Planned to drive to hogenkal with friends on an early sunday morning.... had heard a lot about hogenkal falls but never got opportunity to visit... Well since it was more of an unplanned trip i didn't even fill fuel for my car thought would fill up in the morning.... well bad luck struck in the early morning it self, my car stopped near netkalappa circle without fuel.... i managed to find petrol bunk which was open for 24hrs and some how with some difficulty managed to get around 2lts of petrol.....
We wanted to start at 5 however we started at aroun 7... hogenkal is around 170kms via hosur,dharmapuri route however there is a shorter rout which is around 140kms for which you need to take a right as soon as you get down from the flyover in hosur... however this road is not very great since its a single road...but you can avoid lots of traffic.....
We managed to reach hogenkal at around 11... the place looked overcrowded that was a big turnoff for me..... it has become a thought for me that i have started hating places where in the human inflow is high.... i have good reasons for the same and which was justified immediately.... Felt very bad that even after charging around 100rs for the parking,village panchayat development and the entry fee i didn't see any steps thats been taken in order to improve the beautiful place.... if it continues in this way the beauty of hogenkal would not last long and it would be a big dump of plastics all around......
4 of us got ourselves a teppa(a small circular shaped boat ), in which we need to go in order to have a look at the falls..... Well to be frank i didn't like this place at all at first instance and the only reason was the level at which its been exploited.... you could see people eating and throwing paper plates everywhere.... we could see people drinking liquor in the small boats and then throwing the plastics into the river..... i felt its insane to have such people at such beautiful places we need to have very strict laws to avoid these people exploiting the same.... felt very bad looking at the plight of such a beautiful place......
The basic thing is how responsible are the civilians to maintain such a beautiful place, why does this happen only in india.... why don't everyone understand that these places are very special... and needs to be taken care..... felt very sad....
however i plan to visit this place very soon again however this time i would go very early in the morning and also probably on a week day in order to avoid all the humans..... i need to explore this place a lot more, like need to get into the water a lot more and also i need to go around and explore on top of the falls and stuffs.... in one word this was a spectacular place being spoiled at its best.... and one main reason is its accessibility.... to everyone.....
We took a shorter route on our return and were back to bangalore pretty early..... and one main reason for the same is just after looking at so many people on a weekend we straight away decided we gonna come back again ........and on a weekday....
Other things which attracted the most was a small kid who was sleeping in the middle of the river on a small rock... we remembered the movie "tare zameen par" when we saw this kid in his own world... sleeping on the rock and playing in the water was just wondering what would be the kid thinking in his mind....... and the other thing was small kids diving from the height of around 30feet from the huge rocks for mere 5 bucks ...felt very bad...as the risk involved was very high.... felt bad that people enjoy such stuffs putting a kids life in danger for a mere 5bucks.... :-(
Lots of things could be changed.... but its only like how much we wanna do.... nothing is gonna happen until we take the initiative to do something rather than just blame the government...for not doing anything.....
Route:
Bangalore - Hosur - Dharmapuri - Hogenkal -- 170kms
Around 3hrs....... drive... Return take a left after 5kms from hogenkal and then drive for around 140km and reach hosur....
Team: Poorna,Loki,Shilpi and prabodh..... with my baby swift :-)
3 comments:
I liked the way you have penned your feelings abt this place poorna. I too had been to this place in july last year, and i was dissappointed by the absolutely unbelievable exploitation and ignorance towards the place. its easily one the dirtiest places i have seen, but still the beauty of the river and the falls was bursting through all the mess created by humans. and unfortunately, i could not see how this place would improve in future.
-- Pramod kulkarni
poorna it is 5 bucks right? Was that a spell mistake?
Poorna, the other side to this:
You need to see why its like this! This place is one among them which is a part of Karnataka and TamilNadu. You have another route somewhere after Bidadi (not sure if its true).
So, its ended up that both these govt do not take steps as they feel its the other's job.. tats the reason, there is a need for "a centralised" system which takes care of it.. somethin like the "world heritage" places..
just a thought-a... nothin personal..
matte.. innondu.. there is another place near Bidadi.. been one of my fav places.. one small hill.. not a peak or somethin.. but peaceful and worth going.. let me know if you wan more info..
/Sriki
Post a Comment