Kunigal

After what seems like a long time, I finally decided to get back on traveling. On a nice Saturday morning (16th Oct) After Ayuda Pooja at home, I decided to take my car on a ride! My friend T joined me on this trip to Kunigal. As talked about earlier, I have this ambition of covering the length and breadth of every district in the State and compile my extensive research of tourist attraction. Having finished Kolar, it’s now time for another nearby district, so I picked Tumkur and Kunigal taluk seemed the easiest to complete. So on this day I set out on the expedition to complete the Taluk.

We left Bangalore at around 9:45 AM and reached Yediyur at around 12:15 PM after driving wrongly towards Tumkur and then returning to Nelamangla on the newly constructed toll way. Yediyur Sadhalingeshwara Temple is very known pilgrimage. The temple was crowded with people and vehicles as it was Ayooda Pooja. Villagers drove their bikes, cars, tractors, bull dozers to the temple and worshipped the machines that help them survive. In olden days Ayuda poojas where done to worship all the weapons used during war and now people continue this tradition to all the machineries used these days. I feel that the tractors and tillers suit best for this worship than cars and bikes as they help us in agriculture and support us in growing food and not just comfort like a car or bike does.

The temple mutt offers free food to devotees and the simple rice, sambhar, buttermilk and kheer was a perfect meal for us. After food we drove 5kms towards Markonahalli Dam. The dam is constructed on Simsha River and supports agriculture for villages around. It was built by Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV, the king of Mysore under the guidance of his Diwan, Sir M Visweswaraiah.


From here we drove to Kunigal town where we wanted to visit the Stud farm, initial built by Hyder Ali but now owned by Vijay Mallya. Unfortunately we were not allowed to enter the farm unless we had some permission from UB city but the security guard said during the month of Shravan, villagers are allowed to worship at the temple inside the farm, so we planned to return back next year during the month of Shravan.


We drove to the Village Lake called Dodda Kere and by its side Someshwara Temple.


We spoke to a villager regarding the prices of land around Kunigal and he was quite informative. After a walk around the lake and watching the villagers fishing, we drove back to Bangalore.