Sunday, September 18, 2011

Flopped Antharagange Trip

"We must go somewhere outside Bangalore", my friend called me. It was already 10 am and we had just finished breakfast. I quickly considered quite a few options and decided on Anthargange. Following a blog by someone I don't know, I thought it would be a nice trek with caves on top of the hill. But little did I know my plan would be ruined that day.


By the time we got ready and leave the Bangalore, it was nearing 1 pm. We didn't stop till a Shanti Sagar on the outskirts of Kolar. We had lunch there. It was good until my wife got a cockroach free with the lunch!
We almost finished our lunch, so we started towards Anthargange querying the route. I do not write the route here since we took too many alternate routes as many roads were dug up in Kolar. Finally we got a tarmac road to Anthargange, but by then, it was cloudy and very dark. Time was around 3 pm.


We reached Anthargange and parked our car. There is a police substation and a constable at the base from which there are steps to temple at a distance of approximately 300mts. He noted down everybody's name and sought address in detail. When I inquired about caves, he said there were no caves. We should not go beyond temple. There was a hillock range but it was the place of leopards There would be illegal activities going on and family people should not go. etc., To add to our dismay, drizzling started. Bottom line is our plan to trek and see the caves was shattered.


Anyway, being come so far, we thought of visiting temple atleast and return. There are too many monkeys in Anthargange. They literally attack each and everybody for the reason they only know. One monkey came and it almost attacked my wife and she, in order to escape, gave her bag to it. Monkey was confused on getting the bag without much effort, so it sat upfront scratching head. By then my wife realized her mistake and told our home key, wallet, everything was in the bag.

Now, it was our turn to attack the monkey and get the bag back. It was groaning but still sitting in front of us. When I tried to snatch the bag it tried to hit me and I took back my hand quickly. My friend was holding a stick with a lot of leaves so I told him to shove towards it. When money turned towards it in defense, I snatched the bag, this time very quickly. After that, we climbed up hurling sticks at monkeys.

 

We had not even reached the temple when heavy rain started pouring. We stood there for sometime watching rainfall. It was 4 30 pm when we got back to car and drove towards Bangalore.




I plan to visit again with proper route map to trek and reach the top and caves.

11 comments:

deeps said...

looks to be an exicting place...

Gowtham said...

Hi Deeps, thanks for dropping by. Yeah, exciting and it would be more exciting if trekked and explored caves!

Gowtham said...

@Ashwini, Thanks.

chitra said...

Experience would have been horrible i guess that day with the unexpected rain, monkeys and failed plan...but the long drive with ur wife and friend would be gud and enjoyable.
nice blogs..
and gowtham..plz make an option for 'follow' in ur kannada blog.
i love to read kannada blogs as we rarely find them...

Gowtham said...

@Chitra, Thanks. Yeah, we enjoyed nevertheless.
I have added Follow option in another blog. It's my wife's blog actually :-)

Deguide said...

Gautam, i did not know there are caves, i believe this place is famous for moonlight trekking. Once again word verification is bugging

Saru Singhal said...

It looks like a place with lot of excitement...lovely photos and thanks for sharing!

Gowtham said...

@Deguide, Yes there are caves and there must have been some illegal activities happening either now or in the past. The police substituted hides that and if you ask, they would say not to go there.
As I said, word verification was to check spams, but I ll remove since it irritates many.

Gowtham said...

@Saru, Thanks for dropping by and complimenting. Yes, it was exciting!

Karthik (Sp) said...

Add Shivgange with this place... Monkeys rule this part of Tumkur road :P

Gowtham said...

Hi Karthik,

Yes, they rule. I already wrote about Shivagange in an older post - http://gowthamspeaks.blogspot.com/2009/06/shivagange-rocky-holy-hillock.html