A Drive To DR Hills- Devarayana Durga Hills

 

A Drive To DR Hills- Devarayana Durga Hills

Like any other weekend plans we decided to go out on Saturday. So I checked from my friend for suggestions of some unexplored place which I had not visited. He told me that last week he had gone to DR Hills and the place is worth visiting.  So the 3 of us friend decided to make a trip to Devarayanadurga Hills .

This place is off Tumkur road and is a temple town surrounded by forests and hills and temples. Devarayanadurga means Fort of the God and is in the Tumkur district and is some 2 hours journey from Bangalore.

We set off Bangalore at 12 pm. The drive to tumkur road is beautiful with not much traffic on this road. Our journey consists of small stops in between, to click pictures, to take a restroom break and of course for lunch. Since we had left at 12 pm, we reached the1 highway by 1.30 so decided to break for lunch. We found a neat looking place Halli Oota where we had our lunch.

Once we take a deviation off the Tumkur road, the roads become curvy as we reach the hills and forests. The drive to the place is nice and roads are good.

On the way to the DR Hills we come across a beauty full pond. A perfect place for picnic. There was a little crowd but each one was maintaining the social distance. I think once can swim in this pond but did not see anyone doing that except getting their feet wet and taking pics. But I just loved the place. We spent some half an hour there enjoying at the banks of the pond and lying on the rocks

We reached the place by 4.30 pm. We need to go up to the hills in our car where one can park. From there we need to climb up the hills through steps. And yes, on the way up there are 2 deviations each one leading to 2 different temples

It has 2 temples on the top one of Yoga Narasimha and Bhoga Narasimha and lots of monkeys. One needs to be careful not to carry anything in hand for the fear of being snatched by the monkeys. Both the temples are open from 2pm to 5 pm. Since we were late, we had time to see only one temple, we took the road to Yoga Narasimha temple. There are fleet of steep steps up the top of the hill where the Yoga Narasimha temple is situated. After some 20-25 steps, we came across Hanuman temple. We bowed our head in prayers and proceeded further up the steps. Since the steps are steep, we had to stop in between to catch our breath. Finally, we reached the summit and the entrance of the Narasimha temple. The priest told us to hurry as the temple was about to close. We hurried inside. Inside is a beautiful idol of Lord Narasimha. We offered our prayers and came out of the temple to see the view from above. The view is mesmerizing from above of the hairpin roads engulfed by hills and forests. We sat there for few minutes and started down. On the way down is another temple of Hanuman next to a temple pond. We prayed there as well and came down. It was time to start back to Bangalore. The journey back was just as beautiful with the sun setting in the jungles. We across a small hillock where we stopped and thought of climbing as it looked so inviting. Most of the other people also were stopping for the same reasons there.

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We were getting late now. We climbed down and proceeded towards Bangalore. It took us some 2 hours to reach Bangalore. But glad we took the suggestion .