Prologue-The pictures on Google barely did any justice to the spectacle we were witnessing in front of our eyes. The way the humungous monoliths towered over everything in the vicinity is a sight that has to be personally witnessed and experienced. No amount of photos or videos could do justice to this high definition wonder. Situated at an elevation, surrounded by dry deciduous forest all around, Thimappana betta, the popular 'twin rocks of Ramanagara' draws hordes of tourists to the spot every weekend. The bigger of the twin rocks seemed to be as tall as a 7-storey building, and the way they stood together gave them such a royal majestic appeal.
The mist added a tinge of magic to the enchanting scenery as it slowly made its exit towards the right, revealing another hillock in the distance. After a quick Google search, I got to know that that hillock is Talawadi Betta. Ramanagara is so extravagant and is overflowing with the bounty of nature in the form of hillocks, lakes, and forests all situated close to one another. You never know which new hillock you'll discover on your next trek, and your next weekend is already mapped out by whatever you've seen on your current trek.
Now I have a new hillock to explore, see! 😃
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| Talawadi Betta |
First half - Thimappana betta
We arrived at the twin rocks sometime around 8.30 due to a late start from my side. I had to make my way all the way from my place at Marathalli to my friends house at Kengeri, covering a distance of 24 kilometers on my two wheeler in the early morning frigidness. Trust me, the colder it is, the more you just want to snooze your alarm, draw the blanket over you, and forego all your exploration plans for the weekend. After snoozing the alarm two times with such thoughts, I finally woke up at the third bell and dragged my ass out of bed at 5.30. I was supposed to be at his house by now. 😂
I reached his place at 7, and we were well on our way to the spot. It wasn't too late but in hindsight, we could have hit one more hillock that day had I made it on time.
We encountered a bit of fog on the Mysore highway which is typically used to get to all the hillocks of the Ramanagara cluster:
We didn't do our usual stop for breakfast on the way as we were already late, and thought of having breakfast after getting down from Thimappana betta and going towards the next hill (or so we thought). With that, the drive was breezy and there was barely any traffic on the highway despite being a Sunday early morning. A couple of bikers had stopped to the side at a bridge to get some pictures of the sunrise and trees in the fog just a few meters before the above image was taken. The place was getting crowded with more and more bikers so we decided to move from there to the next bridge to get some shots of the countryside cloaked in fog. However, the videos we shot from the car sufficed and we proceeded directly to the hill.
We arrived at the base of the hill at 8.30 and parked the car at the designated parking spot, with its attendant who was handing out receipts for the same.
Right next to the car park was a viewpoint with a bench that offered stunning views of Kootagal town below most of which was partially enveloped in thick fog mixed with smoke arising out of some of the chimneys:
We parked the car and headed straight for the viewpoint of the twin rocks. As it came into view while we were slowly ascending, we couldn't help but be propelled ahead faster by the sheer magnitude of such a towering sight and the respect it commanded. The hike was so short, I woulnd't even call it a hike. It's a picnic spot at best and you are free to bring all your family members, your kids, parents, cousins, relatives and even grandparents ! 😜 Yes, it is so short that people of all ages and capabilities are welcome to come check out this natural wonder.
We sat there totally speechless as we never expected it to be so humungous in complete contrast to all the photos we saw online. Somewhere in between all our clicking and video taking shenanigans we caught a glimpse of a group who had descended the hill we were on, and were making their way to the opposite hill on which the twin rocks stood. We had never thought about it at first or even had it in our plans, but like with most things trekking, things just happen as you go. And especially with exploration, the majority of your day is going to be dictated by how you find your way around whatever you're exploring. So up we got, and followed them into bushes on the trail that led to the twin rocks. We took our own sweet time with it, glancing back at the hill we came from every now and then to check our position.
Turns out that it was just as impressive as what we were seeing from that side:
The twin rocks looked truly spectacular up close and personal while viewed from the trail that curved around it:
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| See the moon? |
With that we proceeded to follow the trail that curved right around the twin rocks from the right side, which gave us a better view of Talawadi betta:
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| Talawadi Betta as seen from Twin rock |
You feel royal as you are treated with vast open vistas in front of you on this side; dry scrub forests peppered with hillocks, plantations and villages. It was truly a sight to behold, and we there for a while not to catch our breaths but to take in the breathtaking scenery. When we turned left and faced the behind of the twin rocks, we were in for even more amazement and adventure, like the kind you have at the caves of Antarganga. Huge boulders littered the space with dry shrubs and grass filling up the dead space in between. There was no trail anymore and we had to push the tall prickly branches out of our faces to see properly and keep moving ahead. We propped ourselves on the huge boulders that overlooked the other side of the twin rocks and it felt truly royal to sit here and admire the landscape down below.
When we looked up, it was truly a magical sight straight out of a fairy tale. The sharp twin rock with one part of it highlighted by the sun pierced the deep blue January winter sky, and the branches that hung overhead looked extraordinarily beautiful complementing the entire scene.
By this time, the group we had followed had already got themselves to the last point on the trail. There was a gigantic boulder which they were seated on and busy having their breakfasts while making occassional conversation with each other every now and then. With a bit of effort and after taking the help of one of the trees, I propped myself up on the boulder that came before the final boulder and made my way to where they were seated.
I got a perfect natural frame from nature at this point which I used to frame Talawadi Betta which now seemed closer to us than ever:
After I was done, we were tweedling our thumbs as to whether to crouch into the cavern below that was formed by all the slanting rocks and get over to the other side. We anyway wanted to check if there was a trail that led back down from that side, so thought why not give it a go. We were there to explore anyway.
