15 Sep 2013

Gudibande fort

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29th June 2013
Gudibande is a small town about 100 km from Bengaluru. Go on
NH-7 towards Hyderabad and take diversion after Chikkaballapur. 10 km from
highway is the town of Gudibande.
I and Subbu had some difficulty in finding the correct
diversion to Gudibande. The sign boards were not proper which led to confusion.
Thanks to sygic maps, we were able to retrace back and locate the exact
deviation.
The fort is situated in the town itself. We parked our
vehicle at the base and started our walk. Initial stretch of the fort is well
paved.
Looking at the fort, we quickly realized that it would be a
cakewalk. With plenty of time at our disposal, we concentrated towards
butterflies that were numerous in numbers. Satisfied with the shots, we
proceeded to climb further.
The climb is simple with clear paths. At some places, the
route goes though the spaces created by huge rocks.
After first level, there are several caves which houses bee
hives. A small kalyani here would have served as water source during its active
days.
One of the several exit paths in the fort.
The view gets better as we climb up.
A ruined Temple on the way to the top.
The path gets narrower as we pass through the “rock
tunnels”.
Subbu inspects top of the fort.
The landscape around Gudibande town.
Gudibande town and the lake near it.
A small kalyani just below the top of the fort.
The final steps to the last stage. A Temple exists on top of
the fort.  The Temple was locked but it
was a “live” Temple with a deity inside.
I don’t remember how long we took to climb the fort
considering the stops we took to photograph butterflies and the fort. But a non-stop climb would just take less than 30 minutes!!
We had reached the top much ahead of our plan. The place was
calm and serene. We slept for nearly an hour only to be disturbed by barking
dogs!! Few shepherds were climbing up with their sheep. The dogs not happy with
our presence kept barking at us. It was time to get down.
Here is the landscape of top of the fort with the path
leading to it and the Temple.
One of Subbu’s relative stayed near in a village near
Gudibande. We had our lunch there before proceeding to Bengaluru.
The return journey would have uneventful but for the fine I had to pay for over speeding near Devanahalli!!

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