Shivagange trekking

Team : Basavaraju, Deekshith, Shashi

Route : Bangalore --> Yeshwanthpur -> Dabaspete --> Shivagange (~64km)

Transport : Bike

Trek distance : 2+kms 

Trek timing : ~2hrs to reach peak

Trek difficulty level : Moderate 

There is a saying, "Unplanned trips are the best, because planned trips never happens". This is one of the trip in my bag, which strongly upholds the above quotes. It was on Saturday night, I messaged my friend Shashi asking that "I am getting bored, shall we go out for trekking?". As I expected, his response was very quick "Sure, we can plan something...". This is how the trip to Shivagange was initiated and we decided to go on the very next day.

We started our journey early in the morning at 4:40 AM from Domlur, Bangalore. With couple of tea breaks on the way, we reached our destination at 6:20AM.

On the way to Shivagange 

Shivagange hill

Shivagange is a hillock and Hindu pilgrimage center located in Tumukur district. The Shivagange hill basically has four different faces, when looked from different directions. It looks like a Nandi from the east, like lord Ganesh from the west, a huge snake from the north and like a Shivalinga from the south directions respectively. 

Pushkarani pond at the base of the hill

 The Team

We parked our vehicle and started to climb the hill early at 6:30AM.

Trek route

There are steps or notches cut into the rock, making the initial part of trek easy. As you climb higher, the surrounding areas around the hill, looks more beautiful.

Beautiful View 

Basava

Along the way

There are frequent spots on the way, for resting. Also you can find couple of stall/shops serving food and drinks on the way to hill peak.

The shop

Monkey

Tiger teddy used by shop owner to keep out monkeys

Shiva - Parvathi statue

The hill peak

Final phase of the trial is very difficult. Here the steps are either too big or too small with carving done on rock itself.

We had a pretty nice experience, while climbing this part. One monkey started to follow my friend Basavraju,and all of the sudden it jumped on his bag pack. The monkey become more aggressive and started to show its angry face, when we tried to get rid of it. Believe me or not.,the monkey was so much professional in its business, that it opened the bag zip and pulled out a biscuit packet, water bottle and ran away.

Zig-Zag path to reach hill peak

It took us almost 2hrs to reach the peak of the hill. At the peak you can find Lord shiva temple, statue of Basava and Shantala point.

Lord Shiva temple

Statue of Basava at top of hill

Beware of attacking monkeys

Shanthala Point is named after the great Bharatanatyam dancer and the queen Shanthala Devi, who was the wife of Hoysala king Vishnuvardhana. The point of the hill is where she committed suicide. 

The view of the surrounding at Shanthala point was breath-taking.

Shantala point

View from top

Shathala drop view point

Descending

Time for some rest

After spending some time at the hill peak, we started to descend. We first came across a temple called as Patala Gange.

Patala Gange means underground Ganges.It is called so, as water flows underground inside a cave.It is believed that the holy water of the spring at Patala Gange is connected to Antaragange in Kolar.

Patala gange 

While scaling down, we came across a interesting temple called as ‘Olakala Teertha’, which means ‘water inside the stone’. Inside the temple, there is a small hole carved into the rock floor, through which one can reach out and touch the water from an underground spring. It is believed that one who does good work in his life gets the water from the hole. But in reality, one having the longest hands gets the water :-) .

Olakal theerta

Small hole carved into the rock

It almost took 1 hour to descend and we reached the base of the hill at 11:30AM. We had our brunch in a nearby hotel and started to head towards 2nd place of the day, Siddaganaga matha.

Sree Siddaganga matha is an ashram established by Sree Gosala Siddeshwara Swamiji in 15th century. It is one of the unique gurukula providing education to children with free food and shelter, without any discrimination of caste or creed. 

Siddaganaga matha

After spending some time at Matha, we started to head towards Bangalore.We reached Bangalore at 2:45PM. 

I feel this is one of the short trip, anyone can plan without much preparation. You will definitely enjoy the trekking..