Kollur Mookambika Temple
— — the river, the forest, the goddess, in that order.
Not only on a wall.
“A small temple town in the Western Ghats foothills of Karnataka, where the Souparnika river runs past the gopuram and the Kodachadri hills rise green behind it. Pilgrims have come here for centuries to sit before the swayambhu linga of Mookambika Devi. The day begins early, with bells and the smell of camphor; by mid-morning the courtyards fill, then quiet again by dusk. One of the seven Mukti Sthalas of the Karnataka coast.
Kollur Mookambika Temple, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Kollur Mookambika Temple stands in the village of Kollur, in Udupi district, on the banks of the Souparnika river in coastal Karnataka. The temple sits at the western foot of Kodachadri, a hill that rises to 1,343 metres in the Western Ghats. The Goddess Mookambika is worshipped here in the form of a swayambhu jyotirlinga. Tradition credits Adi Shankaracharya, the eighth-century philosopher, with consecrating the present temple. Kollur is one of the seven Mukti Sthalas of the Tulu-speaking Karnataka coast.
The Souparnika river runs along the temple's eastern side, and pilgrims bathe in it before darshan. The river is said to gather the medicinal properties of plants on its bed, and the name itself comes from Suparna, the eagle Garuda. Its course is short, rising in the Kodachadri hills and reaching the Arabian Sea near Maravanthe about thirty kilometres west, where it runs parallel to the coastal road. The monsoon, from June through September, swells the river and turns the surrounding forest a deep wet green.
Kollur is reached by road from Mangalore, about 135 kilometres south, or from Udupi, around 80 kilometres south. The nearest railway station is Byndoor Mookambika Road, about 27 kilometres west on the coastal Konkan line. The temple is open from roughly 5 a.m. through 9 p.m., with the morning and evening seva drawing the largest crowds. The annual Navaratri festival, across nine nights in autumn, is the high pilgrimage. Saraswati Puja, on the ninth day, is when families bring children for the Vidyarambham first-letter ceremony.