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| Imagine standing right under this |
We got through the slit on the other side, found that there was no trail there, and got back to the main trail we came from. When we got back to the side that faced the viewpoint on the opposite side, we could easily discern the spurt in the number of visitors that had taken place in between all our adventuring and exploration.
With nothing else left to do, we got back to the other side, hopped into the car, and left for breakfast.
Second half - offroading fun
Little did we know that we would end up skipping breakfast altogether and directly proceeding for lunch. While descending the hill in the car, my friend got a call and it turned out that some of his gang of off-roading buddies were in the vicinity and were enjoying some rocky jeep fun on some muddy trails nearby. So we also decided to join them and proceeded for the area they were in. The entire area was either forested, or had villages and plantations in between. Later, I got to know that we were going to the Bajrangi backwaters, a section of the Arkavathi river that one sees standing on the Savandurga peak. Since it was going to take us an hour to get there, we stopped on the way for some tender coconuts and malai. We crossed the viewpoint for the Manchanbele dam soon after, along with the weekend crowd that had congregated there.
The road more or less followed the river all the way to the homestay where my friends' friends had already arrived and were lounging on the sofas, tired after half a day of exhilarating off road fun. It was a cute little cottage with a very minimalist design, which featured nature as it's main theme. It consisted of a kitchen, a hall space with a huge window overlooking the Bajrangi backwaters, and a small bathroom whose bathing space was open to the sky. The space between the kitchen and hall was open, and the entire courtyard was naturally lit. The roof of the two structures were not flat but were in the olden style red bricks that slanted at all sides to easily drain rain water and keep the place cool. A bright afternoon sun illuminated the Arkavathi river in front of us which could be seen through the humungous window that overlooked the river as we munched on pakodas (not pictured as we were too hungry to take pictures) and made light conversation. My friend decided to tie a hammock to the hooks outside and truly lounge it out in style! 😎
On further surveying the property, I found that it had an infinity pool that overlooked the towering monolith in the distance - The Savandurga hill.
It was empty now, but imagine how cool it would be to lounge around in the chill pool water in the afternoon sun while gazing at Asias largest monolith? 😀
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| The (now empty) pool overlooking Savandurga hill |
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After exploring the area around the property, I decided to get down to the waters edge and absorb some sights from there. The afternoon sun was merciless as it was beaming down on me directly overhead but the cool breeze emanating from the river prevented even a single bead of sweat from forming. The river looked truly magificent at this time. The water glitered in the rays of the bright afternoon sun in the backdrop of the Savandurga hillock and the fishing hut next to which I was standing.
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| Savandurga in front and the fishing hut on the right |
I could hear a few bird calls every now and then, but it was only when I firmly transfixed myself to a spot on the ground and stood still, did I finally managed to catch a glimpse of some of them.
I luckily managed to capture this bee eater from two angles as it flit from a creeper at ground level higher up to a branch on a tree:
I then sensed that lunch might be ready at least by now and so went back to the homestay. There were some barren trees on the way that looked quite stunning in the background of the sunny blue sky.
But I was disappointed once I got back to the property as not only was lunch not ready, it would take at least another 45 minutes for it to be served. However on the bright side, we were treated to multiple rounds of piping hot pakodas as appetizer, so we weren't starved of anything as we waited. While the other other guys had had their breakfast earlier in the morning, it was my friend and I who were badly craving for a nice hot meal as we were the ones who'd skipped breakfast. But for now, the pakodas sufficed. We didn't feel the passing of time with our constant chatter, and it only felt like it had been a couple of minutes before the cook called us over to the dining table for lunch. Lunch was pretty basic with rice, chapathis and sambar. For the meat eaters, there was chicken curry along with the option of having omlettes made to order.
Now, you might be wondering what we did next, aren't you? We completed our trek in the morning, did a long village drive to get to where we were, had a sumptuous lunch while lounging at a homestay that overlooked a lake, and got down to the lake and sat by the waters edge. What else was left to do but head back to the city, right? Wrong! This is where the real fun began, actually.
The guys had plotted a particular route that went through farmland and dry scrub forests that would eventually take us back to the main highway. But here's the thing right! It was all exploratory. They had only a vague idea about the routes and since Google maps doesn't spoon feed you everything, it was a journey of constant mistakes, backtracking, getting into private property, and what not. This was the real off-road fun, the kind I'd been seeing on my Youtube feed all these years. And now I was finally getting to experience it.
Heck, I even got to experience a real stream crossing standing on the footboard of a 4x4 jeep deep inside the forests of Ramanagara, holding onto the vehicle for dear life. We started from the homestay right after lunch, got off the main tar road into a muddy tractor trail, and it was just that all the way from the homestay till the viewpoint of the Manchanbele dam we had crossed earlier that morning.
We stopped at a couple of viewpoints on the way to catch our breaths and take in the sights as well:
If you look a bit closely at the second picture, you'll notice how high the second viewpoint is. It literally took us an hour of off-roading to get there. You really need to be an adrenalie junkie to have fun at these things. It's definitely not for the faint-hearted or squeamish. The vehicle literally treats you like a ragdoll, with the rolling terrain making your body sway from side to side, and the steeper ascents and descents making you jump up and down at times.
As much as we enjoyed the high adrenaline fun of the tractor trails, we heaved a total sigh of relief when we exited the forest an hour later and got onto smooth tarmac, the interior village roads of Ramanagara. It was almost 5 now, and everyone had to get home. So without wasting any further time with parting pleasantries, everyone said their goodbyes on the walkie-talkies itself and then proceeded in the direction of their respective homes.
Overall, it was a great weekend. I had not only got a trek in, but also explored some cool new undiscovered places surrounding the Bajrangi backwaters which I've bookmarked to explore in the future. There's absolutely no dearth of places to discover even just an hour out of Bengaluru. You just have to get out and explore.
