Angamali - Cochin - Vaikom - Cherai

Bisle Ghats - Coorg

The Escape route :
Airport Road > BTM >Mekhri Circle > Yeshwantpur > Tumkur Road (NH4)

The Plan:
Bangalore > Nelamangala > Channarayapatna > Hassan > sakleshpur > Arikere > Kudrasta > Bisle Reserve forest > Kukke > Sulya > Sampan (?) > Merkara > Murnad > Virajpet > gonicoppa > chennangoli > konnankatte > Balele >



konnankatte > thithimathi > hunsur > ilval> Shrirangapatna > Bangalore



The Trip:
Bangalore > Nelamangala > Channarayapatna > Hassan > sakleshpur > Arikere > Kudrasta > Bisle Reserve forest > Kukke > Sulya > Sampan (?) > Merkara > Murnad > Virajpet > gonicoppa > chennangoli > konnankatte > Balele > Kabini > Shrirangapatna ( we bypass mysore town to avoid the traffic jam ) > Bangalore



The sneak-in:
Mysore road> BTM>Silk Board> Vasanthnagar> RT Nagar> Jalahalli

Pandavapura - Shreerangapattanam

A Trip to Pandavapura and Shrirangapattana could be a day trip extended into an overnighter. An easy drive down Mysore road, with a breakfast stop at the old and new age eateries, takes you to the Pandavapura turn off.

A pleasant drive through sugar cane fields takes you to the foothills of the "french rocks" It consists of a couple of hillocks, a temple ( with a temple tank, large basava's statue, larger Ganesha's Bas Relief mural, et al). The adventurous kind can do a trek/climb up the hillocks which takes a couple of hours to get up and around the same to come down. There's also a lake behind the rocks to explore. While driving back dont forget to drink the refreshing sugarcane juice and learn the process of jaggery making at the many "ale mane" around the Sugarcane fields.

Places of accomodation are around Shrirangapattana with KSTDC and private resorts and budget hotels too. The temples and fort of Shrirangapattana provide more then enough for the tourist and the traveller.

Access:

Nearest Airport: Bangalore

Nearest Railhead: Pandavapura and Shrirangapattana

Bus Station: Pandavapura and Shrirangapattana

By private vehicles




The Plan

Most of the gang seemed to be headed towards Byleguppe and I was clueless about what to plan for an otherwise seemingly boring weekend looming over my head. S then woke me up asking what’s in store and we started discussing Pandavapura about which I had read about but never visited. It was already Thursday and so the obvious questions of when’s, how’s and whys came up.

Since we were pretty uncertain about what was in store we kept the plan as open as possible. Plan A was to head towards Pandavapura, try to climb up the Kunthi Betta hillock, camp on the top if possible and explore Shrirangapatna the next day. Plan B was pretty much the same except to find a decent place of accommodation and in the rare event that we got too bored too soon, plan C of coming back the same day was also in mind. But finally we froze on Plan Z, the open plan, to do as we please as time goes by. That suited us just fine and also gave us Friday to try and find more travelers. Faced with the quandary of choosing only two more from so many new friends we made, we decided to tread the open plan path ourselves first and then try and make this a monthly routine. Discussions of the mode of transport (car, bike, train or bus) and timings fizzled down to the creature comforts so we eventually shortened the list to a two-wheeler or a four-wheeler. My regular 4X4 was out with a friend so S’ wheels were the only choice. And there began the trip.

Morning mayhem

Meeting early morning at BEL circle, with S getting delayed with a futile search for his 3 man tent and then taking a wrong turn at the Hebbal flyover gave me enough time to get myself at the pickup point before he arrived. We started off on Tumkur road, cut across Magadi road and eventually reached Mysore road at Kengeri and headed off to destination Pandavapura. All was well, till we figured we both hadn’t taken down notes of the directions to the place. Hmmm.. Good way to start an open plan trip I guess. Anyway getting there was no problem as there's enough people on the way to ask directions but to make things easy, here's the key - get to Mandya via Mysore road, take a right turn around 12 km away which is the shorter way to Pandavapura. There is also another turn off a km before Shrirangapatna. Both turns have a green sign so its hard to miss unless of course you are both directionally and geographically challenged like me

The day finally begins …. With breakfast

The usual breakfast stop for travelers on Mysore road at the wayside restaurant at Ramanagaram, which was filled with the weekend day-trippers, had drawn us to a halt too. After the arduous tasks of finding parking space and a table, we had a quick breakfast of khali dosas, masala dosas, idlis and vadas and a round of coffee and tea before hitting the road again. Before all you readers raise those eyebrows about our appetites, you must realize we are young growing men and we need our nutritional ration for the day. I was fast growing past 30 and S racing close behind, just past the mid 20s.

