Num ooru, Mysuru, nim ooru yaar ooru (Mysuru is my town, what is your town?).

Decades ago, I sang that line with a child’s fierce conviction. Recently, my wife and I followed that childhood refrain back, driving from Bengaluru to Mysuru.

We made the most of the journey. Three stops. Three elements. Three encounters with how time changes places.

Water: Gaganachukki

Our first stop was Gaganachukki Falls, where the River Kaveri plunges tall and forcefully even in winter. During the monsoon, they say, it spreads wide and becomes a thunderous curtain.

The viewing platform is top-notch: solid granite steps, high-quality stainless-steel railings, and a broad gallery offering excellent views of the falls.

And yet, there were only a few visitors there. That’s a familiar Indian paradox: world-class natural and historical assets waiting for better storytelling.

As we drove up, we passed two churches and a little Christian graveyard. They feel out of place in the remote countryside of Karnataka. And they are.

Asia’s first hydroelectric power station was established here in 1902 to supply electricity to the Kolar Gold Fields. British engineers and Goan Catholic staff came to build it, then stayed to run it.

As automation reduced the need for on-site staff, the residential colony emptied.

What becomes of a region when the local community is no longer needed? This is how ghost towns are born.

If Gaganachukki reveals a ghost town created by a shifting economy, Talakadu, our next stop, was one created by shifting sand.

Sand: Talakadu

Between the 14th and 17th centuries, sand slowly swallowed the thriving urban and temple center, Talakadu.

The Kaveri makes a sharp bend here. Over time, its shifting course piled sand along the inside of the curve.

The winds carried the dry sand inland, layer by layer.

It wasn’t a calamity that buried everything overnight. It happened bit by bit; a catastrophe in slow motion.

How do you fight sand that advances several feet a year? You don’t. You retreat.

Residents moved farther north, but were close enough to witness what they were losing.

A Mysore king had two temples excavated in the early 19th century, but the sand returned.

It took modern retaining walls and a shield of trees to finally hold the sand from reburying what had been excavated.

The Panchalinga: Five Faces of Shiva

The Talakadu region is home to a cluster of five ancient Shiva temples, known as the Panchalinga, built 900-1,200 years ago.

They were built independently, not conceived as a set. Over time, pilgrims wove them into a sacred circuit.

Every 12 years, during the Panchalinga Darshana, thousands visit all five in a prescribed sequence.

We visited them in the order they appeared along the way, starting with the Arkeshwara temple, several kilometers from Talakadu.

Arkeshwara: The Sun (Arka) Temple

The temple sits amid open farmland. Ancient. Isolated. Serene.

When nearby Talakadu’s fortunes shifted, perhaps this temple’s surroundings contracted with it.

The temple priest told us that on Ratha Saptami, the first rays of the rising sun fall directly on the lingam. What’s remarkable about many Hindu temples is that they aren’t just standalone structures. They were designed as part of a bigger cosmological picture, aligned with specific celestial moments.

We next headed to Talakadu proper.

Descent

Sand never fully submerged Vaidyanatheshwara, the largest of the Panchalinga temples, which anchors the Talakadu village.

About one kilometer away are two completely excavated temples. To get there, we walked barefoot along soft, shifting sandy paths.

Descending the stone steps to Pataleshwara, to what was the ground level a thousand years ago, we got a feel for what “buried” means.

Dynasties and Deities

Nearby stands Keerthinarayana, a Vishnu temple built by the Hoysalas after their victory over the Cholas.

The Cholas and their predecessors, who built the Panchalinga temples, were Shaivites. The Hoysalas were Vaishnavites.

These temples coexisted; different dynasties, different deities, the same city.

When the sand came, it didn’t differentiate between dynasty and deity.

We left Talakadu with sand between our toes and thoughts about what it takes for a place to survive. Our final stop offered one answer.

Stone: Somnathpura

The Keshva Temple at Somnathpura, now part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was built in 1268 by a Hoysala general as an act of personal devotion.

What made the temple endure?

Partly the material. Soapstone carves beautifully and hardens over time. But mostly sustained human intention.

People decided they must preserve this place. It is not hard to see why.

The temple sits on a standout star-shaped platform with intricate carvings wrapping around the temple in horizontal bands: elephants at the bottom, then horses, then leaves and vines, then scenes from the Ramayana and Mahabharata, and, at eye level, the gods.

And although it ceased to be a living temple, Somnathpura escaped the extensive damage that Halebid, its UNESCO co-listed site, suffered during the Islamic invasions of the region.

Inside the temple, my mind drifted from the ancient soapstone to the modern gray granite corridors of IIM Bangalore, where I had graduated long ago, and had visited just a day earlier.

The IIMB campus is among the finest works of B. V. Doshi, India’s most celebrated architect.

Doshi acknowledged that temple architecture influenced his IIMB design, citing Madurai’s Meenakshi Temple complex, though never the Hoysalas. But standing there, I wasn’t so sure. Perhaps influence doesn’t always know its own sources.

I am no architecture buff. But the gray stone, the long shaded corridors, the columns, and the way both temples, one to learning and the other to the divine, demand you move through them, not just look at them, felt familiar.

Arrival: Mysuru

I had set out to relive the past.

Fittingly, along the way, I saw how differently time treats places.

Some get buried. Some fade. Some endure.

More than five decades later, Mysuru’s pull remains.

Num ooru, Mysuru.