Hassan, Sakleshpur Trip

This summer, we made this great road trip of 3 days and 2 nights duration to Hassan and Sakleshpur. We did this from 18/Apr/13, Thu. morning to 20/Apr/13, Sat. evening. We covered some offbeat historic locations and hillside stay.

Usually I get my car serviced or a general check-up done just before such long trips; actually this is not such a long trip, just ~600 KM total, spread unevenly across 3 days. Since I had got a regular service done for my car recently about 1000 KM ago, I did no preparation on that front this time. May be due to that, we did encounter a couple of abnormal stoppages during this trip, including one serious, on the high way - before Hassan in the onward direction - we had to push and jump-start the car!

That apart, overall it was a very nice trip. There were many memorable moments as you will see from the details and pictures I have posted below.

Places visited

1. Shettihalli Church: About 24 KM from Hassan. This is an unusual old 19th century church built right on the Hemavathi river bed, in the Gorur reservoir area. Though it is nearly in a state of ruin, what is special is that, during high flood levels in the river it gets fully immersed under water and is accessible only when water level is low. 

2. Manjarabad / Munzerabad Fort: About 6 KM from Sakleshpur also known as Sakaleshpura. Sakleshpur is the starting point of western ghats where we also start seeing coffee plantations when we travel from Bangalore direction towards Mangalore on NH48. This fort is located at the outskirts of Sakleshpur and was built by Tipu Sultan in the 18th century as a monitoring camp to guard the border at that end of his territory. It is positioned at a slightly elevated ground and gives a nice green view of the surrounding terrain.

3. Tusk & Dawn: About 29 KM from Sakleshpur. A jungle retreat, tucked just into dense forest and located at one of the foothills of the western ghat range. Away from all human activity, with none of the modern facilities available, it is nested in the middle of peaceful surroundings amidst quite a few pet birds walking around.

Route

Here is the round-trip Route that we followed: 

Bannergatta road - NICE road entry at Gottigere - Tumkur road exit - Nelamangala - Left turn on NH48 on Mangalore road - Kunigal bypass - Channarayapatna bypass not ready yet - Hassan - Shettihalli Church - Hassan (halt) - Sakleshpur - Manjarabad Fort - Sakleshpur - Hanbal - Agani - Tusk & Dawn Resort (halt) - Sakleshpur - Hassan bypass - Channarayapatna bypass not ready yet - Kunigal bypass - Nelamangala - NICE road entry at Tumkur road - Gottigere exit - Bannergatta road.

Click here for full route map, interactive, on Google Maps.

Read on for more details of the itinerary we followed, of the places we visited, and a lot of photos.

Here is a overall route map of the trip.

Detailed Time Log of our Itinerary

* Bangalore to Hassan on day-1 (18/Apr/13), Thursday morning - 206 KM [Route]
     7:15 AM - Started from Bommanahalli, Bangalore
     7:20 AM - Local stop to pack breakfast packets for 15 min.
     7:50 AM - Entered NICE road Gottigere / Bannerghatta road
     8:40 AM to 9:05 AM - Road-side stop before Kunigal for breakfast
     9:20 AM - Rest room stop at Indian Oil petrol bunk for 5 min. 
     9:50 AM to 11:35 AM - Road-side stop near Byaladakere Nursery for official conference call
     12:20 PM - Sudden engine seize halt and push-start car for 5 min.
     12:50 PM to 1:20 PM - Lunch stop at Kamat Upachar (right hand side)
        - Kamat is located 11 KM after Channarayapattana and 27 KM before Hassan
     1:55 PM - Entered Hassan town
     2:10 PM - Checked in to Mallige Residency

* Hassan to Shettihalli Church and back on day-1, Thursday afternoon - 22 KM + 22 KM [Route]
     3:30 PM - Started from hotel
     4:35 PM - Reached Shettihalli Church location; 10 min. walk to reach the church near river
     5:30 PM - Started from Shettihalli Church location
     6:15 PM - Reached hotel
     6:45 PM - Went out again to Jilu Maruthi Service Center to check car battery connection issue
     8:00 PM to 8:30 PM - Dinner at Parijata Restaurant in the Hotel

* Hassan to Manjarabad Fort Sakleshpur on day-2 (19/Apr/13), Friday morning - 47 KM [Route]
     7:45 AM to 8:45 AM - Breakfast at Parijata Restaurant in the Hotel
     9 AM - Checked out hotel at 8:45 AM and started from Hassan
     10 AM - Reached Sakleshpur town
     10:15 AM - Reached Manjarabad Fort parking lot
     10:25 AM - 10 min. climb of about 300 steps and reached the fort
     11:20 AM - Reached parking lot and started towards Tusk & Dawn