After the first direction check with an auto rickshaw driver we headed to find the “sortkat route” and to our luck, we found a bus with Pandavapura written on its destination board just minutes before the first turnoff. So we just tailed the bus till there and then took off ahead. Kunthi Betta and the twin hillock appears quite early in the distance. That route is also one of the ways to get to Melukote so its pretty much on a populated tourist trail.

The road to the French rocks

It was one of the most scenic routes I've traveled on, where you drive to acres and acres of sugarcane fields. You find small tiled buildings interspersed between the fields bellowing out smoke from their long smoke stacks and some just from the ventilations on the top. In the beginning it’s not clear what the buildings were till we drove past them and the sweet smell wafted past. It was the traditional "Aalemane" where they extract the juice from sugarcane and make jaggery* ( *unrefined sugar used in most of rural India) Old clay and terracotta tiled brick buildings with an open area in front of it strewn with crushed cane and surrounded by the fields.

The road led us to the one-horse township of Pandavapura town as we drove past the hillocks on our right. We missed the turn off sign to Kunthi Betta and turned around after nearly touching the village. A few kms later we arrived at the foot hills of the twin hillocks with a school right there. The odd school kids were running around, some drinking water out of a tap and others keen on being photographed by us. A few of them did what they were supposed to do at school too, i.e. studying

Shutterbugs on a sojourn

Our photographic sojourn began there as we took out cameras and began shooting the Peepal tree with deities of the snake gods and furthers up the stone steps some old relics of pillars. The steps took us to a small cave which was pretty interesting to me, but a kid we met there, who eventually took upon himself to be our “guide”, told us there’s nothing there and we should have a look at Basavanna instead. He led us to this pretty huge statue of Basava which he said was the second biggest in Karnataka (arguably!). We walked around the statue to its front and found the much revered monolithic member of the bovine family seemingly sticking out its tongue at us. Now that was superlatively, a unique Basava at least. Our newly recruited guide, Raghavendra, then led us to the temple tank, which also had a small well near it and some ruins of a few smaller shrines. There was also a large bas-relief Ganesha on one of the rocks faces with a bas-relief mouse scurrying beneath as the mythical God’s chosen mode of transport.

Some mythology, history and reality bites

Finally we were at the foot hills of the not so famous French rocks, which history has it that the French army was camped there while they helped Tipu Sultan battle the British. The strategic location and proximity to the power centers and the far view it gave made perfect sense for a military encampment.

The mythology of the place says that the Pandavas in exile stayed at this place for a while, with the hillock being the favorite of their mother, Kunthi. There is a huge depression on one of the hillocks called Bheema’s foot step or Bheemanapada. There’s a Kunthi kola or Kunthi’s pond also around there.

We were then faced with the choices of climbing up the betta which S, the active trekker, took up with gusto and I went uphill kicking and screaming. What started off as a difficult walk turned into climbing over rocks and crawling between the rock crevices. I was out of steam after an hour of climbing and our kind guide, seeing my plight, led us down and this time it was S who came down kicking and screaming since he wanted to climb to the peak.

After drinking water from the water pipe at the foothills, and some farewells to Raghavendra and his friend, we headed back after the usual travelers white lie of promising to come back soon. Well, I prefer giving them a sweet placebo over the truthful bitter pill.

The elusive Aalemane waterhole – The right kind!

We had decided to have a taste of the sugarcane juice so went around asking for the right place where they would give us some. Every Aalemane we stopped at, we were not sure if the folks there thought we were looking for freebies, and didn’t even want to converse with us.

A stop at a junction which looked like one of those bus stops where buses stop once a day, a kind soul pointed us in the direction of the “good” Aalemane who will give us our much needed drink. We arrived at this nondescript building which seemed, well, something you find in any Indian village, with all its rustic charm and cheerfulness. The workers there seemed friendlier than the earlier lot and a bit curious too about our intent.

I walked in boldly and asked him for some sugarcane juice in Kannada to be greeted with a pretty blank expression. Then he tried his reply in the language he knew best – Hindi! And the message was conveyed. We soon got a jug of the juice which was downed in no time. The worker had this incredulous expression on his face, but I was in no mood to be bashful… Heck, we were downright shameless, drinking till our gullets and then sat back with the broadest smiles we had. After recovering for a few minutes, we asked him about how much our tab would be and he generously told us that it was on the mane* (*house).

