Hessarghatta : Bengaluru's Hidden Gem

A google result says it all. While the more popular destinations of Nandi Hills and Bannerghatta gives nearly 1/3 a million and almost a million results respectively, a search for Hessarghatta gives just above a 50K mark results. This pretty much gives an illustration of the unknown lands of Hessarghatta. I was not even aware of the existence of such a serene place in the vicinity of Bangalore a few months back, until I came across a blog.

A Dried Up Hessarghatta Lake

So it was decided that we would pedal all the way to this place on one such lazy "nothing better to do" weekend i.e. on 7th August 2010. Only 2 bikers this time and it was me and Raghav. We met up at around 5.50 am at Deve Gowda petrol bunk to be consistent with our policy of  'bike hard till the Sun gets hard on you' . We continued on the ring road till Mysore Road and moved towards the BU campus to take a shortcut to join the Outer Ring Road.

 [Pose of a Cyclist]

The ride through the Jnanabharathi campus was good and we joined the outer ring road. Since its a six lane road we had a whole lane all to ourselves with no one bothering us or zipping close to us as larger vehicles tend to do on a 4 lane Mysore Road or the BSK Ring Road. We pedaled a good distance to reach the Tumkur road. Since Raghav had not touched his bike since the last bike ride to Bannerghatta nearly 3 months back he was more or less "out of shape" as rightly put by him. So this time I was pretty much leading the entire ride and he was lagging far behind which was against the norm :P. As we reached the Tumkur road we continued to ride away from the city till we came across the diversion to Hessarghatta. Leaving the first couple of kilometres the entire stretch was perfect for biking with minimal traffic and smooth roads. There are a lot of Y forks and its better to ask the locals for directions. After pedaling for nearly 2 hrs we finally arrived at Hessarghatta. There is a diversion there to your right which would take you to the lake/kuteeram/nrityagama/our native village.

First we came across the Hessarghatta Lake. After climbing the steep bund walls while pushing our rides the view what we say was a complete contrast than what I had expected. I had expected it to be a huge lake filled with water, even though it is a huge lake it was completely dried up with puddles of water here and there. But even then this view was far from disappointing. We could see miles and miles of grassland as on the lake and we decided to descend to this lake bed do some offroading exploration. After spending time exploring we decided to continue onwards towards the Nrityagram.

[A Road to the Horizon]

This part of the city is literally filled with all sorts of animal farms, turkeys, emu, ducks, pig , you name it and they have it. While moving towards the Nrityagrama there is a turn to the right, which is so often described by the fellow bloggers as the place not to be missed. A huge grassland going on and on till the horizon and a kuccha road accompanying the grasslands to infinity. After a couple a kms of exploring this road came across a cluster of trees. This place was truely impressive. Roaming around and exploring some trails we decided to move Nrityagama , a place set by Late Protima Bedi and we were expectant to catch a glimse of some hot traditional dancers. But alas the place opens up only at 10 am and we had 1hr to kill which was not acceptable since that meant one extra hour cycling in the afternoon sun. So taking at 10 min break at the entrance of Nrityagram and Taj Kuteeram which itself was quite impressive, we decided to head back home.

Until this time the weather was quite pleasant and even after this it was with some few exceptions in between due to traffic flow. We reached Tumkur road and took the Outer Ring Road. But at the Magadi Road junction we didnt take a right since we saw a new road which is also christened as Outer Ring Road. Now this road till Nayandhahalli was simply superb. There was literally no interesections at all, with flyovers etc build at strategic points. But the only complain on this 6 lane highway was that the wind was blowing against us making it somewhat an effort.

Our Pit Stop

The connection of this road to Outer Ring road is incomplete at Nayandahalli requiring a 200m detour to reach the main ring road. Now this narrow detour was jamed to the brim with no place for any vehicles to move. But being on humble cycles we had an advantage. We just passed through small gaps and the other vehicles owners face was going green seeing how easily we passed through the jam :P. Would be happy if atleast one person in that jam takes up cycling , bcoz thats basically how I got inspired in the first place.

Finally we reached our destination at 12.40 pm after negotiating some huge inclines on the BSK ring road. More or less didnt find this ride that exhaustive as the previous ones, guess that might be becoz of the frequent unintended breaks we took.

Figures:

Trip 'O' Meter -> 91 kms
Time Taken -> 6 hrs 55 mins
Average Speed -> 13.15 km/hr

100's ----------------------------->1
50's ------------------------------>5 (including the Bidadi ride at the beginning of this month)


Snaps Link -

http://picasaweb.google.co.in/unithinbhat/Hessarghatta#