Thalli: Experience ‘Little England’

As I mentioned in my last post, in the series of guest posts from some of the incredible bloggers I've following,

Let me introduce you to a fine heritage travel blogger, Arun Bharadwaj who blogs at Payana and is a voracious traveler by himself. The list of places he has seen and covered is worth envying and the amount of information he shares in his post is commendable.

He says "India, as I see it, is a land of surprises. Imagine everything under the sun, we have it- Beaches, Snow, Desert, Hills, Mountains, Rivers, Oceans, Islands, Gulf, Natural Caves, Waterfalls, Places of worship, relics of ancient civilizations... Given an average life of 60 years, I can only wish to cover at least 20% of the exotic country."

He has a liking for archaeological heritage places and visits a lot of 'lost temples', discovering the 'heritage tales and kingdoms' and is an avid traveler too.

His post is about a literally unknown place called 'Thalli', very close to Bengaluru city.
Read on...


Overview:
Visiting Thalli is one of the best ways to beat the weekday stress from work. Being very close to Bangalore, this can be done as a half day trip. I came across this interesting place while going through some website on tourism. And there aren't many blogs on this either.

Away from the prying eyes... Image copyright Payana

So we thought we should make is to Thalli. We left early morning after breakfast towards Hosur Road which was relatively free because of the weekend. We reached Hosur town pretty quickly and had to take a right turn towards Thalli. There are ample boards to guide one to Thalli from Hosur. The weather was cloudy and had cool environs and probably that is the reason that this place is called 'Little England'.

The path into wilderness... Image copyright Payana

We reached Thalli in around 1.5 hrs with breaks and passed through Thalli lake which looked calm and pristine. Thalli is a rustic and laid back town just on the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border so people speak both Kannada and Tamil here.

'Rain pond', Image copyright Payana

Though there is nothing much to see in Thalli as such, there is a small hillock called Devarabetta just a few kilometers from Thalli. That hill looks great with a couple of temples at the base. The climb to the top is not very tough and there are well laid steps leading to the summit. At the top of the hill the entire region looks so green and colorful and the surrounding hill ranges can be seen. The farmlands below add to the glory of the place. The cool winds blow pretty strongly at the top which feels soothing. The irregular shapes of rocks are the targets of our photography.

'Balance', Image copyright Payana

To sum it up, the hill is aptly named Devarabetta which translates to 'God's hill' in Kannada. We returned back with loads of memories and pictures. This place is very little known to people so the crowd is very less. An ideal place for a weekend getaway from Bangalore.


How to reach: Head on NH7 towards Hosur. At Hosur, before entering the town, watch out for a board for directions to Thalli. Turn right and drive for around 25 km to Thalli.
Regular buses available from Bangalore to Hosur. From Hosur, private buses are available to reach Thalli.

Food/Accommodation: Not many options available for food. Its better to carry food and water from home.

Map:

View Larger Map

FIVE years

5 years of blogging
A journey that began this week 5 years ago, a journey into the unseen virtual world, a journey of tales and tribunals, a journey to showcase the hidden splendors of the nature, journeys of joy and fun, journey of togetherness, journey of friends, journey of bonding, friendship and togetherness.

The saga of Huchchara Santhe is now at the step of completing ‘five’ years (let me clarify, this journey is only the virtual ‘web’ journey) and believe me, it’s been a fantastic ride all along.

5 years ago, a little known, shy, outspoken introvert decides to pen down his tales, his experiences, and his travels with his friends, egged upon by a like-minded friend, not aware what the virtual world has in store and thus came into existence in the virtual world, ‘Huchchara Santhe’.

A different name, something unique, something crazy… well, its all that we have done, been doing and will do ahead as well, I have received quite a few curious glances and expressions whenever I utter the name of my blog.

Blogging opened up new avenues, new dimensions, new thoughts and ideas came in and the articles started building up and after a slow beginning, the blog started having people follow and some would wait for an update! Humbled!

From only travel articles, new genre crept in with more photo blogs coming and now the blog caters to travel tales, treks, photography, wildlife, nature topics and much more.

With around 1.5 lac page views and about 100+ followers/readers on the blog and Facebook, the blog has tremendously grown much to our surprise and the ‘mouth of word’ reference has been a powerful way in this.

Heartfelt thanks to my boys, the close-knit group without whom probably I would have had no tales to even think of writing upon. Indiblogger.in has been a godsend site with a strong community of bloggers from different genre’s uniting together as a family. Networking sites are an important tool in reaching out to people and they have brought plenty of readers too.

Also, a great set of people who blog, who have fantastic blog to their credit, who have critiqued, appreciated, commented on my blog also have helped it grow tremendously.

A big ‘high-five’ to all of you and hope the support and encouragement continues. Thanks!


On this special occasion, I take privilege in hosting guest blogs of some of the best bloggers whom I’ve been following and who all have a different way of conveying their story to their audience.

Watch out folks!!!

Thanks and Keep Visiting :)

Kolli hills - the sad part!

Kolli hills – the ugly or the ‘real’ part

On a recent visit to Kolli hills (also projected as the Herbal mountain) located in Namakkal district in central Tamil Nadu, I had high hopes of going to an hill station secluded away from the world, all pristine and beautiful. Kolli hills is not yet popular as its famous counterparts, the Yelagiri hills or Yercaud but of late is slowly becoming popular with the weekend crowd and the distance from Bangalore is just lower than 300kms, a potential tourist spot in the making. Reaching there is a driver’s delight as you need to counter 70 hairpin bends to reach the small village at the top of the cliff and nevertheless to say the highway is neatly laid out and is a cruise from Bangalore.

Mid-way, while we stopped to enjoy the views (it was dry and hot being summer), a look below the walls and the scene was petrifying. Beer bottles grew on trees and the ground was plastic’d completely. Further, the next couple of stops that we did and the scenes repeated…slowly I began to realize the place been infested with plastic bottles and beer bottles!

With uncertainties and sapping in the hot sun, we reached our place of stay ‘Nallathambi Resort’ that looked quite clean and well maintained or I thought so! On the outlook, everything looked fine until I looked over the compound wall in disarray, again a plastic trash city over there. I went around different directions peeping over the walls and it was the same sight everywhere. Sooner, I realized not only this resort, other resorts/hotels too bore the same sight!


Sigh! To make mockery of the situation, the bus stand had a board stating ‘No Plastics’.

With a troubled conscience hitting me hard, I set off to the ‘touristy’ places nearby and the overall situation looked grim, far worse than I thought. We walked up and down to the Akash Ganga falls (the 1200 odd steps fatigued us no end) and it was infested with hordes of people (as expected), some bathing, some relishing and some sunbathing and yes littering was common.

Arappaleshwar temple is a favored place for many visiting Kolli malai it was not anymore surprising for me to see a huge dump yard right in front of the temple. The visit to the small falls/stream opposite to the temple yielded more signs with the stream littered with clothes/plastic/bottles. What I expected was a quiet hill station offering solace to the weekend traveler and what I saw was a notorious ‘plastic station’ infested heavily with plastics and garbage. The signs of herbal mountain turning into a garbage mountain doesn’t seem too distant.