Omkar Hills and Turahalli Forest – Morning booze 04/01/2015

Place: Omkar hills and Turahalli forest, Bangalore.

Distance: 20 x 2 = 40 km
Route: Mind Tree -> Omkar Hills -> Turahalli Forest -> Bangalore University -> Vijaynagar

Crew: Abdul, Arun, and Sagar (Myself)

Type: Sight Seeing

Ideal for: Omkar Hills – Friends & Family, Turahalli forest – Friends

Bikes: Bajaj Discover 125 and Honda Trigger 150
Budget: 50/Head

It’s my third visit to Omkar Hills and Turahalli Forest, I have covered every bit of the journey in my last post

Omkar Hills & Turahalli Forest: A perfect morning hence I am restricting description as short as possible.

Sri Dwadasha Jyotirlinga Temple

Brief about the places:

Omkar Hills:

2800 ft above sea level
Houses many temples, Sri Dwadasha Jyotirlinga Temple being the main attraction (the one in the above photo)
Sarvadharma Samanvaya Peetha which means seat of equality for all religions. Banyan tree surrounded by eight mini shrines of different religions.
Giant tower clock which is one of the biggest clocks in the world. Each hand of the clock weighing 40 kg.

Turahalli Forest: One of the few forest tracts near Bangalore, Turahalli, a dry, deciduous forest of 800 acres, is dominated by eucalyptus and other native shrubs. Its a destination for the Rock climbers and Birdwatchers. Its a reserved forest for Peacocks.

Sunday Morning: Left Abdul’s home at 5.45 am. His home is near to Mindtree, it took hardly 10 minutes ride to reach the Omkar Hills Temple. As we reached the omkar hills were none other than us as I expected. The temple opens at 8 am so we saw places around and left the place.

Sun hiding behind the clouds

Omkar Hills Temple Frontside

1200 kg Metal bronze Bell.
One of the heaviest bells in India

Asia’s Giant Tower Clock

Proof to the above caption

Temple Back view

Sarvadharma Samanvaya Peetha

The mighty banyan tree

Kaapi Katte: Another 5 mins ride to Kaapi Katte Hotel. Had really tasty Idli-Vada and Masala Dosa.

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Turahalli Forest: Drove 15 more minutes to Turahalli forest. There were 8+ cyclists from Basavanagudi and couple of people making a short movie. The calm place refreshed the old memories. We sat there enjoying the cold breeze. Though this time we couldn’t see any peacocks.

Entering the forest

Temple at the top

Top view of the forest

Police Trouble: Two constables came to the hill and asked us to leave as its unsafe place because of the past record of robberies. Even last time also we got a similar warning for coming to this forest. There were many visitors but still, I don’t know why its unsafe at day time. I agree its never good for sunset seeing or a weekday as there won’t be much people. Anyways as long as you are in group of 4+ it shouldn’t matter much.

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Also, read places around 50 kms from bangalore:

Art of Living International Center – 24 km [Ashram]

Pyramid valley – 37 kms [Meditation Centre]

Rasta Cafe – 45 kms [Hotel, Night out]

Shivaganga Hill – 50 kms [Temple, Trek]

Nijagal Betta, Tumkur – 52 kms [Trek]