Yesterday... Was a lively lovely day... A date with rain , sun ,cool breeze with rocks monkeys and dog at shivagange. Wat a wonderful date it was . Muahhh. I just love trekking
My trek on Saturday was very interesting , though after my accident due to my hurting leg & Surgery , I haven’t done any exciting Trek , SRS hills was quite a small trek in comparison to Shiva Ganga and Savandurga. Shivaganga is less tougher compared to Savandurga, cos there are steps to traverse at Shiva Gange.
Shiva Ganga is a hill about 50 km from Bangalore, 20 km ahead of Tumkur. It’s a pretty tall hill with two Shiva temples, one very close to the foot of the hill and another, that’s possibly around 5 km uphill! The deities are “Gangadhareshwara”, and his consort “Swarnambha”.
The place is just fantastic, with breathtaking views from the high altitudes. Brilliant are the views of the surrounding city, the nearby `pushkarini’ or pond, from the top of the hill. Most of the place is rocky, with railings to hold on to as you climb, and monkeys to make sure you don’t take any offerings to the deity on top! A very unforgettable experience was how Akshath was snatched of his bag by a monkey searching the bag for for some food but only found his text book, PSP which he threw away as it was a waste (luckily it was safe as it fell on Grass).Another experience was monkey sitting on Jazz back pack ,and one more was quite expereinced the terrror of monkey myself.
Once we reached at the top I saw that there were many of them starving , so bought cucumbers and cut them into pieces and distributed to them. I saw a dog also looking so adorably he wanted something to eat, so bought a biscuit packet and gave a few biscuits . Kept rest of them to myself so that I can feed myself while walking down.But one of the sharp ones among them saw that I kept in my side pocket, he came down to along with me to search in the pockets and took it and ran away. I remember another funnier thing how he took Vani’s water bottle and struggled so much to drink water.
Some of the places on the way to the top were reminscent of `Prince of Persia’, where you had to figure out a way which is hardly apparent to the eye (the typical hidden ledge you would climb on to)! In all, it was an experience in trekking as well 
. Inside some of the rocks (of which even the temple and the deities and sannidhis are a part of!), you could find some small fountains or water bodies, that we were told, never dry up throughout the year! But the most intriguing of all was a tunnel which supposedly led into the heart of Bangalore (couldn’t snap this up though!).
About the Tunnel, this was dug as secret escape passage from Bangalore , which is also from GaviGangadhareshwara temple . Could you believe to travel from Bangalore it takes normally around 1 hour 30 minutes but if u traverse thru this secret tunnel it is just 20 minutes they say.. Unbelievable..
One more Unbelievable part of Shivaganga is when u smear Ghee over Lord Shiva’s Head on the shivalingu u get Butter..Is it ever possible in Science as we know it and irreversible chemical process… But here u will experience this.
The way back was the same, but more easily traced (without the pebbles of Hansel and Gretel), Took about 2-2.5 hours to go up I guess and around 2 hrs to get down the hill. Being a Saturday, there was hardly any crowd, but we were told that there’s a lot of queuing on Sundays and on Overall, it appears to be a great place for a quick weekend trek.
Photoshttp://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/media/set/?set=a.2176852906531.2133012.1403118085
