Trip to Devarayana Durga

It was late on 8 April 2006 we decided to make a trip to Devarayana Durga in Tumkur District. No particular reason. Just people from the team. Bright and early on Saturday 8th of April we gathered in the Oracle OTP office. I had Siddhant (my 4.5 yr old son) along with me. The other people in the group were Nilotpal and his better half;Ruby, Anand and his wife and kid Nalin, Toji, Sandeep and Dev. After the usual "mai tere ko saath (7) baje aaneko bolatha , its now eight" kind of arguments, we had a nice breakfast in Udupi Garden and got on our way at 9 am in 3 cars.

We took the long route using the Outer ring road,Hebbal flyover and Peenya. It took us 90 minutes to reach Peenya. So a good lesson learnt. Use the inner roads ! We stopped for the mandatory tea and then proceeded on NH4 towards Tumkur. This is now a toll road. The toll is 20 ruees/car if you are travelling till Tumkur. Its 10 if you are getting off in between. On the excellent toll road, you can really take off at high speeds, but with frequent 'U' turns this can quite hazardous. I still think this road is as good as the ones overseas. Lots of shoulder area, reststops, and well lit petrol stations.

Just after crossing a village called 'Yede Halli' we got off the toll road. Below the flyover, there was a mass of humanity. We navigated our way through them and the comment was "Dream Sequence all done. Back to reality". We asked for directions and were told to turn right below the flyover bridge towards "Udegere". I could be
wrong abt the spelling, but just asking Devarayana Durga would have been better since this is a well known place. We now proceeded on the country roads with each one of us reminecintg about their own travels when they were kids. Remembering grandpas and village homes we have not visited in a long time. It was nostalgic.

Once we reached Udegere, which is about 10 kms from where we took the right turn, all of us had forgotten the Bangalore traffic. Its a quaint village with children playing on the road and cattle lumbering around without a clue. Toji did remark that the cows were very lean. ;-)

Continuing on the road, we made a left turn towards Devarayana Durga. The signs along the way are very helpful. We passed through a protected patch of forest. Forest always have a way of making environmentalists out of people. The sad part is they forget the comments as soon as they are back in Forum Mall. The road was in very good condition. The white temple on the mountain is visible from the road.


After making a right turn, we started climbing a steep hill. The view is quite exquisite from the top. My Casio Pathfinder watch told me the altitude was 1200m.

We parked our cars, there is space for about 20 cars on the top. I guess this is a famous temple since there were a few people around. The temple itself is about 700 years old.





It is believed to have been a major stronghold during the Vijayanagara empire. So it was like passing through a curtain of time. These were the very steps on which the "Palegars" walked 700 yrs ago.










We made a quick visit to the temple and started exploring the mountain top.
There is old pond structures right next to the temple. Its supposed to a natural spring. We climbed up to the top, and it is a fantastic view from up there. Undulating hills allround, varying hues of green blending with the clouds. We spent some time at the flat rock top and then we climbed even higher where we could see an old structure. The climb is not much, problably 50 feet, but is steep in places and requires some scrambling. There is a nice big cave along the way. Siddhant got all excited about finding tigers, panthers
and pythons. At the top, there is an old stone structure. This directly overlooks the temple. Inside the structure hangs a bell, which had some engravings. It was cracked from being exposed to the elements. After spending some time, we decended down, and took the road to Tumkur. This is again very nice drive through the forest. Once in Tumkur we had a nice lunch at around 3pm and got on our way back to Bangalore. Got into Yestwantpur at peak traffic and spent the next one hour recovering all the forgotten STREES !

All in all a great trip. One of the memory books.

-Ciao.