Since the lockdown kicked off, I could not go out and was getting very bored .
So, we decided to go out to places less visited. We chose places of natural beauty which wasn’t far away as we had to come back in evening. We wanted to avoid crowded place and to maintain social distancing. We planned basic precautions like wearing mask, carrying sanitizer. We carried even food and tea from home so as to avoid contacts.
We chose the places which, we assumed, no one else would. If that would be the case, we were to find out.
Planning
5 families planned for the trip. But 2 families dropped out for different reasons, leaving 3 families in the plan.
On the D-day, 1 car tire got punctured and Ankit Uncle was left stranded in Indiranagar. At the end, 2 families went for picnic – Amar Uncle’s and ours.
The first stop – Big Banyan Tree
Imagine a tree,450 years old and spread over almost 3 acres of land – size equivalent to almost 2.5 football fields. It’s a nature’s wonder and also boasts of open space to run, play and have fun. The tree has so many secondary branches of the tree that no one knows where the primary root is. The tree has many branches which 100 of monkeys have made their habitat. It was fun to watch those monkeys jumping on and off the branches of the gigantic tree.
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Alas, to our disappointment, the entrance to the tree park was closed – thanks
to COVID-19. Nonetheless, again thanks to the same covid-19, the adjoining
restaurant was closed too. The restaurant has lot of open space and the
provides a comprehensive view of the tree. We stood there for some time, took
snaps and enjoyed the monkey business. The most adoring was the way mummy
monkey was taking care of baby monkey.
Off to second pit stop
Having been disappointed by closure of the banyan tree, we decided to go to Savandurga. Savandurga is a hill 60 km west of Bangalore off the Magadi road. The hill is considered to be among the largest monolith hills in Asia. The hill rises to 1226 m above mean sea level and forms a part of the Deccan plateau.
Half way through to the monolith, we saw many cars parked on roadside. There was a small hillock nearby. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius could be the term to describe the view. There was a dam nearby, river all over the place with lots of greenery and hills to rejoice the mind. Seeing the scenery, we decided to stay for a while, so we sat down and had tea, the tea was made tastier by the view we saw. Having enjoying the view for some time, we decided to move on to savandurga.
SAVANDURGA is a monolith approx.50 km away from Bangalore. It was huge. A monolith enough to exhaust a person trekking the wrong way in a min. With my dad I made a plan to go trekking there the coming weekend.
RAMNAGAR made famous by name RAMGAD in Sholay movie was our next destination. Against our expectations, there were many people visiting the place, we roamed and saw few places, sitting there we had our lunch, played football and cricket. The sun was moving towards west, sky turning light blue when we started back to home. We reached around 6. Believe me this was an amazing trip. You people too should go
