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Pune to Dharwad and Vanoshi in my Hyundai Exter: New year well spent

10th January 2025, 14:28 by Dev Shah

I was quite impressed with Dharwad, it is a quaint town but has big roads, good BRTS service, roads are not much crowded.

BHPian Defdrvfan recently shared this with other enthusiasts:

Hello Folks,

Always wanted to share a travelogue on Team BHP, so here goes my first attempt at doing so.

As the yearly farce called as "furlough period" approached in our office, which is the period when people claim there is no normal work, so managers expect people to work on additional things, which in turn become more than normal work, gave me an impetus to plan a leave in that period.

Me and wife got busy trying to agree on locations that we wanted to visit. Being in Pune means we normally have about 3 directions to go out to and lot of options. As usual it was not reaching an agreement, but this time, my son who is officially in his teens now intervened and closed the discussion, by saying he will come to the places he suggests or else he doesn't want to come. You cannot argue much with teens, those who have them, know it.

He wanted to visit Dharwad and some jungle. Dharwad, because his musical idol, "Pt. Mallikarjun Mansur" used to stay there and the house is now a museum which he wanted to see, and a jungle because he was fed up of the daily school run through the city. So that was that, and we packed our bags.

The now year old Exter had not stretched its wheels in quite some time and seemed eager as well. Did the usual laundry list on the day before, like getting the tank full, getting air pressure checked, checking if PUC is not beyond validity, Fasttag filled up etc. Had planned to start at 5:30 am and we sure did start at IST 6:00 am as expected, later than planned, but not later than needed.

It was a smooth ride till Satara as expected due to the early morning sparse traffic. Post Satara the good old NH4 gets split into left and right diversions every 2-3 km due to work going on all through till almost Kolhapur. It is not pleasant and eats up time as you cannot have a fair stretch of road to yourself. But we had decided not rush but to enjoy the journey. We stopped at couple of places, had breakfast at the well known Aram on Satara road ( though it is on the opposite side) and then after Kolhapur, stopped at a place called "Viraj" food mall. It was a clean and well maintained place. People going on the route can mark it and consider it as a good stop. The plan was to reach Belgaon for lunch and wife had searched up some place where they serve authentic north Karnataka meal on a banana leaf , i think name was Annapurna Thali or something. It was managed by a nice middle aged couple and their children helping them, seemed popular as most tables and staff were very busy. The food was quite good.

The road between Belgaon and Dharwad is absolutely brilliant and I really enjoyed that 90-100 mins of drive very much. We reached Dharward around 4 pm. and checked into the GRT square hotel on PB road. We were visiting for the first time and had no clue if we were near the city centre or far away. But turned out most of the things were quite in reach from that place. The Hotel was clean and staff courteous. There was a decent basement parking and attached restaurant. There were some language issues but nothing that could not be managed. The beds were too soft for me to be able to sleep well, but then that i think is my problem universally with hotels, i always wonder how people sleep on beds that go down a foot when you sit on them.

We decided to finish off the shopping demands from some of the aunts and mausi's about getting them Dharwad sarees by finding the local market on Subhash road. After some shop hopping we decided that our knowledge in sarees and cloth quality etc is dismal so bought whatever seemed best and in budget. 6 sarees in about 7000 Rupees seemed a decent buy. Closed off the day quickly though we were not really tired from the drive. Maybe because we had enough stops, rotated the drivers seat between me and wife at regular intervals and were excited for the seeing the thing we had come to Dharwad for.

Day 2 of the trip was quite interesting, it was a sunday and we reached Pandit Mallikarjun Mansur's house turned Museum in about 15 minutes with the help of Google maps. For those who are not much into Indian classical music, let me mention a note here, Pt Mallikarjun Mansur was one of the foremost vocalist of the Jaipur Atrauli Gharana and was known for his chaste renditions of the ragas. Incase you hurriedly try to search for him on Youtube and listen to him, maybe new listeners might find his singing dry and husky. But it is a developed taste, he used to be called as musician for the musicians. In our family most of us are into singing or playing some instrument and its a way of life. My son sings and I have been building my rapport with the elusive flute for few years now.

So when we reached there we found a fat lock waiting for us on the gate of the property, we were naturally disappointed. We asked around in the adjacent house and an elderly lady welcomed us inside the house and asked us to sit. After settling and some initial talk, we came to know that the museum is closed on Sundays but since we had come from Pune, she said she will call the caretaker and get it opened for us. And the most interesting part was, she was Pandit Mansur's daughter. It was a welcome surprise and a good feeling for us, to meet the maestro's daughter, having Tea and listen to some of his times directly from her, the way she experienced it with him. My Son said, it is going to be one of the most memorable life experience for him. Due to our musical background, we had utmost respect for the great man and meeting his daughter was an unforgettable experience. The caretaker did come and we went through the museum, his tanpura, his Padma awards, photographs etc were well kept. The photographs had all captions in Kanada though and would have helped if they added English to it. After couple of wonderful hours we started from there and made our way to Hubli.

