It was the first week of August(2006), just few days for our 3rd sem to start. We were beginning to get worried of life becoming monotonous again for the next few months. So it was time to gather at ‘The poms place‘ and discuss things. The outcome was to go to Shivagange on our bikes, six people confirmed their participation and 3 bikes(2 Pulsars and a Unicorn). The place is around 60 kms from Bangalore and you have to take a deviation towards left on the Tumkur road, one of the six guys knew the route. Finally we decided we’ll be going on August 8th, 2006.
On the day we met at our usual ‘Adda'(place where we hang out) and left Bangalore by 7.30am. The six people are Anil(me). Aditya, Santosh Joshi, Vishu, Pramod, Shubanga. As it was our first ride we were very careful, that doesn’t mean we did not rip on the Tumkur road, almost touched 120 on my Pulsar. You can actually travel with full throttle for 2 minutes. The road was very good until we reached the deviation, after that its quite bad but manageable and we made it to the bottom of the hill by 12.30 pm.
We visited ‘Pathaalagangadevi'(Godess Ganga in the underground), I should say the place was very interesting, Nature’s creation at its best, then we moved on to the new temple where a miracle happened. The main temple consists of a ‘Shiva Lingam’, the preist applied ghee on the Lingam and it turned to butter. The sight was really amazing and we actually ate the butter he gave us. We decided to ascend the hill and started climbing it, mid-way you can find many small temples. I had given up when we had conquered half the hill, friends forced me to climb it. Below are few snaps.
Finally by 3pm we were on the top with only monkeys surrounding us. we were very hungry but had lost all our food to the apes. The view from the top was a treat to the eyes. A dog accompanied us when we started descending and it actually showed us the way, in case we were on the wrong path it barked at us showing the correct path. This was a sixth sense type of experience. We were down by 5.30pm and tarted our return journey, had dinner in some local Dhaba and came back home by 8pm. Our first ride was successful.
Tips for people who are going to visit this place:
Dont carry expensive bags, plastic covers, make sure you are in a group when climbing as there are lots of monkeys, take your own food and lots of water.