AVALABETTA

A trip with friends, could be more than just a breather from one's daily hustle bustle. friends can fill up the entire trip with life, unexpected deviations and make it one of the most memorable events.

One such experience was my trip to Avalabetta. Avalabetta a small scenic hillock located about 90 kms from bangalore, was our intended destination for a planned half day trip on a nice warm sunday in the month of february.

Initially though planned as a single destination trip, eventually panned out to be full day trip comprising of a visit to a historic and mythological temple town LEPAKHSI and a short but sweet birding session on a lake bed in a small lesser know bird sanctuary of VEERAPURA hamlet near lepakshi

We started from Bangalore around 9:00am after our breakfast heading towards our destination Avalabetta, On the way we deviated from the route as one of my besties found an handsome soldier in the military convoy and friend/ dentist/guru who was driving the car was sportive enough to adjust the speed of the car to be around the convoy so that my friend could quench the thrist of her eyes a bit. In the process of following the handsome soldier we realized that Lepakshi was only about 30 kms from where we were. So we decided to go to Lepakshi first and visit avalabetta on the way back.

We reached Lepakshi around 11:20am and did not need a guide nor had to pay for the parking because this place happens to be the native of my dentist friend,

Lepakshi, a beautiful architectural piece has refrence from Ramayana. It is said that when Ravana struck the Garuda (eagle) which was fighting to protect Sita from getting abducted, the Garuda fell on this place and later once Rama arrived gave the news to him ,and was told “Lepakshi” (translating to “Get up”) and thus the origin of the place name.

Apart from this there is also Veerabhadreshwara temple. The temple has a history of aboout 2000years and was renovated during the Vijayanagara dynasty. The temple roofs depict many stories and the pillars have carvings of different deities. One pillar in specific caught my attention, which was once a hanging pillar and is said to be the base of the temple structure. During the British rule one of the architects is said to have tried to move the pillar to find out the technology used in the construction and the walls immediately cracked and the pillar slightly touched the ground.

On the way back from Lepakshi we decided to take another small detour to visit a small bird sanctuary VEERAPURA winter home to painted storks that travel all the way from as far as siberia to spend the winter here and have thier young. My inspiration to learn and teach me photography being a bird photographer we had to visit this spot.

It’s an village untouched by most of the urbanites, has a small lake and on nearby trees were hundreds of Painted Storks. We spent a couple of hours soaking in the serenity of the place and doing bird photography.

It was now finally time to visit Avalabetta with a small stopover to have our lunch in a newly opened Rajasthani Dhaba serving us authentic Rajasthani food by its natives.

Avalabetta closes to its visitors around 6:00pm and we reached just in time to watch the sunset and take a couple of pictures in the spot the place is famous for. One has to take prior approval to go to the tip of the clif as it’s a little risky. Once we got our pics at the cliff we moved to a comfortable place to watch the captivating sunset.

Post sunset with eyes full of memories and heart full of our chatter of how beautiful the day had turned out for us we walked down the hilltop and returned to Bangalore.

P.S. we need to trek 2kms one way to reach the tip of the cliffs