Around Gopalaswamy Hills

Time 5 am
I woke to a brand new day as I had grown older by a year now. Monday mornings are usually crammed up, bustling traffic, even Mysore is not spared on those frantic Mondays. But, I chose to stay back at home on this special day and plan to visit Himavad Gopalaswamy Betta situated somewhere in bandipur national park.

We started around 6am, the sun was steady high and i guessed it would be a very bright sunny day which i thought would take away the essential purpose of visiting the hills. Himavad Gopalaswamy Betta as the name specifies is covered with veiled mist all round the year. That's the specialty of this place. As we slowly started our ascent towards the hills situated at an altitude of 1300m above sea level, the conditions around started changing dramatically. What was supposed to be a bright sunny morning was slowly changing, the clouds were almost covering the peak of the hills almost making it invisible to the bare eyes.

Thick veiled mist covering the peak of the hills

We reached the base of the temple at around 830 and we were almost shivering as the clouds grazing by us gave that punch of coldness.It was as if the clouds were singing in praise of the lord. The sight which behold in front of us was almost like a picture used on my desktop wallpaper.

The whole place around Gopalaswamy betta is frequented by wild elephants

Nobody was present around the temple. It was just my parents and me and the whole place to ourselves. The temple priest arrives only by around 930 because the only bus to this place arrives by that time. we had the whole one hour to ourselves with nobody disturbing us. And luck what may, soon after walking a few distance away from the temple, we spotted a herd of wild elephants grazing in the plains below:). That was awesome. Watching these beasts in their wild habitat, it was just amazing. The whole place around Gopalaswamy betta is frequented by wild elephants because it falls in the core zone of the Bandipur National Park. We came back to the temple after watching the elephants and the temple priest had arrived by that time. He conducted pooja for us, and explained to us the importance of this place. This temple was built by the erstwhile cholas way back in the 12 century.

The temple was built by the Cholas in the 12 Century

We sat there for a while, took a deep fresh breath as the air had the purity of the surroundings. we started back around 11 to Mysore with our minds still in the backdrop of misty hills of Gopalaswamy.

Around Gopalaswamy Hills