* Manjarabad Fort to Hanbal to Tusk & Dawn Agani on day-2, Friday forenoon - 26 KM [Route incomplete]
Note: The Google Map route here is incomplete; Tusk & Dawn's location is so inaccessible.
     11:20 AM - Started from Manjarabad Fort
        - Drove 3 KM towards Sakleshpur; stopped for 20 min. to buy Robusta coffee-wood craft piece
        - Turned left 3 KM before Sakleshpur on Mudigere road towards Hanbal
        - Drove 14 KM to reach Hanbal town
     12:15 PM - Reached Hanbal town
        - At the junction (turning right takes to Mudigere), kept straight on Devanaguda / Devarunda road
        - After 3 KM turned left and followed the signs to Tusk & Dawn
        - Drove 9 KM on mud road / off-roading drive and passed two water streams
     12:45 PM - Reached Tusk & Dawn

* Tusk & Dawn on day-2, Friday lunch to day-3, Saturday post-breakfast
     1:30 PM to 2:00 PM Friday - Lunch
     2:00 PM to 4:30 PM - Strolls, ponds, exploration and walks around the resort, and rest a bit
     4:30 PM - Tea and snacks
     5 PM to 6 PM - Trek on the hills
     7:15 PM - Ponds, strolls, exploration, hammocks and trampoline
     7:15 PM to 8:15 PM - Campfire
     8:15 PM to 9:15 PM - Dinner
     6:45 AM Saturday - Morning tea
     8:45 AM to 9:15 AM - Breakfast
     10 AM - Strolls, exploration and walks around the resort
     10:15 AM - Check-out

* Tusk & Dawn to Bangalore on day-3 (20/Apr/13), Saturday - 270 KM
     10:20 AM - Started from Tusk & Dawn Agani village
        - Passed through Hanbal (10:15 AM), Sakleshpur (11:30 AM), bypassed Hassan town (12:15 PM)
     12:50 PM to 1:20 PM - Stopped for Lunch at the same Kamat Upachar 27 KM after Hassan
     3:30 PM - Entered NICE road at Kengeri
     4:30 PM - Reached Bommanahalli

Highlights and Pictures

1. Shettihalli Church

Shettihalli is a small village, about 22 KM from Hassan. The Church is located about a couple of KM after the village on the Hemavathi river bed in Gorur reservoir. You can see someone's Facebook page for this Church, including some pictures showing it fully immersed in water, here.

A beautiful architecture, but it is already ruined seriously. Some walls are already washed off. It does not look like it would survive many more years. This place is not known to many people. There is no proper sign board during the drive anywhere or no architectural or historical information boards around the actual location as well. So it is really unattended and forgotten. Above all, the sadder part is that many public visitors have spoiled it further by inducing damages to parts of the remaining structure and scribbling ugly stuff all over the walls everywhere possible. Serious scar.

Other than those issues, it is a great feeling to see such an architecture and concept. It is said to be Gothic architecture and built by French missionaries in mid 19th century. We did see a narrow stream of water at the center of the river bed, some 300 feet from the Church. On the other side of the water on the river bed though, people were doing cultivated agricultural farming, spraying pesticides (you can see it in one of the pictures)! We interpreted that the water level probably has not been rising anytime seriously for many months or even years.

We spotted a lot of birds along the river water stream -- Egrets, River terns, Cranes, Kites, etc. They were all simply ecstatic going about their flights up and down in the surroundings and about catching their prey in water.

Here are some pictures.

First glimpse of the Church from the road.

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See a river tern bird below.

More birds.

See the fertilizer spray for farming in the picture below.

2. Manjarabad Fort

It is located about 6 KM after Sakleshpur when we go from Hassan. It is a simple and nice (Islamic) architectural fort. There are quite a few things to see here in a very small area: The fort wall, watch towers, a cross-shaped stepped well at the center, surrounded by dungeons, a few storage rooms, kitchens, tunnel (it is said that the tunnel was once connecting all the way to Tipu Sultan's fort in Srirangapatna near Mysore), etc.

It is located slightly at an elevated ground with about 300 odd steps to climb, and gives a great view of the surrounding dense greenery of the western ghats. It is said to be Tipu Sultan's border-monitoring camp for his soldiers. The fort walls are designed in a star-shaped layout; you can see it clearly in the satellite view of Google Maps here.

