the garuda temple located in ‘koladevi’ a small village located in ‘mulabagal taluk’ in’ kolar’ district karnataka. this is one of the very few temples which has its principle diety as ‘garuda swamy’ who is the vehicle of the supreme lord vishnu
As per the hindu mythology, in dwapara yuga during mahabharatha pandava king ‘arjuna’ went for hunting , due to the force of the arjuna’s arrow the forest was set to fire, and all types of snakes in the forest were died. this leads to the sarpa dosha for arjuna. when arjuna met with some of the great sages they insisted him to perform the garuda puja so that his can come out of sarpadosha. so after performing garuda puja arjuna was come out of sarpadosha.
coming to the history of koladevi, in threta yuga during ramayana, the demon king of srilanka ‘ravana’ who kidnapped ‘sitha’ while taking her in his ‘vimana’ a bird called ‘jatayu’ was opposed ravana to save sitha. at that time ‘ravana with his sword broke both of the wings of that bird, even the bird attemped a strong fight to rescue sitha from ravana. then with extreme pain the bird chanted as ‘rama’ ‘rama’ , after hearing the painful chanting of the bird lord srirama saw the bird and came to know the facts. then the bird requested rama to burie the bird at the same place . after this incident the place got the name as ‘koladevi’ and now in kaliyuga the same jatayu is resided as ‘garuda’ and the idol of garuda was installed by the great sage ‘brugu maharshi’ some centuries back, and performed regular rituals for the diety. and the speciality of the garuda idol here is that it is carrying lord ‘vishu’ on right shoulder, and godess ‘lakshmi’ on left shoulder. and one can find a beautiful idol of lord ‘hanuman’ also here. and the temple is getting more and more popular as it is the one of the very few garuda temples in india. so the temple here is very powerful and so many people have benifited by performing puja at the temple. the temple is opened through out the year.