Recently I went on a trip with my friends. Well to be honest not too recent but sometime back, in the month of august ‘08. But that time I never used to blog so writing it down now. Will also pen down about other trips in reverse order of date. We went to this place called rangaswamy betta, also called bilikal rangaswamy betta (B.R.B.).
To be honest all my friends are waste, they want to go out, want to do thing but do not like to take initiative. And some who try to are not good enough to convince everyone and have poor managerial skills. So every time it’s all on me. The first problem was deciding the place. As am new to Bangalore I don’t know many places around, so I relied on different travelling websites and blogs to decide on this place. And not to miss, I was helped by Moutushi to finally decide the place, thanks a lot for it Moutu. The next hurdle was to see who all were in for it and how many bikes we really had. The thing I hate is when others act like pussies, and come up with a reply ‘can’t confirm now, will confirm by tomorrow morning’.
So we decided to meet at 7am at marathalli bridge. Asked every one to be there by that time so that can leave by 7.30 max, but hell no! people just love to be late n late. And the worst thing that happened was there were more people and less bikes, thanks to some very cool people who did not turn up at the last moment(which was happening the first time). Prachi, I am really sorry for that day. Anyways we left by around 8 am, and look the boy-gal ratio, only for girls turned up and TWO boys!!! So six people(rohan,swetha,moutushi,soumya,preetha and me) on one unicorn, one active and one dio. Ha ha ha. Anil and his girlfriend were the last minute entry. I felt that their motive was to spend time together rather than the interest in the place.
Left at 8 am, started towards the destination BRB. I had taken the route from a website but still though of confirming it with local villagers on the way. But we dint know that those guys will be more confused about the way to BRB. All throughout they were guiding us to some other Bettta place which was really far, Anil lost hope half way and going by the distance that villagers told he took a U-turn and went back. Luckily at one place a guy told us that we have come a wrong way and a long way. This was out time to take a U-turn and head on the right path. And as we headed close to our destination we became more and more sure that we on the right path now. The localities on the way warned us against the wild elephants we might come across and this totally thrilled us.
The ride got a little hilly on the way but nothing compared to other hilly rides I have been to. Rohan was a little hyperactive all through the journey and every body else just enjoyed abusing him for his stupid activities. Some 3 km before our destination the road became really bad, or rather say no road at all. A local suggested us to park our vehicle there only as the road above was worse and will be difficult for activa and dio to pull till the top. I am proud of my unicorn.
From there we started trekking. The trek route was pretty long, and we had wasted a lot of time already by going wrong way so we took a way through the jungle made my flowing water with little hope in our heart to catch a glimpse of some wild animals. Reached top finally but very tired, but more than tired was the feeling of proud of reaching the top of mountain.
Now a little about BRB- it is situated on top of a high mountain, don’t know the height above sea level. But it’s really high. The view from there was awesome, too good. Have never seen a place like this in Karnataka, never thought there can be place like this. This place was called BRB because of a temple of a GOD RANGASWAMY which is over 600 years old. As per the information given to us no one lives there except the pujari of the temple. But we did find some crowd there, more than we expected. But compared to other commercial places it was very quite and pleasant. Overall I will rate it 8/10. The amazing thing there was a pond which looked very dirty but the water in it was very pure and chilled. The source of water in the pond was not known.
After resting for some times n clicking some photos we realized we were hungry and got nothing to eat. Went to the mandir, they gave us banana as prashad. I don’t like banana but that time it was as good as DBC. Than we asked those guys if there is more to eat, as we very hungry. May be it was a little cheap but they had, those bhandara kind of thing they have at many temples n gurudwaras. They gave us tomato-rice and one more kind of rice which was sweet. I really got to admire the hospitality of those people. For the first time in the state of Karnataka I was treated so nicely by some one who is not my friend. Ate real nicely and continued back our journey, we were getting very late so hurried our way down, got our vehicles and started ripping towards Bangalore. To add to all the fun we had it started raining as soon as we hit Bangalore. I was home by 6pm but some others lost their way inside the city as they were acting too smart and reached home after 7pm only.
Overall it was a nice experience, first trek after coming to Bangalore and loads of fun.
(P.S. –since it’s about a 2 month old trip, I have just given a very brief information excluding many other interesting things that happened on the way)