This place is also not very popular. So during our visit, there was not much crowd around. The calm isolated location amplifies our experience of peace, apart from the sense of historic connection we go through when we walk through the structures here. Around 11 AM, we were kind of rushing to leave Manjarabad soon since we were heading from there to reach Tusk & Dawn by 12 noon. But actually, one can spend quite a few hours here, a quiet few hours in fact, walk in and around all the structures, study them meticulously, and can gain a thorough deep feeling of historic connection.

The tender coconuts we had after coming down the steps was simply cool and fantastic, and countered the mid-April summer heat that was beating us down.

Here are some pictures.

Road-side car park.

Information board on the right hand side (rusted and almost gone)

Walk up.

Climb up.

Wall outside the entrance.

Entrance.

Tunnel to Srirangapatna.

Kitchen?

Cross-shaped stepped tank.

View of the western ghats from top.

Moat (agazhi / அகழி)

Main entrance again.

Watch tower and Moat (agazhi / அகழி)

View of the western ghats from top.

3. Tusk & Dawn

Located some 30 KM away from Sakleshpur, and away from any human activity, this small Jungle Retreat has a few simple cottages built at the base of hills at the beginning of western ghat range on the Sakleshpur side. It is a good place to spend time with nature and peace (particularly, if you are lucky like we were -- alone at the entire resort that day).

None of the following are available at this location: TV, telephone, newspaper, radio, (almost no) cellphone signal, and, finally -- no electricity too. Yes, there is no EB supply here, and they generate their own electricity by a small hydro-electric generating pump (a very small one, just some 1 cu. ft. size) using piped water's pressure from the waterfalls nearby. They do have a backup DG unit that they can use in case of necessity. But we never saw them use it during out stay. Basically there is no electric power supply available during the day from 7 AM to 7 PM. They turn on the hydro pump at about 7 PM and they turn it off by 7 AM.

In the cottage also there is no furniture except the cots with mattresses. There is no make up table, no luggage rack / shelf, no AC, no chairs or tables, etc. The bathroom is decently large, with highlights being -- a part of the ceiling done with a transparent fiber glass roofing for skylight entry, and a bathtub sized plant garden as well in the bathroom.

This jungle retreat's location is quite hard to reach. This was in mid-April we went, and so, the winding up & down sloping mud roads were just about okay for us to drive. Only at a couple of slopes my Swift's wheels suffered, as it could not get proper grip and it puffed-out fumes of mud, but finally it moved forward. There were a couple of water streams to drive through, one of them was slightly wide at 10-12 feet wide and may be about 1 foot deep, and it had a lot of boulders at the bottom. They said that during monsoon rainy season this route is a very tough one with soggy and marshy roads, and at that time they do not allow visitors to drive up to the resort by own vehicles. During those times, the resort offers four-wheel-drive jeep pickup to fetch the people for that last 5-6 KM of mud road. For me too, due to the fact that the location of the resort is so much isolated, and the road leading to it is narrow and without any people movement, I would have really suffered if I had to drive all the way to the resort on my own. Luckily, one of their staffs was incidentally passing by Hanbal towards the resort at the same time as we did, and he joined me in our car. Because of that I could reach the resort without much of difficulty. Else, it would have actually been a challenge for me to find the way to the resort on my own, in that alienated surroundings amidst those thick trees, ups and downs of slopes, and completely silent route. There were just no people or vehicle movement for that last 4-5 KM of the route.

The resort team said they can take us on a paid trip off-roading, on a 4-wheel drive jeep, on the mountain slopes amidst the forest area. But that very drive on my car for the last 4-5 KM to reach the jungle retreat was itself an off-roading experience for us! So we did not bother to think about their offer, that too at additional cost, for one more such drive!

At the resort, luckily, we were the only guests on that Friday noon to Saturday morning package. That was a great plus, since we had a calm and peaceful time. We were told that they were expecting a contingent of some 22 members in 4 separate groups checking-in on the following day (Saturday). But we were happily sure that we would have checked-out of the resort by that time they all pour in.

The resort's new cottages where we stayed are all normal type construction. They have two other old log-hut type cottages, that are nested among dense trees on a slope behind the dining hall. That looked adventurously attractive. But we were told that those log-huts are very small and not spacious enough.

