A day away from the sickening city civilization - Savanadurga trekking
The
Bangalore environment is becoming so sickening. For people like me watching Bangalore's growth since more than a decade, the urge to get out of it whenever there is break from work life - is intensifying.
Still, there will be many reasons, for not being able to take a breather, by going out of the city. Some of my friends find 'rain' as an excuse, some find a festival as an excuse, some points out prior appointments already queing up.
Last weekend some of my friends could get out on early Saturday morning. We drove on Magadi road, when the city was just waking up. It was pleasant weather. There were so many 'limbs of tender banana plants' on the streets too on the occasion of 'Gowry habba'.
There was pleasant view of 'Thippegondanahalli resorvior' on the right side on the magadi road, few kilometers before Magadi(Maagadi).
Just before Magadi we turned left to reach Savandurga - a pair of big rocky hills. The hill is almost made out of granite, you can see little soil here & there on top of it. Most of the visible skin outside is of smooth steep granite.
We were four friends (Four of Gangothriya undaadigaLu) - me, shiv, maani & manja who were on the outing.Shivu had brought his son Chetan too.
The hill was inviting.. We started climbing the mountain(Maani went to pursue his photography of avians near the lake there)
The weather was so pleasant. There was cool breeze, though sun was shining bright in the sky. The visibility around was good. So much of greenary around, pleasing the eyes (well, due to Monsoon effect).
It was clear sky. No signs of rain - though our friend Sankra had predicted rain (atleast he should have used some 'kavade'/kallu for the prediction -the odds would have been better!)
We found some people climbing down on the way. They were some villagers who were from some village near Doddballapur. The group had mix of young & old people including ladies. Some looked little tired, some young lads were not. They were proudly showing us the steep path they had taken to climb! Some of the elder folks were advising that- it will be foolish to be so adventurist- take the round about route! They were all bearfooted. They were advising us to be barefooted (little they knew that we are different species, without the capability to walk barefoot!)
The weary look of some of the heavy breathing folks & the steepness of the hill discouraged our young man - Chetan. Chetan decided to call off. My persuation went in-vain. Shivu decided not pressurise him more.
It was tough - testing our endurance. Manja & Me didn't want to give up. We knew that though it's quite sometime since we haven't been to trekking, our body still should have some memory of our earlier treks and it will not unlearn them so fast. It's just a question of allowing the body to tune itself to it's memories.
Our mantra was simple - slow & steady wins the race.
We did keep our senses open. The weather was refreshing; the view around too.
It's not easy for us to comprehend why our Kings were building fort on top of hills. It's such a herculian task to climb the hill (atleast for the current civilization), forget about building something on it (without current available modern technology)!
It's even amazing to hear about others going there by foor or horse & try to conquer those forts too!
There is shelter near the top - a stone 'mantap' - for those who feel exhaused while climbing.
There are few small water bodies - rain water collected on rock surface & some tadpoles on it, too.
That reminded me Kanakadasa's keerthana - 'kallinali hutti kooguva kappegaLige allalli aahaaravittavaru yaaru? thallaNisadiru kandya thaaLu manave ..."
There were steep elevations to be climbed on rocks.
There were cables to carry electricity till the hilltop! Not sure which King's plan that was!
All the feeling of tiredness vanished when we reached the top Mantap! A bull temple/mantap welcomes us at the top.
It's quite refreshing near the Nandi. The cool breeze there erazes the tiredness too.
The view from there is fantastic! One will feel overwhelmed by it.
The songs of nature reverberates between the hills there(including our shrills)
Savandurga Lake attracts quite a few birds. The lake also feeds the greenary around. (It's maintained by Forest department)
It will be a good place for bird watchers (like Ganesh Handige)too.
Climbing down wasn't that tiresome, though it was stressful for the knees.
There was an unexpected tourist guide on the way back. Though the fees we had to give was - biscuits!
Manja's journey down from the top was looking similar to the last episode in 'mahabharata' (but reverse).
The episode says there was a follower with Dharmaraaya on his journey to heaven. Here there was a follower to Manja during his journey from the heaven!
Near the foothill there is a village with few temples. Quite a few devotees visit there.
The tender cucumbers sold by vendors were helpful to cooldown during the sunny noon.
It's worth to often visit the 'heaven' to get new lease of life.
Else the city-life can be unbearably suffocating!
I happened to hang on to the caravan of Rural Reach Program this time. This is one program from my office which I am fond of & gives me some pleasure while participating in it. The program is quite simple. Reach some village(pre-identified by our Education & Research department) school (Normally only Govt Higher primary schools will be identified) and make the students aware of computers. The idea is to chase - the fear of computers - off their mind & help generate some curiosity (and may be urge to know more about it). All the children of 5-7th standards in that school will be participating in this program along with the teachers of the school.
We started on Friday afternoon from Electronic city & reached Sagar around midnight. It was long journey on a bus(we were nine from our office). We stayed there in a lodge.
Got up in the morning, had breakfast & proceeded north via Soraba to Kerehalli. Kerehalli is a village near Anavatti(the hometown of one of my friend named Malthesh, who is no more now). There were lush green around. A Kere (pond) invites us when we enter the village. The school people along with some villagers were waiting for us near the school.
There was a small function organized by the villagers in a Devi temple near by. It was refreshing to watch the students in school uniform eager to listen to us.
It's usual customary function including prayer, welcome speech, speech by village heads, we folks etc.
