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

Postcards From Backwaters

Some more pics from the backwaters

The ancient temple complex built by Hoysalas

An Evening at the backwaters of Cauvery

Another weekend, another hangout with my very close friends. The decision to have a hangout here was all of a sudden and surprising. Well, let me introduce you to the team who joined for this memorable outing.

The team(from left): Raja,me, Manohar,Raghavendra, Somasundar ( a.k.a Soma),Amith,Krishna & of course Nitin.

The Team photo on the bridge across Cauvery

It was 2pm on a wet Saturday evening, it had been drizzling a lot from the morning, and by afternoon, the cloud storm intensified leading to torrential rains. It was impossible to move out in such rains. It was around this time Krishna called me up to join for an hangout at the backwaters of River Cauvery. We all met at manu's place,with rain clouds still playing hide and seek . Four of us, me, raja and amith were stuffed into Krishna’s car and the rest into manu’s car. We drove off with the rains still pouring on and very good music being played on the player. We passed by Mysore’s Electronic City, home to companies like Infosys, LnT & SPI ( My friend Raja works here, so couldn’t leave out his company) Soon we were nearing the K.R.S dam, most of the crest gates had been opened and the water was gushing in full force. We headed straight towards a small village where a temple which used to be submerged all the time when the dam was full, was being renovated and bunds being built to block water from again flooding the temple complex.

On the banks of River Cauvery

The rains had finally stopped, so that we could enjoy the place in peace. Not too many visitors, Few locals(like us), few people from outside, and very few people who had been entrusted with the work of renovating the temple. Soon we were enjoying the vast backwaters of river Cauvery having our photo-sessions then and now.

The ancient temple complex

Looking at how all the guys enjoyed the much needed break, it was bringing all our memories of our college life back to us.

An island on the backwaters

We moved around a bit, watched the sunset, evening lights around the reservoir were being turned on. It was already getting dusk, so we decided to pack off towards mysore. The enjoyment had made everybody hungry and something like hunger cannot be controlled by the boys. So we stopped by a midway dhaba and ordered a little bit of everything, Soon we were all busy eating and discussing about our lives which i believe stretched for the next 1 hour and we were back in our homes by 9, and to top of it, I had to take another round of my dinner, lest I angered my mother.

This is how an evening which was turning out to very pale due to the rains turned out actually to be very memorable!!

©All image courtesy is provided by manu’s camera and he is the sole owner of all the photos.

A final word of thanks to Manu’s camera Sony DSC-H3, Krishna’s W350i, Amith’s W700i for providing the photo courtesy. I shouldn’t forget the two beautiful cars which bore all our brunt’s and the poor roads around the city.

Krishna's Car

Manu's car with Manu in the middle