Sholay spot: Ramanagara (Ramadevara betta)

Itinerary for Ramanagar trek:

· If you are going adventure (:P) by taking public transport reach Majestic or Sattelite Bus stop early morning. Try to catch first bus.

· Take a ticket to Ramanagar.

· Once you reach Ramanagar, take an auto to reach foot of ramadevara betta.

· If you are going on a road trip J, then also leave Bangalore by 4.30 or max 5am.

· Once you see the board to ramadevara betta on your left (there is a sharp bend towards right around 2km to ramanagar), you can see the Kamaan to the hill on your right hand side.

· If you are ready to skip your breakfast, then you can take that entrance and reach the foot of ramadevara betta. Or else you can have an awesome tatte idli in Bidadi(on the way) or delicious south Indian dishes in Kamath Lokaruchi (which is 8km ahead) and then reach the betta.

· Either you can park your vehicle near the gate(which is 1km before the entrance) and start walking from there itself or you can take your vehicle till the entrance, park there and start climbing steps.

· Be prepared to climb around 400 steps. There is not much trouble makers (monkeys) in this place compared to Shivagange.

· Once you reach the temple, don’t forget to take the diversion on left side of temple which leads to the summit of betta.

· It’s better to reach the top early morning. As the weather will be cool and you can enjoy the breeze.

· Once you reach the top, please spend time sitting alone for sometime quietly.

· You can have tender coconut while going back which you will see along the road

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Yes, the place where the famous gabbar scenes from Sholey movie are shot!! As it happens to be just around 50km from Bangalore, it’s a well suited for a weekend getaway. And also this is the perfect place for a person who is a beginner in trekking. Thanks to my friend Neeta’s sis for suggesting this place. On the night of Saturday while coming back from Commercial Street, suddenly she said lets go to Ramanagara tomorrow!! We all said yes in union and it was decided.

Next day we woke up around 4 am and we were ready by 5!! No tension of transportation, as we had car :P We started from home by 5.30. It’s an awesome combination of early morning long ride in a car with cool breeze kissing your face and a sound track playing in the background!! :D I had a smile on my face throughout the ride.

Once we crossed Bidadi, we were looking for sign boards which can direct us to Ramanagar. Since local call it as “Ramadevara Betta”, all direction board had this name instead of “Ramanagara Betta”. Now, as our stomach were making noise, we decided to finish our breakfast and then climb the hill. While driving in Mysore road highway one must stop @ Kamath Lokaruchi to have a delicious south Indian dishes. Immediately after Gousia Engineering College we saw a sign board on our left hand side saying 13km to hill. There was an arch to our right side which led to hill. We didn’t want to listen shouting from our stomach. So we drove extra 8km to stop the noise of hunger. But we were not sure whether they will have breakfast ready so early. With complete trust on Google, which said breakfast starts at 6am in here, we went there around 6.30. By the look on their face, we understood that we are the first one to do batting. :P Thankfully they had 2 to 3 items. We had our all-time favorite idli with hot coffee. After an awesome batting between hand and mouth, we took u turn around 7 towards Ramanagar.

We passed the arch and the road to hill was manageable. 1km before the foot of “Ramadevara Betta” temple, there is an entrance gate, which is supposed to open @8. But we reached there by 7.30 only. The gate is helpful if you are planning to take your car till the entrance of temple. We parked our car near the gate, not because gate was closed, but because we wanted to walk. While walking we captured the moments in “DSLR” :P Once we reached the entrance we saw a writing that said 400 (may be 300 :P, little confused) steps to reach the GOD. Half of the trek is climbing stairs only.

We took short breaks in between to pose for a camera, but the actual reason is of course to take rest :P. The view from wherever we stopped was great. Every view at the stops we made, was like view from different floors of a building. Finally we reached the temple. We took almost 45min to reach till there. Temple was still closed. There was a huge rock to our left hand side. We didn’t know the exact place where Sholay was shot. But whichever rock we saw we said may be there!!

My expectation was like will have an awesome view once we reach near temple same as shivagange. View from there was good. Not that amazing. There was a huge rock behind the temple. But we were not sure whether we can reach there or not. Then we saw 3 guys taking selfies at the edge of that rock. Thanks to them! Otherwise we would have returned from there thinking that , that is the last stop.

Then we found a way next to temple which was not visible from far. While following the path we found a point to our left side from where we were able to see another side of Ramanagar. The view was nice. It was almost bird eye view point. Obvious that we had some photography session. Since the sun was raising, we thought of continuing our photo session while coming back. Then we reached the place where those guys were taking selfie. We also took selfies. At that moment we saw them again. But now little above. Oooo there is still more to climb!!! Then we hurried to that place.

We saw few foreigners coming. They had 2 big dogs!! It’s still a wonder to me how foreigners treat traveling. I feel for them traveling is not a run away from the day to day huddles. It’s their part of life. Anyway we said hi to them and resumed our climb. Next part was little difficult compared to the climb we did till now. It’s a slant climb, where they made steps on the rocks. Thanks to the one who put the iron bar to hold on to. Otherwise its little difficult to climb as the gap between steps is more. After 5 to 10 min we reached the top of ramadevara betta. Finally!!!

Our guides (three guys :P) were going back. As there were no other people, we were the only left ones. It was very peaceful. The view from up there was awesome. Sky was clear. This was a real bird eye view point. There was not much breeze. It was just kissing us instead of pushing us down :P It was really a best option for a weekend getaway from Bangalore for one day(actually you can say half day :P). We explored the summit. We found a small lake there, which was perfect spot for photography :P We spent an hour up on the hill. Obvious that half of the time went for giving pose to the camera :P As Sun was coming over our head, we started to climb down.

I left one part of me there only, so that it can take me to different spots of ramadevara betta whenever I think of it. After half an hour to 45 min we were back to our car. We drove back with a satisfied smile on our face. It was a short and sweet, fun filled trip with lots of photography.

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