Coauthored by Mandeep
Outing, this is what we had been planning for the last 6 months. Sometimes I gave the idea of going for one, sometimes it was Cijal’s birthday that made us plan for a picnic. But as usual nothing materialized, people were always busy… some doing coding, some in testing and some attending onsite calls. Finally, Mandy did her research, decided on a place and emails were sent out. Cijal and Mandy became the organizers while Priya took charge of food and beverages.
So on Saturday, July 15 we started for this outing, and still there was no one who could get the name of the place right. There were variations from “Devraja Durg/Durga” to “Devarayana Durga”. We had no idea what the place was like. Mandy’s research said, that it had a few temples, a fresh water lake, and a hot water spring and is really scenic. Cijal was saying it’s a place for pilgrimage. We decided to check it out and started.
Owais, Jappo, Megha and Rini joined us. Our first stop was at an ashram.The ashram had a beautiful temple/meditation hall with the preachings of Lord Krishna to Arjuna from Shrimad Bhagwadgita. The entrance to this temple was through a majestic chariot which looked awesome. Outside there were seven statues representing rivers of India, and the rivers originated from the pots in the statues’ hands. We tried to identify which one was The Ganges, but now that was difficult!! Explanations varied, like the position of the statues was according to their stature or geography, nothing convincing, but it was a lot of fun.
Our next stop was at Devarayana Durga. This place has two temples on different hills. We went to one of the temples, had to climb around 200 steps and the scene from the top was awesome, there was greenery all around with small water bodies at the bottom of the hill. It was drizzling and the weather was best suited for a picnic. We moved around the temple. Checked out the small pond and clicked a lot of snaps. There was a cave near the temple and we decided to go and explore it. The entrance to the cave was very narrow and dark and a few people who were already inside were not moving ahead. It was also a little slippery (my friends might disagree with the slippery part) but we went in using the light from our mobiles. At the end of the cave there was nothing but just a small water source, but it turned out to be fun (we managed to take some pictures here as well).
Next we moved on to see another temple but ended up at this beautiful place at the top of the hill. The view from there was awesome and with the wind blowing so fast we were having a good time balancing ourselves near the edge. Sat there and enjoyed the beauty of the mountains.
As it was almost lunch time, we thought of stopping at a Dhaba and then moving on towards “Namada Chilume – the hot water spring”. But with no Dhabas in sight we had to make do with Bananas!! The way for this place is breathtaking. But to our disappointment the spring turned out to be just a hole in the ground. However, it has some mythological significance attached. This is the place where Lord Rama had shot an arrow into the ground and water had started gushing out.
Since there wasn’t much to the spring we decided on going for a trek through the jungle.That was fun!
After getting back from the trek, we had some refreshments at a Cold-drink shop outside.
By this time all of us were tired and hungry, so we decided to head back towards Bangalore and stop at any of the roadside Dhabas to have a late lunch (at around 4:30 – 5:00). Lucky us, we found this place called Friends Dhaba and the Dhabewala was sweet enough to oblige us at that time. The food was good, though very different from the roadside dhabas up North.
And with this we wrapped up our trip and headed home after a lovely weekend trip to Devrayana Durga.
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