The resort's is a 3 meal package including a trek on the hills. When we checked in around 1 PM, the sun was scorching and we were wishing for some breeze or chillness. With no air-conditioner or fan (basically no power) in the cottage, it was very hot. Temperature reduced down later in the evening. The trek around 5 PM was a great experience as they took us close to the top of the hills. See the picture where I have pointed by an arrow. We did wish we could have spent more time there and could have reached further up to the plateau grass land at the top. However, even at the top most point where we reached up to, we could still see the long view of hills on the western ghats with those sprawling layers and decks of dense green nature spreading endlessly from there.

One the way up on the trek, we stopped by the pristine and cold mini waterfalls that is located within about 5 min. walk into the forest as soon as we started the climb. It was nice to see water flowing even in that hot summer. Water was cold and the location amidst trees was very scenic. We also came across some elephant dung droppings, some looked fresh, on the trek route up. On the slopes, the greenery was all dried up due to mid-April heat. We were wondering about the fantastic views this same location would display after the monsoon rains: it would surely be a great sight up these hills.

Though when we arrived at this retreat at mid-day was too hot at about 35-36 deg C, even on that mid-April day, the night became quite cold at about 21-22 deg C. We laughed initially when, during lunch time, they told us that they will light up the complementary camp fire at night. But when they actually arranged it for us, we felt it was very much necessary and helpful.

The night scene is another icing on the cake. The swarms of fire flies (மின்மினிப்  பூச்சி / min-mini poochi) were sitting on all the trees around, and were in full action. Since there were not many electric lights (the hydro power they generate is not too much, so there were no lights in the open space from the cottage to the dining hall) around, we were treated to some grand lighting display by the fire flies. It was a phenomenal exhibition of blinking lights by the fire flies. Once in a while they were all lighting on and off in concerted sync / unison, all over the trees in the area. We watched a visual delight.

At night, the rooms did have intruders from the surrounding trees and plantations. Insects. We had to shoo away spiders, snails, and other insects that walked in to the room, the bathroom and the mattress. It is a phenomenon that can never be avoided when we stay anywhere amidst trees and near plantations / forest.

The other attraction here is the couple of nice ponds they have created, with one having a wooden path to the small central island ground with a lot of big gold fish in the water. That pond was simply fantastic and nice to sit around and enjoy the nature surrounded by scenic hills, trees, birds, and silence.

Another special is the lively pets they grow with them here: Their dog (Mickey) was very friendly, and always ran to us and stood rubbing beside our legs whenever it saw us. Then they have ducks, guinea hens, turkeys, wild hens, guinea pig, and then the star attraction in the morning -- a visiting pea hen that flew and landed in the morning and took long walks around us, all over their resort area.

Food they offer is basic. They provide veg and non-veg combined on a buffet serving. The staffs were all very friendly and courteous.

Here are some pictures.

Ducks.

Guinea pig.

Turkey.

Wild hen.

Guinea hen.

The climb starts.

Pristine water falls.

The hydro power generator.

Elephant dung.

The only small flat road during the trek.

Climbing up.

Climbing up.

Still climbing up.

Still climbing up.

Almost there.

At the top.

View of the ghats from the top.

View of resort from the top.

There, that is where we climbed up to.

Walking down.

Trampoline ready?  Yes, trek was not tired at all.

Relaxing after the trek.

Camp fire getting ready.

Nice, and warm.

Dinner.

Dining hall.

In the morning.

Camp fire, fully done.

The morning guest, pea hen.

Lot of morning dew on plants.

Pea hen was walking around closely.

Showing: 'There', that is where we climbed up to.

The pea hen and the dog closely, no problem.

A big shell-less snail, many of them in the bathroom.

Mickey always liked to rub and lie on our legs / laps.

Pea hen driving a bike.

The scenic pond again.

Breakfast.

Some caught specials

There were quite a few scenes of interest or attraction while driving en route that I caught on camera. There were also some special pictures that I caught at the places we visited.

Here they are, enjoy.

NICE road.

Road-side food stop.

Ah, the idli vada.

Mynah, joining us for breakfast?

The conference call.

NH48 double road is still not fully ready. Several cross-overs to drive on same side for both traffic.

A road-side goli soda guy.

Agri farms on the way to Shettihalli.

Cattle egret bird.

Jack fruits.

A farm owner on his Ford Ikon right in his farm.

The mill-stone used in old practices, found many of these.

Bul Bul bird.

The day's harvest is ready.

NH48 is great in some stretches.

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