One day trip Gudibande Fort and Gudibande Lake
The Drive
After a hectic weeks work , with a bit of struggle we woke and started our journey by 7 AM.
It was about a 2 to 2.30 hours of drive.
The drive to Gudibande was quite enjoyable with excellent roads. Most of the drive was through Devanahalli Highway - NH44 , the view was splendid with hills crowned with the clouds and a short drive through the village. Fields on either side with different vegetation and farmers ploughing not a usual site for Bangaloreans !!
The drive through the serene fields was a nice experience. We stopped by the fields clicked some pics and bought some veggies from the farmers. Every time we go for a trek outside the city we usually make it a point to buy the produce from the farmers , as a small contribution to empower them to sell their own produce.
GudiBande Fort
GudiBande means "Temple Rock" , situated at a distance of 100kms from Bangalore at the borders of Andhra Pradesh is GudiBande Fort.
This hill provides one of a safe trekking experience near Bangalore. You can drive upto the foot hill and the climb is safe with concrete paved steps for half the way and rest of the way with beautiful rock steps.
The hill houses beautiful remains of a layered fort and a small Shiva Temple , which is considered to be one of the 108 Jyothirlingas.
It took us about 45 mins to complete our climb , we had stopped at several places to soak in the beautiful views.
Every turn had something interesting , remains of the fort , steps through boulders , trees with roots holding on to the fort walls , the entire trek felt like a place out of a video game - uncharted lost legacy or temple run !!!
The fort was built 400 years back by a local Chieften Byre Gowda who was a Robin Hood of his days. On reaching the top of the hill , we found more remains of the fort , a small pond filled with water , a Shiva temple , wild red flowers grown over moss and beautiful panoramic view of the nearby village and the GudiBande lake.
Nature shows its beauty in the most unexpected ways and in unexpected places , who would expect these wild flowers grown on top of a dry hill could be such an eye candy.
Interesting ?? want to plan your trip to Gudibande ? Here is everything you need to know
GudiBande being surrounded by several small hills , offers excellent 360 views degrees.Its very windy yeah the whole climb we felt strong winds !! Its a beautiful yet an unexplored place with very less crowd , but it is a shame that its not being preserved and the people are destroying the fort walls and boulders by carving and painting names.
The descent was way easier than the climb :) we did it in no time.
We found a small dog following us , it looked quite lean and weak we tried to offer it some biscuits , initially it feared to come close probably it was subjected to beating earlier , but later he did feed on the biscuits out of hunger. It was quite a sad site. Though we have in abundance of food we hardly think of sharing it with these poor things.
GudiBande Lake
On our drive back we stopped by the GudiBande lake , we just stood there for a couple of minutes taking a small break.
It was a big lake , but didn't look like a picnic spot , just had a small fisher man hut and fishing nets. Mostly over rated place when you google it. We got a view of the GudiBande hill and fort from here.
It was past lunch time we stopped by a restaurant "Godavari Delights" , and had a authentic Andhra meal. It was surprising to see less crowd with such good food being served.
The place was a small pit stop with a restaurant , Chai stall and mud handicrafts store. There were surprisingly beautiful collection of handicrafts made out of mud, cooking vessels , mud pots sold here.
If you are traveling this way its definitely worth a stop here.
Devanahalli Fort
I had just googled this place during our journey and found it was a fort and Tipu's birth place so we thought we might take a look to just realize there's nothing much and its not a tourist spot.
Living in Karnataka gives us abundant access to geographically scenic places such as these small hills which serve as a weekend getaways from the madness of the City's rat race.
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