TG HaLLi and MAgaDi

[agag]

07-May-06:
Fast asleep I was. "Wake up son!" ... in my sleep I woke up and rubbed my eyes and ... lo! there stood the Goddess of Travel! "Thou art not expected to waste weekends like this ... wake up ... lest I bestow upon thou my curse of ..." I woke up in a snap before she could continue ... ending my mid-day siesta!
Then a retrospection unwound ... another sunday is almost gone? ... no way! Naheeeeeeeeen ... yeh nahin ho sakta!

We got ready and set off ... where to? lets see ... Doddaballapur road, Bellary road, Mysore road, Tumkur road ... all are pretty much seen, lets go towards Magadi road! I remembered reading some reports about TippagondanahaLLi, which had aroused some interest. We took the route through Malleswaram, West of Chord road, Toll gate, and hit Magadi road. A sunday afternoon paved the way through a relatively sleepy road through the city. Within no time we were in the country side, with a picturesque view of the hill ranges on the left and the small valleys on the right. We saw a huge lake near Maranahalli, which we thought will keep for another day. We moved on to the minor ghat section and pulled over on the side of the road for a view of the valley, which was by now quite 'gorge'ous! This happened to be the 32nd milestone (rather kilometer stone, but I will be referring to it as milestone itself!) from Bangalore. Not so deep down the ravine is seen the river Arkavati, which happens to be a tributary of the Kaveri, not much water though. A few more kilometers, we reached a narrow single-laned bridge, crossing the dry river bed, which had an entrance to the TippagondanahaLLi dam.

View of the Dam:





Entry to this dam is not allowed for the commoner, so we had to be content with viewing it from a distance. This is also officially called as Chamaraja Sagar, named after the King Chamaraja Wodeyar of Mysore. This was built to supply water to the city of Bangalore. Till pretty recently, this was the complete source of water to Bangalore, until the Big 'n Bad IT Boom happened to the city!

Some intuition struck me and we stopped all of a sudden at the 37th milestone. Got down from the car and crossed the road to find a nice forest and a valley. The trekker within had woken up by then and we jumped towards the forest. A few hundred meters down, to our surprise and utmost pleasure, we saw the catchment area of the TG halli reservoir! We sped towards the still and clear waters of Arkavathi, who was spreading a sense of tranquility and dignity. Though it was summer, there was sufficient water in the river. We drank the water of Arkavathi, which is known to be one of the sweetest rivers (which is actually true).

Thats me ...






After enjoying the scenic beauty of the place for some time, we climbed back the same distance (about a kilometer), to come back to our car. We continued to reach MAgaDi, the town of Kempe Gowda, the architect who built the city of Bangalore. The main temple of this place is at a place named 'Thirumala' (SwarNAdri Parvatha in the legends), to which you need to take a right turn from the main road, before you enter the town. The lord here is 'Paschima Venkateshwara', owing to the fact that the lord is facing west here, unlike the usual east facing shrines. However, the Goddess and other shrines here face east. One more interesting fact is that, though the lord is Venkateshwara, the temple is known as 'Ranganathaswamy Temple'! The reason apparently was because Tipu Sultan, under whose territory MAgaDi used to come, was averse to all Hindu Gods, except Lord Ranganatha! This was because Lord Ranganatha resided in his capital (Srirangapatna), on whom he had special respect. So, to prevent Tipu from destroying this temple, God himself was rechristened!
The usual God-Goddess couples are Venkateshwara-Padmavathi and Ranganatha-Ranganayaki. But here, the Goddess has the name of Padmavathi Ranganayaki (owing to the same reason)!

The Temple 'Vimana':






The road beyond MAgaDi leads to SAvandurga (12 Km). There is an excellent monolith and a fort upon it at SAvandurga, but since it was quite late, we thought we will pay a visit to it some other day. We started back by 17:45, and reached home in a little more than an hour. All in all a Sunday that was saved!

Cartography: MAgaDi is 49 Km from Bangalore in a direction to a little north of west.

[bruce]

Hey Agag,
That was some cool writeup!! a nice weekend you had!!
How was the road to Magadi is it good?

[aah78]

hey, thats a nice short review of your trip.
beautiful pictures, especially the Vimana temples have a certain architectural appeal.

[agag]

Originally Posted by bruce

Hey Agag,
That was some cool writeup!! a nice weekend you had!!
How was the road to Magadi is it good?

Thanx!
The road is good, though not a highway ... u can average speeds between 50-60.

-Ajay

[deepug]

Very good writeup and good pictures

Deepu