Freedom Drive!!!

Trying not to break the tradition of “freedom drive”, Sunil and his friends planned a trip. In case you are wondering what that means – Freedom Drive, according to “The Boyz” (Sundru, PJ, GP, Chinu, Barry and Sharath), is a drive undertaken by them on every Independence Day (Aug 15th) and this year was no exception… just that I became a part of it (by default)…

As for me, I always wanted to do something like this from a very long time. Sunil, unfortunately, isn’t that adventurous… I mean, he likes to travel but asking him to drive a long distance is one hell of a task. He’d rather prefer a chauffer-driven car than do something like that. The farthest that we have driven to till now is to Srirangapatna – which is about 120 odd kms from Bangalore.

So here go the details…. The place was finally decided as Belur, Halebidu and Sravanabelagola. Chinu worked out the itinerary for our Freedom Drive (he did a lot of research and picked up the place with the help of lot of resources including some blogs). And there we were… All set for the road trip!!!

My Independence Day began at 5.45am (yes, I had to wake up early, inspite of me not being a morning person). Hats off to poor Sundru for he had to literally pull me out of the bed… I was so frustrated that I could have just cancelled the whole trip for my precious sleep but Sunil’s trick some how worked and I was ready by 6am.. We drove to PJ’s house and parked our car there… We took PJ’s car, picked up Chinu & Sharath from Sharath’s place and set off!!!!

We drove for nearly 2 hours and at around 9 am, we finally stopped at a joint called Mayura Hotel near Adichunchunagiri College for breakfast… Though we had stocked a lot of snack items & quick bites, we weren’t too keen to have those and were eagerly awaiting a place for breakfast… We had some idlis, dosas, tea and coffee and were back on the roads in half hour’s time…

The drive was really awesome till Hassan. The weather, I would say, was on our side… It was slightly sunny with light showers once in a while... Drive to Hassan was really beautiful wherein you get to pass a lot of Sunflower and Marigold filled fields. Many a times we stopped to take couple of snaps and to gaze at the scenery.

The roads were really good (NH48) but the painful part was after Hassan. From Hassan, on the way to Belur, the roads were just horrible, to say the least. Belur & Halebidu are part of the world’s heritage sites but looking at the roads it just didn’t seem so. Well… crossing all the dumps, ditches and the craters on the roads, we managed to reach Belur safely and visited the famous “Chennakeshava Temple” built by King Vishnuvardhana from the Hoysala dynasty in the year 1116 AD. The temple is just so beautiful, filled with intricate sculptures and friezes. Oh!!! I must mention about this guide who took us through the sculptures… He was so obsessed with the temple and the sculptures and took about 40 mins to explain the whole structure of the temple to us. It was fun, hilarious & nevertheless informative to hear him speak in a very exquisite english language.

After spending about an hour there, we made our way to the main road and suddenly realized that Chickmagalur wasn’t far from there – it was just about 20 kms further. Sharath said “Sounds like a plan” and we just felt what he meant!!! It was just a little over 12 pm then and we changed our plans and headed straight to Chickmagalur for lunch at the Taj Garden Retreat!!! It was so unplanned and we managed to reach the place at around quarter past one...

The Taj Garden Retreat was a very enchanting and a beautiful place. It was so relaxing that we almost tempted ourselves to stay there for the entire afternoon but had to decide against it in the interest of time... PJ was keen on finishing lunch, having a massage and having a quiet swim in the pool, but that was not to be!!! We managed to finish lunch (the theme of the entire lunch at the hotel was, obviously, Independence Day!!!) by 3pm and resumed our journey back.

Fortunately for us, it had just rained and we could feel and smell the freshness of the earth and it was just so refreshing and relaxing…

We reached Halebidu at around 4 pm but none of us were all that interested in looking around the place. We got a description about the temple in Belur itself and the temple at Halebidu just looked like a replica of the Belur temple. So, we didn’t waste much time there and decided to just head on. The weather was just right for a cup of coffee / tea and so we helped ourselves with a cup of tea each for all the boyz and I had a cuppa coffee.

On the way back, we kind of lost our way and went somewhere into interior Hassan and wasted around half hour. We had to get back to the highway but just couldn’t seem to get it. However, finally we managed to reach the highway after asking for directions. Having covered nearly 4 places (I am including Hassan here as we nearly went around the town trying to get to the highway), we decided to head back to Bangalore and skip Sravanabelagola but after much speculation, we finally decided to go for it. All the way, we were trying to catch a glimpse of the world’s tallest monolith statue but just couldn’t. The detour from the highway was just 22 kms to & fro and since majority of us hadn’t been to the temple earlier, we had to see it since we were so near to it.

We reached the temple by 5.55pm and got to know that the temple closes by around 6 pm. Now that we were there, we just didn’t want to miss the opportunity to have a look at the Jain Saint Bahubali. We had to cover only 650 STEPS!!! Man… only I know how I managed to climb all those steps by taking regular breaks in between. We finally reached the top and just as our luck would have it, the temple was still open. Thank God!!!

Finally after giving our prayers and spending around 15 mins there, we walked back to the car after having a round of coconut water to quench our thirst.. We had 156 kms to cover and it was already close to 7pm.. Hats of to Sharath who covered the distance in 2 hrs flat and was all the time driving at 120 km/hr speed.. Phew!!!! Awesome stuff!!!

We reached bangalore by 9 pm, dropped off Sharath and Chinu at Sharath’s place and headed for PJ’s house where our car was parked. We finally reached home by 9.45 pm to get set to leave for office the next day...

This was the best Independence Day ever – covered 5 places and had a wonderful drive… What a drive it was!!!