I have to say here, I was quite impressed with Dharwad, it is a quaint town but has big roads, good BRTS service, roads are not much crowded, there was ample parking available on road sides wherever I went. We even started planning to come and settle in Dharwad post retirement, I mean it was peaceful. From anyone who has faced Pune and Mumbai day after day for years, it was genuinely feeling nice. Hubli in comparison seemed dry and dusty and not very welcoming at first sight. In Hubli we visited the Siddharud swami Math and after a quick lunch at "Datt bhuvan" (courtesy youtube food vlogs) made our way back to the hotel in Dharwad. We had made some plans of visiting some other temples in Hubli and visiting the Unkal lake. But we saw the lake on the way and wanted some rest. The evening that day was spent with a visit to Sadhankeri lake park and were quickly turned away by the gatekeeper saying park closes at 6 pm.. (seriously? what park closes at 6 pm?). We made the evening eventful by giving the pending pizza party to my son which was promised earlier to him.

Next morning we had a quick breakfast at the L.E.A canteen and started the 2nd leg of our trip, which was jungle stay. We had booked a stay at Vanoshi which was a home stay in the middle of the Tillari forest reserve. We crossed back to Belgaon and turned towards Tillari ghat, reached Kudase from where the homestay was reachable. Roads were good all along, even in the ghat section. Tillari seemed a category higher than the other ghats i have traversed normally, but was fun to drive on winding hairpin bends through dense forest. Tillari forest reserve was declared in recent past (2009) as its a main wildlife corridor for wild animals between Dandeli, Radhanagari and forests in Goa, It sits at the junction of Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka borders. The road further goes to Doddamarg.

I was told there are 8 tigers and 5 elephants calling the area their home as well, Considering our luck with wild life sightings, we didn't expect to meet any of them though. I have been in safari rides with people before and every other jeep has normally got good sightings except mine. If i continue for more days in some place, i think local guides will start avoiding to take me with them due to this. Once a leopard ran across the road in front of our car, everyone in the car was amazed by the sight, but I was the one who was checking the road at the rear in those 2 seconds. So as can be made out, am not the guy you should take if you are going on a safari.

We reached the Vanoshi home stay around 1:30 pm and it was as expected in the middle of thick vegetation, few simple mangalore tiled structures. The person who runs it "Mr Pravin Desai" is a local naturalist and he has built up this agro/forest tourism place. It runs mainly on the enthusiasm of avid birders, researchers that come to Tillari and some tourists who want to get away from it all.

The facilities and food is basic, rural kokan touches everywhere, but its a nice experience. If one has resort expectations , this would not be the place for him.

We went on a river trail the same evening and it was very good. There is a tree near the river which is more than 500 years old, its huge. The girth is easily the width of a mid sized room. The river Tillari is one of the cleanest i have seen in some time. Got few sightings of a marsh harrier, a sea eagle and 7-8 Malabar pied hornbills on the way back. It was a nice walk. Evening falls quickly in the forest and its pitch black outside the circle of lights made by men. The Sky looked beautiful on that new moon night and literally hundreds of stars twinkled, as if a glitter box had fallen off on a black rug.
We started around 7:30 am the next day for further rounds in the forest zone and here too mostly birds were the ones who thought we were worth being given a "darshan". Flame throated bulbul, orange minivet, green pigeons, blue eared kingfisher were the stars of the day. Exception was the giant squirrel, (Shekru), which is the official state animal of Maharashtra. We saw many of these red-maroon overgrown squirrels following our movements, with their beady eyes from the tree tops and jumping around the canopy, balancing with their huge furry tails. There is a Tillari dam which is an Earthen dam, completed in 2015 and irrigates a large area in the Tillari basin. We visited the same and though it was quite hot, we thought it was a good view.

There was a night trail later in the evening and we tried our best to find some frogmouth(That is a bird, maybe the ugliest you will ever see, but still a find if you can see one) and nightjars, but I think they had heard from their morning colleagues about me being there and decided to stay quite. We did see some "Palm civet cats" though as per the local guide with us, for me it was more of 2 shining bulbs on a black cloth thrown on the branches. But we were excited with this night trail, its a great experience to be in the forest at night in itself.

It was the year end , but there was not exactly going to to be a celebration of the regular kind, due to the place we were in, and we liked it that way. We could almost hear the year pass by and hand the baton to another new one in the stillness of the night, amongst rustle of the leaves and under a starry sky, it was a peaceful transition is what i can say.

Started early again the next day as we wanted to beat the returning tourist gangs from Goa, returning to city life after a happening party on new year's eve, but then again, i think we missed them as most of them were sleeping on the new year morning. We climbed back the Tillari ghat and reached Nipani and after that it was straight sailing till pune. some quick breaks for lunch , tea in some unknown places and we found ourselves caught up with the traffic trying to enter Pune in the evening.

My trusted boy, the "Exter" behaved very well through out, smooth refined on the road , stable on the highway with A/C on most of the time. We made about 1079km at 15.8 km/l as per the cars dash counters.. Have been too lazy to calculate the average on my own so i rely on the approximation which the car provides.

If you have read till this point, I would like to thank you to bear the ramblings, I normally read through travelogues to the places i visit while planning as it helps get a headstart on what to expect, what i should not miss and what i should in the journey. Being able to contribute back in kind is a nice feeling.

Some pics from the trip as below:

The Road beckoning: