Puneritraveller's Blog

In the land of Hallis Gundis and Durgs!

One of our friends had done a mini road trip to Karnataka and came back with stories which made us resolve to do a road trip ourselves. Once we decided it was time to get our leaves done from office and we started working on a route to guide us through the trip. The google maps helped quite a lot but by the end of the trip we learnt a bitter lesson that we could trust the google maps for the directions but not for the time that it says that it would take and also not the distances from one place to another!

Anyways we started our trip on a saturday morning with and aim to halt at Badami after seeing the ceremony held at the Banashankari Temple where the people put the deity to sleep every day. We had planned to leave at 4’oclock in the morning however our bike refused to start and considering the long journey ahead of us we considered it prudent to have the bike checked before we left. So after a few hours of work on the bike we started our journey – our trip to karnataka at about 11!

We revised our plan and decided to halt at Gokak rather than Badami. NH4 – The pune – kolhapur highway as usual was a delight to ride on and considering the road that awaited us it was as smooth as it could be. Once we took the off road to Hidkal dam it was as if for every kilometre that we rode we where moving a year into the past. Covered bullock carts and little girls staring at us as if we were aliens from mars and drunk men loitering on the road in the mid day sun.. The landscape however was beautiful with acres of sunflower and sugarcane fields. The roads had potholes like craters in the moon and missing them required some careful riding!! At agout five in the evening we reached Gokak. Gokak is one of the oldest industrial town thanks to the Gokak mills from the British times. We checked into a cheap hotel and headed to see the Gokak falls or the northern Mysore falls. Gokak falls is a horse shoe shaped falls and there wasn’t much water that was falling as it was early summers; but that gave us a chance to walk up close to the fall and look straight down the fall.

After a good night sleep we headed for Badami – The  Land of Caves. We were quite apprehensive of the roads from the last dar pothole dodging experience but the roads to Badami from Gokak turned out to be quite good. In 3-4 hours we were at Badami. A place scattered with cave temples and hordes of monkeys. ASI has maintained the place quite well and there are guides who tell the stories of the temples and importance of each structure. From Badami we headed for Hospet and called it a day there.

The next day was dedicated to Hampi Worlds largest open air museum. Hampi is a place where past comes alive. Hampi was the capital of Vijayanagar Empire and its ruins have stood the ravages of man and time and still evoke memories of regal splendor.  The Virupaksha temple ,the elephant stables, Badavilinga and Ganesha idols are worth a mention. the place however was like boiling cauldron. It was so hot that we ended up sitting in one of the roof top shacks for a good 3hours to evade the sun. In the evening we went back to hospet to our hotel room and to be honest i was tired of the temple hopping and looking at the monuments. So the next morning we headed for Chitradurg and from Chitradurg we rode our way to Kemmanagundi. Kemmanagundi or KR Hills used to be the favorite hill station KR Wodeyar so much so that the hill was renamed after him. The Horticulture department maintains a rock garden and also has decent accommodation facilities. Kemmanagundi was pleasantly cool and we also visited a few waterfalls in Kemmanagundi.

Now it was time to head for the beaches. The beaches of Karnataka were a real eye opener. Never had we ever seen such beautiful beaches. real white sand beaches with soft sand and islands close to the shore these beaches were a real surprise to us. The first day we halted at Malpe which is very close to Mangalore. We visited the St Marys Island the next day which is also called the coconut island. Vasco de gama is supposedly the one who named this island!

The next day we headed for Murudeshwar. The Shiva idol apparently the tallest one in the world was so imposing and it would be difficult for one who lives there not to identify with the idol. The beaches where secluded on the left side of the temple and we rented a room in a  beach side hotel. The fish curry at a local shop was delicious. Red fish curry and white rice itself looked delicious and was spicy as hell. From Murudeshwar it was the next main beach of karnataka – Maravanthe where the river sowparnika runs parallel to the road and the sea! and hey dont get confused more than one river is called Sowparnika here. From Maravanthe we headed for the Om beach in Gokarna after trying our luck at Bhatkal. Om beach ended up as one of our favorite beaches of all time. With inaccessible beaches like the half moon beach and paradise beach one could get there only by a boat.

from Gokarna we left the next day left Karnataka to head for Vengurla after bidding adieu to the land of Hallis Gundis and Durgs!