Antharagange

It has been a long time after the Zimply South trip that we did on bikes that we went out as a gang. The last time we did was for Pondy. This time we were planning something for New Year but our friend Chandresh/Chandu/Naveen had decided to quit the corporate world and returns to his good old students days. He is still young at heart. He will be going to do his MS to Colorado on Christmas. So all our New Year plans were called off. We decided to spend a day or two together before he leaves. We had initially planned to got Coorg for a trek there to a hill called Tadiyanmol. But we did not get any accommodation in Coorg and there were people who were interested in a days trip coz of work load in office. So we hot upon this Antharagange in Kolar.
It is 65 Km from Bangalore, adjacent to Kolar city. We decided to leave Bangalore on bikes on Saturday at 7 AM. But considering the cold in the city now a days it was a skeptic time to start the journey especially when AK and Chandu have to start early. Well that was true we Mindu/Harsha his cousin Suresh/Surya had to wait for 1.5 hrs before we could all meet up. It is so irritating to wait when you want to spend time with people and when time is a commodity and is not free like those days in college. You get two days off in a week and there will be so much to do if you have no one at home to take care of you. And above that you have planned to do something so that all of us remember the day and the time we spent together. Well so we had breakfast in Hungry Hunters our local joint for food. By the time we left it was 9 AM. We had to take the Old Madras Road to Kolar. There is terrible traffic on this road at least till you reach Hosakote. After that the situation changes and the traffic is like what you should find on a NH. We took a pit stop at Kamat Hotel on the highway to get some food packed. This place is about 40 Km from Bangalore. Had a glass of Tea and resumed our journey.
After reaching Kolar we took direction from the local people to reach Antharagange. It was the end of the road indicating to us that no way you can ride further. Now we had to continue our journey by foot climbing some 400 steps to a temple on the top of the hill. There were a lot of monkeys and seeing their teeth’s I was in no mood to get mugged by these primates. But these guys did not attack us considering that we did not have any food with us although we had it in our bag packs. We reached the temple at the top and saw a Kalyani (A pond of holy water). Sadly the Kalyani had been polluted by soap. People were having bath using that water and you could easily make out the reason by the colour of the water. There was a interesting thing here, the source of water for the Kalyani was coming out from the mouth of Basava (Official transporter of Lord Shiva). And I must mention that the force of the water was also strong, wonder from where the water was also coming. It was a sight to watch. But the local people used to tap this water for drinking as this water was sweet than what was available in the town. We still climbed up the hills and from here the steps made way fro rocks, it was fun to climb the rocks and do some balancing acts. There were rocks of all shapes and sizes placed in some awkward positions giving rise to some strange structures. We kept on hiking till we reached a place where the land was flat and the local people had cultivated some cereals. At this place there was a huge collection of rocks big ones and they were inviting to be conquered. By this time Ak and Chandu were done and they opted to sleep…aw those lousy lazy pigs….were better off in a bar.
Mindu, Suresh and I took the challenge of the rocks. It was awesome I felt like Tom Cruise in MI although I did not do something so daring. It was entertaining to find paths and place to put you feet and grip to hold yourself, coz if you fall you are bound to break a couple of bones. There was one particular place where there was two huge rocks and the gap between them was just enough for a person of my size or less to squeeze through. I did that and if was great fun to get through them. Took a snap there to depict something like you are getting crushed between two rocks. We reached the top and the last rock available in the pile. We thought of going further but nonparticipation of the two sleeping beauties and time did not permit us to go further. So we came back to the place where they were sleeping and we decided to sit at a place and have or parcel lunch. We had lunch sitting in the middle of a Ragi field. After lunch we came back to the place where we had parked our bikes and headed back to Bangalore. The return journey was not that smooth because of the sun staring at you face. At 4PM we were at our place and that was the end of our journey. At the end of the day I was happy that we did not go to Coorg for the trip with such participation. It would have been miserable.