They don’t sell it as a norm and the guy was more than happy to let us indulge in it. More questions about his antecedents revealed he and the gang there were from Rajasthan. They had leased the land from a local landowner and worked all through the year, early morning to early evening. The next time I think I am working long hours I will remember my friends, the Aalemane employees and reconcile to my better life. Though from the outside they seemed tied into their routine, their busy life though was one of choice, to be their own bosses, to reap the entire benefits on their hard work and be independent.

We spend time photographing them and the jaggery making process, which was mostly manual labour and the only automation we noticed was a diesel motor running the cane crusher. The fresh cane from the surrounding fields are chopped and brought in and fed into the crusher. The juice is directed through primitive plumbing into a couple of cauldrons kept constantly boiling .
















A young boy endlessly kept the fire fuelled with the bagasse, which is the dried cane after the juice is extracted. The boiled cane extract becomes thick and is put in a metal tray and again stirred and just before it begins to solidify, put into buckets.

The jaggery blocks harden quickly and are taken out and stored. As we watched this, a slight drizzle started and that sent the workers scurrying to cover the dried cane and the fuel for the fire. A couple of them continued working on the blocks of jaggery as that couldn’t stop, lest the jaggery hardens in the trays.





The feverish pace of the work and the apparent state of ease of the workers made a strange sight. The blaring regional film songs seemed to help them keep pace of the work but the smiles on the faces and the easy going attitude with jokes being exchanged look away a lot of the hardship from what was otherwise a back breaking routine. I just couldn’t get it or maybe it was another world that kept them cocooned in such bliss.

As we drove away, my mind wandered through the day’s events, how different each person’s life was in that small place, seemingly well protected from all the stress of the city life, but making them curious about us too.

Contentment is not such a hard thing to achieve after all.

Resting by the river

We drove on to the next agenda, to sit by the river and watch the sun go down. While we weren’t exactly opposite a view of the sunset, the colors of the sky gradually changed and diminished into darkness, while we exchanged tales about our road trips done before over hot vadas, bajjis and tea. The calmness next to a river never ceases to amaze me. Water birds wading around, attempting their last catches of the day, the flowing river keeping its rhythmic routine of babbling and gurgling in a sing song way and the leaves of the trees seem to be having a conversation of their own in the evening breeze.

We had tried to get accommodation in the river side cottages run by the tourism department, but they are apparently booked well in advance for weekends. That weekend was no different and seemed to be full already. The guy at the front desk gave us a few dates in the coming week and later as the nearest available ones. We then decided to find a place of stay and get back to the riverside for dinner. Finding a clean and minimalist hotel across the highway seemed to suit our need and budget, so dumping the luggage there, we headed back and assumed our places at the river side. There were more tales from the past told and plans for the future trips made while time seemed to keep pace with our conversation. The day’s adventures took its toll and weariness crept in. So we ordered an early dinner and headed to our place of stay.

Misty morning and dancing monks on the roof

I love waking up early and seeing small towns stir to life. Shirangapatna wasn’t disappointing at all. People move about in no hurry, but getting on with their daily routine. As I stood by the window of the passageway outside our room, I could notice shadows of people on our roof falling on the building ahead. There was a rhythmic drums playing a folksy beat and the shadows were dancing away. A little kid who was kind of a bell boy at the hotel came up to me to ask if we needed our morning fix. Yes! Indeed - nothing like a strong filter coffee to kick start your day. Then he asked me if we slept well. We were too tired to hear anything even if the French army were still firing cannons to help out a local rebellion. We kind of redefined the term “ sleeping like logs”. The boy continued telling us his woes with the monks, who were dancing all night singing paeans to the flirtatious deity who was very popular with the cowherd girls from mythology. Yeah, I guess it was kind of heavenly back then. But last night the monks kept praying and the boy apparently kept cursing as they didn’t let him sleep one bit.

The Plan for day 2

Shrirangapatna had a rich and volatile history from the early 9^th century Hindu rulers of the Ganga Dynasty to the later Hoysala dynasty, coming into the hands of the Wodeyars , and in the background of the Europeans gaining more than a foothold in peninsular India, the history of Shrirangapatna from then on mostly revolved around Hyder Ali and his son Tipu Sultan who dreamt of a unified state from the banks of the River Krishna in the north to Travancore in the south flanked by the Eastern Ghats and the Western frontier ending with the Arabian sea. This large vision inevitably drew the attention and enmity of the British leading to the Four wars of Mysore. The Fourth war ended with the death of Tipu Sultan and the reinstating of the Wodeyar dynasty. That began the decline of the sheen of Shrirangapatna as the capital was shifted to Mysore. But the multi-cultural past has left rich remnants for the tourists and travelers.

