Living in Bangalore, the thought of driving is a nightmare. However what i am suggesting is not driving to mall or a crowded restaurant but suggesting an outskirts trip where one could breathe the fresh air and feel the History.
Having visited and lived in two countries other than the one i was born in and having visited many other countries has made me appreciate the history of India. If there is one thing I can take pride in being indian is the history of this country. Of course the citizens do not care for it as there is so much of living history around us that one is blase or uninterested in preserving it. Anyway that rant needs another blog post. This post though is to give you an idea for a short Sunday trip with bored kids to get a taste of Karnataka history.
Spending 5 years now in Bangalore, I find that there were many power houses in Bangalore's history. Out of this, I want to introduce you to three of these influences in Bangalore that I have learnt over my five years here. One is a lot of temples and architecture of surrounding areas come from vijayanagar kingdom, then there is a lot of Islamic architecture owing to Hyder Ali and Tippu sultan and then since British took over, we see delightful sights owing to the Victorian architecture like other major cities in India.
Today as our son was away on a short vacation visiting his grandparents, my husband and me decided to do an impromptu drive to Devanahalli Fort. This is a pretty short drive from the city and only around 10 kilometres from the airport. The fort according to history was built by Rana Gowda when escaping from Tamilnadu into the nandi hills area. As soon as you enter the fort, you feel like time has slowed down a bit. It's a lovely sleepy town with grazing cattle and a very malgudi days type of feel.
One can easily trek up the fort with young children. The fort seemed to have very thick walls and some very wide gaps in between unlike forts i have seen in Rajasthan(jodhpur and jaiselmer) or Maharasthra(Aurangabad). Usually these gaps are where soldier would shoot arrows from or place canons. One can easily also imagine the moot around the fort.
The history says that after Rana Gowda, it was taken over by various other kingdoms till it fell into the hands of Vijayanagar empire. At that point I suppose the beautiful venugopalaswamy temple was built. Once one enters the temple, there are many beautiful sculptures on the walls that remind me of Hoysala and Vijayanagar architecture. The gentle breeze and the calmness of the place put one into a spiritual zone. This was in spite of the fact that the main temple was closed. We only visited the outside of the temple and it was unbelievably beautiful.
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| Scenes on the outer walls |
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| The top probably a new edition but bottom is old. |
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| Is that Hanuman ? |
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| My favourite mythical animal the yaali. |
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| The Dwaja stambam |
After a while this town was taken over by Hyder Ali and then Tippu was born here. Again if you walk down the fort, you can see some very Islamic style pillars and you can almost picture the history and it's magical. Perhaps those pillars came in when the Islamic rulers took over??? One thing that struck me was also Tipu had a good relationship with the hindus in the region because the temple looks well preserved. So historically Bangalore had learned to coexist with different religions.
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| These pillars very Islamic. |
After this period the fort was seized by Lord Cornwallis as part of the Mysore war. I came back from the trip and read a little bit on the Mysore war. I remember having read about it in history but it was a vague memory. For those of you interested, check out
this.
Me the warrior! Check out the huge gaps. Can't an enemy enter?
In conclusion we have an accessible history lesson to people of all ages on short drive out of Bangalore. I would really recommend driving back through Devanahalli toward sathanur as one can see some lush green fields and plants growing on vines. This very rustic village scene and lovely drive made me very happy,calm and refreshed.
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