Koongal Betta

 This off-beat trail is a convenient day-trip hardly 60 kms. from Bangalore. We took the Mysore highway and reached Ramanagara, crossed a level-crossing next to the railway station and drove past thick vegetation and paddy fields till we reached the village of Koongal. As you enter the village, a peculiar rock formation resembling the beak of a bird greets you which has an interesting story going behind it.

 

From the foot of the hill, a steep concrete road takes you almost half-way up the hill which ends rather abruptly here with another 100 meters of mud-track ahead of it. Negotiating the deep water-channels running in the middle of the road turned out to be a risky and wasteful exercise with one of our tyres getting stuck in the channels. Though we somehow managed to pull the car out, we now chose to cover rest of the distance on foot instead. We reached a rocky plateau with a big white Nandi sitting quietly but majestically at the edge of the cliff.

Spending some time here, we now made our way towards what looked like a cave opening. Crawling through this cave-like passageway we reached a bridge of loosely piled-up stones crossing which was not only tricky but unnerving at times. We gathered enough courage and slowly made our way across only to meet another challenge - a series of steps awkwardly carved into the rock leading up to the shrine of Anjaneya on the top.

 

There were two more bridges like the one mentioned before that one had to cross to reach the summit. A meaningless picnic-hut like structure stood before us from where one could spot another shrine a little further ahead with a missing idol.

 

The view of the rugged hill-scape all around was breathtaking and definitely the highpoint of this trek which was easy and a bit adventurous.