We had quite a few choices in the places we could see today. The ramparts of the island fort of Shrirangapatna, the famous temples of Sriranganatha swamy and Nimishamba, The Sangam, DariyaDaulatPalace among others, all seemingly unavoidable on the crowded weekend tourist trail. The sanctuaries of Ranganathittu and Kokkare Bellur ( on the way back) were close by too. With overwhelming choices, we decided to follow the tried and tested “open plan” which worked well for day 1, which was to take things as they unfold in the day.

We stepped out for our first taste of Shrirangapatna town and our breakfast. Without going into a lot of details about the food, the town seemed to be in its own reverie. It wasn’t exactly standstill, but moved at its own pace which differed vastly from our hectic city life. I would like the much traveled Indians who come to Bangalore and call it slow paced to have a look at Shrirangapatna.

A small match-boxy barber’s shop and a few other similar ones lined one side of the road. Auto rickshaws crawled around to pick up the Sunday tourists for the regular circuits of “sightseeing” with a “Yellige? Saar” look in their eyes. These autorickshaws are a cheaper and flexible alternative to the travelers who don’t prefer the long drive from Bangalore. You can conveniently arrive here by bus or train and do your local travels in these three-wheeled cabbies.

Travel tip - Do make sure you do your haggling before hand though, and arrive at a reasonable bargain, where either side thinks they have got the better of the other, as there are a few wolves in the driver’s clothing that are out to fleece the odd unwitting tourists. The best bet to get a good deal would be to take the assistance of a local traffic policeman. Start off by asking for directions about the places to see, the best circuit to cover them all and finally how much it would cost to do that by an auto rickshaw. As most locals are, the police man would be more than happy to direct you and help you get around his home town. Another alternative would be to hitch different auto rickshaws from point A to point B which kind of works well too, If you are familiar with approximate distances and the existing fares.

We walked around that place, came to an old bridge across the river right behind out place of stay. Taking some pictures of the old structures there, we ambled across to move on. My quest for a temple next to a river, one of the lucid memories I have of Shrirangapatna, led us to ask locals for directions and we eventually were sent to the more famous Sriranganatha swamy Temple, instead of the Nimishamba Temple.



After some more photography around the temple of an old wooden ceremonial chariot used for the temple festivities and the surroundings, we walked to Colonel Bailey’s Dungeon. A recessed construction housed an arch supported series of dungeons with a cannon housed there too. It had too many tourists at the time we got there and so our getaway from there was quick and painless.

One of the next things on my unwritten agenda was to get to the small storybook small town train station. We found the train station was close to the dungeons and walked across to the good old Shrirangapatna railway station. The old station structure was now a reasonably protected place which also housed some sort of a training school for the railway staff. We sat down on the wooden slatted benches reminiscent of stations across India and just took in the ambience of the place.

I am not sure how much time we spent at the station. Some people were waiting for a train soon to come in, some others seem to be there for no particular reason, like us. A few of them were asleep, with a small snack counter doing brisk business and a few staff walked around. A sixth sense in some of the waiting passengers seems to have alerted them, with a couple of them looking anxiously. A fast train suddenly steamed in and out of the platform before people really moved about. The train not stopping there seemed to reflect the fact that it was in too much of a hurry for the life back here.The train had left the station, but we were in no rush to go anywhere. Sadly we were done for the day and it was time to head home ... this trip was very different for me ..... spending time in a place where time moved at the pace you wanted it to ... and I was in no rush ... no rush at all ...

The drive back was only briefly paused for a coffee break at one of the new age coffee shops come up on the Mysore highway, perhaps as a step to get us back into the groove of the city.

Chorla Ghats

Chikmaglur - Magundi - Basrikatte

Chiikmaglur - Magundi

Madras in march a.k.a the mad trip '06

Pollachi - top slip - Aanamalai - Karian Shola - The Indira Gandhi Wildlife Sanctuary & National Park [IGWLS]

Madras in march a.k.a the mad trip '05

March 12-13

Chikmaglur, Balehonnur - New Year's Eve trip

Nilgiris

18/092004
19/09/2004

Karwar - Devbagh - Independence Trip

13/8/2004
16/8/2004

Chikmaglur, Magundi

Wayanad - Edakkal

24/1/2004
26/1/2004

Masinagudi

4/10/2003
5/10/2003