnataka which I made in February 2017.

It was an early morning start for the ride to Sringeri as we rolled out of the Tibetan settlement of Bylakuppe at 7.15, heading west on the road through the town of Kushal Nagar and up into the Coorg hills. For this little trip it was me, Anita, Sonam Tashi and his niece Passang Dawa. It would be Sonam Tashi doing all the driving in the black Mahindra Scorpio, a bulky four wheel drive that we had to take us there and back. The reason for going to Sringeri was to see its holy Hindu temple, or math, which lay next to the Tunga River in the hilly Chikkamagaluru district of Karnataka, lying north east of Mangalore on State Highway 169. It was an ancient temple founded by the great Advaita Vedanta teacher, philosopher and saint Adi Shankara in the 8^th century, and it has been a place of pilgrimage and spiritual learning more or less ever since, being the seat today of the Jagadguru Shankaracharyas.

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