We clarified that the purpose is not to try making the children computer literates(with the available short timeframe it's not possible for us), but to introduce it. Village children may not get exposure to computers like urban children, hence a small effort from our side, we said. We showed a (Kannada) PPT explaining computers - what it is & what it can do, etc. Some kids have heard about it & said that - it's used for calculation & viewing pictures!
We did a demo session setting up few computers there, calling children in small batches. They curiously watched
Word, excel, paint etc. They also saw how to make marks cards, how to make greeting cards, how to draw pictures, etc.
There were few curious questions, there were exclaims, there were puzzled looks.
We hope that next time when they go to city & see a computer, they will have less fear & look less puzzled.
Kids were distributed a notebook, a book about computers(in Kannada), a pen & a sweet pack.
When we packed up & about to board a bus, saw a boy in tears with his father. He had missed the function(don't know the reason) and was crying since all his friends got the books & pen except him. When I gave the items to him, I saw his face brightening. Not sure whether he will be able to understand well - what a computer is by reading just the book (This reminds me - my case of learning two programming languages in my college without seeing a computer. At the end of year when someone brought a computer for a demo, I was ready with a paper containing my BASIC program. That program ran without any errors displaying sinusoidal cusrves etc. My college principal was very pleased! That's almost two decades back. Situation may not be that bad now. During my Interview for MSc computer Science course, the interviewer - Dr. Ramamani was laughing when she came to know that I had learnt programming without seeing a computer!)
That was offline era, difficult to digest in the current online era.
I showed the village people, the bird view of their village using Google earth from my laptop - they were feeling as if they had a helicopter trip over their village(thanks to Google earth's offline capability). Before I started the trip, I could locate Kerehalli on the map, thanks to the public collaboration effort mooted by Wikimapia. Someone from that village side had already marked Kerehalli in Wikimapia. I just did a search in wikimapia.org & found it. Wikimapia is an amazing way of harnessing public effort(similar to Wiki) to map the whole world which will benefit the mass. Any privately managed work wouldn't have been able to help the people like this. We need more of these kind of tools/technologies to enable/educate public. The villagers had arranged lunch for us at the school itself.
After the School venture, we visited a historic place called ‘Banavasi’ which was around 8-10 KM from there. This place has been praised by an ancient Kannada poet named ‘Pampa’. He says if he hasn’t earned enough ‘punya’ to reborn as human being in ‘banavasi’ desham, he would at least like to be born again as a bee there! The Madhukeshwara temple there looks very appealing. The cool environment of the stone temple along with breeze at noon takes one to another world. The river ‘Varada’ flows nearby. There is so much greenery around soothing the eyes.
Then we started for Jog falls. There was heavy rain on the way. By the time we reached Jog falls, it
was dark. There was fog all around. We were disappointed. When we were about to start back from there after fifteen minutes, there was a good breeze, all the fog & clouds got cleared & we had the ‘darshan’ of majestic falls – Raja, Rorar, Rocket, Rani. There was good water though it wasn’t the same as it was when Linganamakki was overflowing. We couldn’t catch the beauty in camera (our eyes were more powerful than camera).
We were richer in memories when we reached back Bangalore next day morning. It is difficult to forget Banavasi as Pampa says. It's not easy to forget Kerehalli & Jog falls too.
I happened to hang on to the caravan of Rural Reach Program this time. This is one program from my office which I am fond of & gives me some pleasure while participating in it. The program is quite simple. Reach some village(pre-identified by our Education & Research department) school (Normally only Govt Higher primary schools will be identified) and make the students aware of computers. The idea is to chase - the fear of computers - off their mind & help generate some curiosity (and may be urge to know more about it). All the children of 5-7th standards in that school will be participating in this program along with the teachers of the school.
We started on Friday afternoon from Electronic city & reached Sagar around midnight. It was long journey on a bus(we were nine from our office). We stayed there in a lodge.
Got up in the morning, had breakfast & proceeded north via Soraba to Kerehalli. Kerehalli is a village near Anavatti(the hometown of one of my friend named Malthesh, who is no more now). There were lush green around. A Kere (pond) invites us when we enter the village. The school people along with some villagers were waiting for us near the school.
It's usual customary function including prayer, welcome speech, speech by village heads, we folks etc.
Word, excel, paint etc. They also saw how to make marks cards, how to make greeting cards, how to draw pictures, etc.
There were few curious questions, there were exclaims, there were puzzled looks.
We hope that next time when they go to city & see a computer, they will have less fear & look less puzzled.
Kids were distributed a notebook, a book about computers(in Kannada), a pen & a sweet pack.
After the School venture, we visited a historic place called ‘Banavasi’ which was around 8-10 KM from there. This place has been praised by an ancient Kannada poet named ‘Pampa’. He says if he hasn’t earned enough ‘punya’ to reborn as human being in ‘banavasi’ desham, he would at least like to be born again as a bee there! The Madhukeshwara temple there looks very appealing. The cool environment of the stone temple along with breeze at noon takes one to another world. The river ‘Varada’ flows nearby. There is so much greenery around soothing the eyes.
Then we started for Jog falls. There was heavy rain on the way. By the time we reached Jog falls, it
was dark. There was fog all around. We were disappointed. When we were about to start back from there after fifteen minutes, there was a good breeze, all the fog & clouds got cleared & we had the ‘darshan’ of majestic falls – Raja, Rorar, Rocket, Rani. There was good water though it wasn’t the same as it was when Linganamakki was overflowing. We couldn’t catch the beauty in camera (our eyes were more powerful than camera).
We were richer in memories when we reached back Bangalore next day morning. It is difficult to forget Banavasi as Pampa says. It's not easy to forget Kerehalli & Jog falls too.
