Biking in Bangalore's backyard

Rocky cliffs around Kanakapura

Yesterday (July 2, 2006) was one of the better outings, I have been on in the past several weekends. The Original plan was that Dev, Anand and myslef would get together with our iron horses and of course Anand's is a Rhinocerous not a horse, and steer them towards Kanakapura and roam in the wilderness, climb a mountain, swim in a river and ride back home by evening.

Dev and I were scheduled to meet at 6.30 am at my place and then head towards Basavangudi where Anand would join us at 7 am. At 6.15 my mobile starts ringing and it is Dev on the other end. "Hey Sri, there is an emergency in the office. It seems our editor quit his job last night and they have called us all at 11 am for the meeting. Why did he have to quit yesterday, couldn't he quit on Monday?" said Dev ruefully adding that he wouldn't be able to make it and wished us a good time. After exactly 5 minutes Anand smsed saying he had already left from home. I got ready and proceeded towards our meeting place and reached there in good time but there was no sign of Anand.

After about 10 mins Anand chugged in and then we started off towards Jayanagar for breakfast of Idly and Sambar at Pavitra Paradise. Having filled ourselves we decided to head out and get out of the city asap. And get out we did.... our first stop was at the Vajramuneeshwara temple just out of the city off Kanakapura Road. The NICE BMIC has just missed this ancient temple by about 200 meters.

The temple had been famous in the recent years for elephant attacks on human beings and had even killed couple of farmers in the region. But now with the NICE road coming up I am sure elephants wouldn't dare to venture here. Anyway coming to the tepmple per se... like all Muneswara temples this too is an open air temple, sited at the fringe of a beautiful forest and hill region. There are two large banyan trees under which Lord Muneswara is consecreted.

Vajramuneshwara temple

The descent to the temple via a short flight of steps transports one to a different world altogether. The temple has stone flooring and a roof of leaves and branches, there is a small shrine dedicated to Shiva, and a natural spring provides drinking water to visitors. We were pretty early and there was hardly anybody at the shrine. Only the temple authorities cleaning the mess inside the temple and dirtying the forest around. A stream runs in front of the temple about 100 meters away amidst thick almost inaccessible forest.

We decided to skirt around the temple and explore the forest as we heard the call of peacocks and sounds of other animals. Truging through the forest we saw a check dam being constructed close by, the roads being built by NICE and the Vaderahalli lake far away. Again we heard the Peacock... this time very loud and close. We followed the sound into the bushes and there in front of us about 100 meters away was a single peacock gracefully walking, weaving in and out of the bushes. Taking in these sights we moved and returned to the bikes at the Muneswara temple, where by then a large crowd of people with sacrifices of Chicken, Lamb etc had accumulated and were ready to perform the ghastly act of killing innocent animals in the name of god.

Chicken ready for slaughter

From here we decided to head to Chunchi Falls and from there to Kabbal before finally returning to Bangalore via Chennapatna, Ramanagaram and Bidadi. Look out for the next post coming soon.