Shop owner named Bob (he shortens his indian name so the foreigners can pronounce it) suggested we visit 3 temple towns, one of them - Sravanabelagola, which has supposedly world's tallest monolithic statue. Statue is of the Jain deity Gomateshvara and measures at 17.5m. Just the day before we read about some celebration regarding this statue in newspaper (yes, we read newspapers here), so we packed and went.

We chose Dharmasthala as our next stopping point mainly because of Lonely Planet's description:

Some 10,000 pilgrims pass through this town every day; during major holidays and major festivals, the footfall can go up tenfold.

LP was right - there are a lot of people, but mostly on main street where most of the temples are located. Step outside a few hundred meters and you will find yourself surrounded by nice jungle like forest with monkeys dangling from trees and birds singing with occasional riksha sound somewhere farther away. We found really quiet temple area just outside of town and stayed mostly there.

One more todo item completed - watch bollywood movie here in India. And while it would be more "proper" to see it in bollywood's homecity Mumbai, opportunity struck and we took it while we where in Hassan.

This morning we decided to explore (relatively) nearby beaches. After walking for ~1 hour through jungle like forest, we came unto road. After rain started drizzling, passing riksha offered us free drive. Fortunately, when we reached first beach, rain stopped. We chilled for a while, drank good, cheap chai and started thinking about going home. Out of nowhere some guy offered us boat ride. After bargaining down price from 350 INR per person to 150 INR, we set off (with several other local tourists). Ride continued about an hour, several more beached were seen and was generally fun.

Yesterday we bought electric travel teapot (0.5L) and 2 packs of different (and good) Darjeeling tea 50g each.