Island town - Srirangapatna

I know its been long time since I posted here. Yeah I was busy touring around that I didn’t find time to update my travelogue.

This is a post about a trip on 27^th August 2011 (I know its loooooooooong back ;) ).

It was a Friday when me and my friend sugan wanted to travel but had no other company this time and no place in mind also. We were discussing till 2 o clock in the night still didn’t finalize any place, but decided to leave home in the morning by 5am.

27^th August 2011

            Got up @ 4 am, left home by 6 am, took a bus to Majestic. In the bus both of us somehow narrowed down to go to Srirangapatna, we had been to Sri Ranganatha swamy temple there during our Mysore trip. So decided to go there first and then think about other nearby places.

            It was 7am when we boarded the Mysore bus and the bus was idle till 7 30 and started only after that. The bus was pretty slow and was caught in traffic on early Saturday morning too…

            I was reminded about a place near Srirangapatna called Pandavapura which I had surfed about long back and even forgot what were the places to been seen there. So called up my friend Vidya to find out the places to be seen around Srirangapatna and about Pandavapura and their respective locations and accessibility options. Now we had a list of places that could be visited.

            Planning on the fly ;) Pandavpura is 12kms from Srirangapatna so we decided to head to Pandavpura first, then to Ranganthitu bird Sanctuary and then visit Ranganathaswamy temple in the evening and return back to Bangalore.

            To our dismay it was around 11 45 am when we reached Srirangapatna, so had to recheck our plan. Since Pandavpura is a place of temples, we assumed them  to remain closed in the afternoon and hence decided to visit Ranganathaswamy temple which is walkable from the bus stand before 12pm and to go to Pandavapura in the evening after 4pm so that temples are open. 

            After our visit to Ranganathaswamy temple, we were walking down the temple street and found beautiful wooden carved paintings stealing my attention (these were the ones I missed to purchase during my Mysore trip and wanted to get there again just to purchase them and it happened. :D ). Me and my friend bought three huge paintings and lately realized that we have to carry them along till evening :P .

            We had time till 4 o clock to visit places around  Srirangapatna. We then caught an auto and decided to go to Ranganathitu bird sanctuary as per plan, worked out a deal for 150INR to take us there, wait and bring us back to Srirangapatna bus stop. 

                  

Never seen a crocodile so close before laughing @ me

Ranganathitu bird sanctuary is a beautiful and well maintained place, we went for the boat ride for 100INR per head. Walked around the garden and had some photo shoots. 

            We were done with this place by 2 30 pm and still had ample time, meanwhile the auto driver told us about the Tippu sultan summer palace, prayer hall and Colonnel Dungeon which were at about 2-3km radius from Srirangapatna bus stop. We agreed for these places and went around to all of them. Summer palace was a worth visit place. The Colonnel Dungeon – it’s a prison which Tipu Sultan used to punish English men very cruelly. As soon as I entered the place I felt some negative vibrations. There was an old man there telling us about the place. It’s a kind of underground construction with no gates or rooms. It was just one big hall with lot of pillars and there were some projections in the wall which was mysterious. We were then told that prisoners were nailed on their hands resting on these projections for about a month without food and water. At the corner of the hall there is a small opening which he says is connected to Sangam (river Cauvery), and after a month this will be opened and the hall will be filled with water since its underground and the prisoners suffer their final breathe. OMG so cruel he was, just cant imagine. 

The stones on which prisoners palm were nailed..

Colonel Dungeon

Prayer hall

U can see a good shoot of all these hot spots of Srirangapatna in  Super stars "Oruvan Oruvan Mudhalali" song. The songs starts with Ranganathaswamy temple, then shows Prayer hall, the bridge to Karigatta, and also Pandavpura.... A full shoot of Pandavapura can also be seen in Raja Hindusthani film climax.

Tipu sultan Summer palace

After all this the auto driver dropped us at bus stop by 4 30 and asked us to take a bus to Pandavpura and then take some auto to the temple. He also told us that while returning to take a train from Pandavpura railway station to Bangalore, he said there were two trains one at 7 30 and the other at 8 so that we would reach Bangalore by 10pm. We nodded our heads tight  :P .

In some ten minutes we reached Pandavpura and took an auto to Thonnur Kere where the temple was supposed to be. Thonnur Kere has three temples dating nearly 2000 years back. Nambi Narayana temple (the most famous), Gopalaswamy Temple(just opposite to Nambi Narayana) and Narasimha temple(where you can find writings of Ramanuja still preserved here) on a small hillock with 25 to 30 steps. To reach Narasimha temple you need to take the road that goes inside a school campus.

We went to Narasimha temple and found the temple closed, then went to Gopalaswamy Temple and it was heavenly. It was a very old temple and there were no light around too, then @ the Garba griha we saw Idols of Gopalaswamy standing with his wives majestically and I was just taken away. We were the only ones @ the temple and I had a positive vibration @ this place. The poojari then told us all the temples in this place will be opened whole day till 5pm and will be closed after that. Though we were disappointed that we couldn’t visit the other two temples, I had so much satisfaction after visiting Gopalaswamy temple. 

Pandavapura Gopalaswamy temple

When we were about to leave we saw a small pond nearby and beyond that there was an elevated land where groups of people were gazing around (Looked like a tourist spot). When enquired with the auto driver, he said you can have a lake view from there. We were under the assumption that this pond was viewed from there, still didn’t want to miss going there. On the way to that place we saw water streams on the sides of the road and some water fall like structures where water was gushing out, few people playing in it and we were completely boosted :D. After getting down the auto we looked at the pond near the temple and the auto driver told us to look at the other side (ie other side of the elevation), we went speechless when we saw water till the end of the horizon. It is a bigggggggggggggg lake with so much water and since it’s at a height and wind was blowing hard it looked like a beech with mild waves. We just sat down at the steps completely mesmerized and felt it to be a complete day out !!! 

Pandavapura lake near the temple

On the way to Thonnur Kere

Thonnur Kere

At about 5 45pm we left the place, this auto driver also asked us to take the 7 30 train, but we completely denied thinking we would reach early by bus since it was not even 6pm and asked him to leave us @ the bus stop. There was a bus to Srirangapatna waiting and we quickly boarded into it and we were the only ones in the bus, the bus started late at 7pm when the bus got filled, and was at Srirangapatna by 7 30 as we got caught in the railway gate (yup its was the train to Bangalore which we could have boarded :-( ). We then took a bus to Bangalore and reached very late, and managed to take an auto home and finally reached safely.

Places Visited

1. Sri Ranganathaswamy temple (110 kms from Bangalore)
2. Ranganathitu bird sanctuary (8kms from Sri Ranganathaswamy temple)
3. Tippu s Summer Palace (6kms from Ranganathitu bird sanctuary)
4. Colonnel Bailey s Dungeon (1km from Summer Palace)
5. Tippu s Prayer Hall (1km from Colonnel Bailey s Dungeon)
6. Gopalaswamy temple near Thonnur Kere  (12kms from Srirangapatna bus stop)
7. Thonnur Kere