As I sit down to write this, the sky is cloudy, the wind mild and the weather pleasant on a fine late August morning in Bengaluru. The setting immediately takes me back to the scenes of Bettamugilalam.
As a family, we cannot hold ourselves from hitting the greenery for more than 2-3 months. Our last such outing was in May and it was already getting claustrophobic and suffocated in the packed urban routines. So when we were browsing for some nice day trip to quickly refill our lungs with fresh
O
2, we chanced upon a link well written about Bettamugilalam and Panchapalli dam -
http://traveltwosome.com/one-day-trip-bangalore-panchapalli-dam-bettamugilalam/. Did not take much time before we headed out.
It was a weekend morning 7:30 am when we started off. An hour of car drive took us to Denkanikottai from Whitefield, touching the outskirts of Hosur. We stopped at Denkanikottai for breakfast at the only small decent outlet called Saravana Bhavan (not even faintly connected with the popular bhavan by the same name). We strongly recommend travellers to stop in Hosur or the highway NH44. There are better options available in both Hosur as well as along the highway.
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| Bamboo country, alive and creaking |
About 9 am we were at the Aiyur forest check post. It starts getting pretty beautiful and scenic from here. Right at the check post one can start hearing the creaks of the bamboo and the fresh smell of green leaves and nice cool winds.
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| At the Aiyur forest entrance |
About 2 Kms from the check post there is a lake locally called the Samieri (Sami - God, Eri - lake in Tamil). It is a waterhole for animals and if one is lucky, elephants can be spotted in this place early in the mornings.
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| Sami eri bordered by thickets of bamboo |
But by the time we were there, vehicular movement had already started. Every driver made sure that he honked before crossing this place either to drive any unassuming animal away or to warn the forthcoming vehicle.Though this really makes the chance of wildlife spotting impossible, one could empathise with the two wheeler drivers. What we could neither understand nor appreciate was the reason behind a big bus which went honking all the way up at every turn. Though it is a hill drive, the bends are not narrow and there is not much traffic. So four-wheelers can go ahead without honking at all.
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| Some scenic views en route to Bettamugilalam |
In 45-60 mins of slow drive gazing the beauty around and stopping for photography, we reached the Bettamugilalam hill top by 10 am. Its a lovely little hamlet with few houses and farm lands.
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| Posing for a click..simple joys of life atop the hills |
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| A curious elder |
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| Cattle company |
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| Country life |
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| A happy son of the soil |
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| Beasts of burden at work |
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| Man's best friend, with him every where |
The hill tops were really picturesque and through out the drive we enjoyed the symphony of numerous bird calls. Mostly these were small birds like the barbets, indian rollers, flycatchers etc. It was very difficult to capture them through the lenses as they would sense even the slightest of our movements and swiftly fly away.
At about 11 am we moved on from Bettamugilalam towards Panchapalli dam. We took the slightly longer route via Kendanahalli, Athimutlu instead of returning back to Aiyur forest check post. This gave us a chance to explore an unknown route through the hills and farmlands. Only the initial 2Km stretch of this route was bad after which the drive was smooth.The road was dotted with beautiful turmeric and marigold farms on either sides.
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| Farms en route to Panchapalli dam |
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| House surrounded by beautiful turmeric and marigold fields...bliss! |
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| Green to the eyes, wind to the soul... like music to the ears! |
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| Hay, picturesquely stacked |
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| A farmer at her office...If only all work places were this close to nature! |
By about 12-12:30 pm we had reached the dam. Much to our astonishment the dam was almost dry except few shallow patches of water with livestock around, in spite of the rains everywhere. When we inquired about this with the staff in the near by quarters, we were told that this dam fills up only by the rains and does not receive excess water from any other dams. As this region had not seen much of a rainfall, this dam remained vastly dry. But the winds were pretty strong here and the weather pleasant. So halting for about 20-30 minutes, we started back.
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| Panchapalli dam |
From Panchapalli we took the route via Ullatti-Palayam, Hosur-Rayakottai Road and reached the highway back to Bengaluru. With a brief lunch stop in the highway we were back into Bengaluru by about 4:30-5pm.
A day well spent amidst hills and birds, a hitherto unknown route explored. Travel is the wind beneath the wings of a wandering soul!
Pics by: Kalirajan Subramanian
Click here for Part II of this series
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