Hey Sid, let's go to Sringeri this weekend asked my friend Kate on a Wednesday evening, with travel being one of my survival escapades every month, my heart instantly answered through my mouth as yes, let's go.
Sid: Hey Sandy, will you join us for Sringeri this weekend?
Sandy: Sure, why not.
Sid: Hey Chav, will you join us too? Yes, definitely replied Chav.
With this conversation, the trip was on; but there was a question that popped up in my head, how shall we go? motorbike? it would be troublesome for the girls to sit for such a long time; Drivezy, showed us the way and booking was done.
Fast forward 48 hours, it was 4:00 on a fine Saturday morning when I had picked up our Car and started our journey of Monsoon. We have planned to visit few other places on our way to Sringeri.
After driving for about 3 hours and having breakfast, the gates of the heaven were opened and it was almost impossible to see a vehicle that was just 5 meters away; the rain continued along with us. After a point of time, it started to play peek a boo with us.
It used to pelt down heavily for 10 min, and then settle down as a drizzle for next 10 min and subside completely for another 10 min and start back again afresh, this was the routine for next 24 hours.
Continuing the routine, we reached Belur around 11:00, the main attraction here was a 12th century old temple still standing erect which was demolished and reconstructed several times during the previous era. A stunning fact was that, it took more than 100 years to construct this marvel.
We had a pleasant visit to the temple, appreciating its architecture and battling the mood swings of the rain; after spending around 1 hour we have set the course straight to Sringeri where the main attraction was sharada pettam temple which was just marvelous.
We had reached the temple on time before the gates were closed in the afternoon, free lunch at the temple was the highlight of this visit, after spending some time inside the temple, we went to a hanging bridge near by, the view of the bridge and the entire temple from the bridge was very pleasing for the eyes; during the mean time rain has started to pour down with more intensity as we ran back to our car, to set course and drive through to our next destination.
The drive until Sringeri was fabulous, but now what we had gone through was just horrendous, the route that leads to Sirimane waterfalls from Sringeri town was such a piece of hogwash. But, all the hardships to drive through such a road has flown away like ash as if Thanos had snapped his fingers with his gauntlet after looking at the natural beauty.
Waterfalls was just mesmerizing and I had captivated the beauty using my digital tool; After appreciating the beauty and spending some quality time at the falls, we were on our way back to the town to crash into a place and settle down for the night.
Sunday morning started off with a drizzle as we started our journey towards Mullayanagiri peak through Chikmagalore. The tone for the day was set by the road, as it lead us to the eternal joy of riding through the lush green meadows of Karnataka. However, our joy had to be halted for a while; want to know why?
Have you heard about the recent traffic on top of Mt Everest? trekkers were passing through the dead bodies to reach the peak; more or less that was the situation here, replace trekkers with cars and dead bodies with fellow travelers, the mountain road that leads to the peak was so crowded and I had my heart in the mouth while driving through it, the wheel of the car was as close as 2 cm from the edge of the road, and during that entire ride we were accompanied by happy showers from the heaven. Thanks be to god, we reached the peak, and came back down safely.
This entire adventure took us close to 6 hours as we started to starve; at the need of the hour we found the indigenous grape fruit which is authentic to this area, we stuffed one into our bellies and also satisfied our hunger with some road side village corn.
** Do try these both when you are here **
And then, we set course to the another small town in Karnataka which is famous for a tallest monolith statue (Gommateshwara statue). Sravanabelagola, is the name of the town and it took us 2 hours to reach this town from mullayanagiri hill. And the statue was standing tall in a temple which was on a hill top. Arghhhh, the sounds of our heart.
We dragged our bodies onto the top of the hill with the tiring feet, the view from the top was so soothing that we found ourselves with some adrenaline. History says that the statue was dated back in 980 A.D, this region was reportedly ruled by Maurya dynasty back then.
After spending some time on the top, we came back to our car and started our journey back to Bangalore; the gates of the heaven were closed as soon as we crossed chikmagalore, however, the clouds were still covering the sky to give us a pleasant monsoon ride.
As the clock was ticking 23:30 we have reached our nests. 44 hours of journey, 26 hours of driving, 1000KM of distance and heart full of memories were pulling us to our beds and yet we shared a smile before we dozed off to start a fresh week in couple of hours, that's my monsoon trip into the thunderstorm.
Do read my other travel experiences down below in the same blog, until next time, happy traveling.
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