Caught Special pictures from our Chitradurga Trip we did in November 2024.
Captured using my mobile Samsung S23 or by my DSLR Canon EOS 700D.
Click open below and scroll down to see all pictures..
Saturday, November 30, 2024
Chitradurga Trip
This was a nice little two nights and three days trip to Chitradurga, staying at KSTDC Mayura Durg.
We had already visited Chitradurga earlier once in August 2009, and we had stayed at Hotel Aishwarya Fort one night, and as it was not a good experience, we moved to Hotel Naveen Regency for the next night.
Vani Vilas Sagar Dam was good; nice to see the calm water. They were doing some drilling and excavation on the opposite end of the water; appeared like construction of some pier or bridge of some sort; seems like the serenity of the place is set to be damaged! We drove by car to the upper level instead of walking up the steps; that is a good plan.
After taking some rest at Mayura Durg, we took an evening walk passing by the entrance of the Fort area, and went in to Sree Maharshi Valmeeki Museum (Entry Rs 10 per person), and Sri Raja Utsavamba Devalaya, and then taking a look at stone swing arch pillar in front of the temple, an old well on the road side there, and a few other very old buildings on that Doddapete Main Road in front of that temple. We then walked through a bylane street seeing the old calm houses, and reached up to Sri Lakshmi Bhavan Tiffin Room an old popular restaurant (sometimes referred as LTR), and took an auto to return to our Hotel and had dinner by room service.On Saturday morning we entered the Fort at 10:30 am and after going around seeing various sections, came out at 1 pm. Many parts of the Fort ruins are not kept up well. The Palace area could not even be accessed as the bushes have grown up and blocked the way completely; risk of snakes in the area is high. As we were about to leave, luckily we had the chance to see the Spiderman of Chitradurga.. Mr Jothi Raj, getting ready at his usual spot; seems like he had just come in. We had seen his wall-climbs during our previous trip in 2009.
Had our lunch at Mayura Durg, took some rest, and reached Chandravalli / Ankali Mutt Cave location by 4:15 pm; and after spending an hour looking around the spots at the top of the steps, and then seeing the water body, we left from there by 5:15 pm.
After some rest, we started at about 7:15 pm, we walked some distance and boarded an auto to go to LTR for dinner and had yummy Masala Dosas just before they closed, and came back by 8 pm.
On Sunday morning we vacated the room and started by 9:30 am towards Jogimatti Forest View Point, crossed the entry gate around 9:55 am (Entry Rs 25 per adult, Rs 50 for car, and Rs 200 for DSLR camera). The Google Map search based destination as Jogi Matti Forest was pointing to a wrong spot, that is ~2 KM before, and somewhere inside. We drove past that and reached the actual spot by about 10:15 am. Parking and making u-turn here is a challenge. After climbing up the steps and spending some time, we started at 11 am, and started to the Zoo.
We reached the Adu Malleshwara Mini Zoo by 11:30 am (Entry Rs 40 per adult, Rs 50 for car parking, and Rs 50 for DSLR camera). Tiger was the highlight. He came close and gave a walk past the glass we stood by. After spending an hour there we started by 12:30 pm towards Bangalore.
We stopped at A2B at Sira outskirts for lunch by 2 pm for 30 min., and reached Bangalore by 6 pm on that Sunday. It took almost a couple of hours more than what it should have, due to a very bad traffic congestion all through the route.. returning to Bangalore after the long weekend.
We had the opportunity to click a lot of pictures of Birds, Butterflies, Flowers, Fruits, Animals, Insects, Nature, and so on, throughout our trip, at the Hotel also, and at all the spots we visited.
Scroll to see more pictures below; and also our Verdict about the whole trip.. at the end of this below.
Sunday, November 10, 2024
Caught Special - 150
Caught Special pictures from our Mysore - Kabini River Lodge - Trip we did in September 2024.
Captured using my mobile Samsung S23 or by my DSLR Canon EOS 700D.
Click open below and scroll down to see all pictures..
Mysore - Kabini River Lodge - Trip
This was a nice little two nights and three days trip to Mysore and Kabini, staying at Lalitha Mahal Palace Hotel in Mysore and at Jungle Lodges' Kabini River Lodge.
We had earlier once done a trip to The Kabini Serai in November 2018 that is located adjoining to this Kabini River Lodge of Jungle Lodges. You can see that travelog here.
Starting
from Bangalore by about 10:30 am on 21st September 2024 (Sat), we reached Lalitha
Mahal Palace Hotel in Mysore by 1:30 pm, (after a 40-minutes lunch stop at a KFC Mysore outlet just about 4 km before Lalitha Mahal), for the night's stay. Covering the 150 km distance via the NICE road and the Bangalore Mysore Expressway.
We looked around Lalitha Mahal during the evening. And as we had liked to do during our previous trips, we drove about 10 km to The Green Hotel Mysore for dinner, and some cake buy at The Malgudi Coffee Shop that is inside Green Hotel. We had stayed here as well once in December 2019 doing a trip to the Dubare Elephant Camp. You can see our travelogue of that trip here.
While driving back from The Green Hotel, we also drove around the Mysore Palace and also saw that the lighting arrangements were being done for the Dussehra that was about to start in just 7-8 days.
Next morning, the breakfast at Lalitha Mahal as usual was fantastic. And then we started at about 10:30 am from there towards Kabini River Lodge. We took the Jayapura, Madapura, Antharasanthe, Malalagadde route (here) of about 77 km and reached Jungle Lodges Kabini at about 12:30 pm.
Kabini River Lodge was good in general. The cottage was just fine. Food was ok; just that they had too many variety of items, but obviously we could not eat everything.
We took the jeep safari option in the evening (started at 3 pm from the Resort, but had to wait at the forest gate at 3:30 pm for entry start, and returned to the Resort after the safari by about 6:25 pm) and the water safari the next morning (started at 6 am from the Resort, but then the boatman went first to Evolve Back Resort on the other side of the shore to pick up the guests there for pool-in, and also our Naturalist Guide joined us from there; and returned to the Resort after the safari by about 9:10 am).
Both were good, but we never spotted any wild animals, except for deer, elephant, fishing eagle, and peacock. So we were not lucky in this safari also, like we had at multiple forest safaris at other places before.
The cost is very expensive at Kabini River Lodge of Jungle Lodges but we found the overall experience and what is given in the package, not justified.
We started from Kabini River Lodge at about 11:30 am, stopped at Hari Govinda's on the Ring Road in Mysore at about 1:15 pm for for about 35 min. for lunch (it was bad; we had stomach problem after returning; and now think not to go there anytime again), and reached Bangalore by 4:15 pm (route).
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