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India & Around

A day out in Kolar

With the heat begin­ning to get to every­one this sum­mer in Ban­ga­lore, I thought this would be a an appro­pri­ate visual for every­one. It’s such a nice feel­ing — to fall into the water, look­ing upwards and feel­ing the spray all around you… SPLASH!

Splash!

I frankly don’t even remem­ber the last time I did this… do you? The sheer plea­sure of this seem­ingly sim­ple act is quite dif­fi­cult to mea­sure. Or express in words.

We spot­ted a group of boys hav­ing a lot of fun in the water on a day trip to the town of Kolar. That’s the place you go in search of gold. Or at least it used to be. The Kolar Gold Fields (KGF) have since closed down so we couldn’t really go in search of our pot of gold after all.

The idea was to ride to Kolar in sleek horses, in full cow­boy (and cow­girl) attire and swing up to some poor unsus­pect­ing locals and say “Sona ke paas le jao!?” Okay, so this was all of course mostly in my vivid imag­i­na­tion. We took a Ford Fiesta instead.

Footfalls

Kolar is well-known for a few tem­ples steeped in his­tory and we headed to this one called the Kashi Vishvesh­wara tem­ple at Antar­gange. This is where water gushes out of a Nandi bull statue (where all the boys were hav­ing them­selves a frol­ick­ing good time) and streams through­out the year.

The water sup­pos­edly flows under­ground (from the Ganga — well there’s no way to prove oth­er­wise) and sprouts up on the earth here in South India. At this very spot — and there­fore the name — Antargange.

Lined up

Once the boys fin­ished their water games, they all sun them­selves while we roam around the small­ish stone tem­ple and area which houses the main lingam. The rocky hill­sides around this area are also good for trekking in case you’re feel­ing adven­tur­ous. Unless, it’s the peak of sum­mer when you’d be well advised to do what the boys did — take a dip instead.

Our next stop is the Koti Lingesh­wara tem­ple. For those who need a trans­la­tion, Koti is crore and linga refers to Shiva (linga). There are around 86 lakh lingams — not that I can imag­ine any­one actu­ally count­ing them — and the aim is to reach a crore. It will suf­fice to say that there were many more than can fit into your imag­i­na­tion (and mine, vivid as it is).

1, 2, 3, 4...

Rows and rows of them. Basi­cally, every­where you look around, there’s only one thing you will see. Lingams. The tallest one is around 108 feet tall accom­pa­nied by a large Nandi bull.

Peo­ple come in from far and wide to see this temple.

In case you’re inter­ested, Kolar has much his­tory — hav­ing gone through it’s share of bat­tles that ancient peo­ple indulged in at the drop of a hat. Actu­ally, we still haven’t been able to get rid of that habit. So the Cholas and Pallavas (remem­ber ancient his­tory) con­tributed their bit to the local scenery till the Vijayana­gara kings took over. After their fall, there were more feud­ing lords (really, what else would they do but feud?) try­ing to take control.

Then it came under the rule of Mysore Rajas. Hyder Ali Khan and Tippu Sul­tan. The lat­ter was ulti­mately defeated and the ter­ri­tory was then shared by the Mysore Rajas, Hyder­abad Nijam, Marathas & British­ers. This town came under the rule of Maharaja of Mysore and became the dis­trict head quar­ters. Krish­naraja Wode­yar was respon­si­ble get­ting the roads and rail­ways connected.

So that’s a brief his­tory of Kolar. The Kolar Gold Fields too has an inter­est­ing past. It was one of the major gold mines in India but was closed in 2003 due to reduc­ing deposits and increas­ing costs. The mine is con­sid­ered the world’s sec­ond deep­est gold mine and is sup­posed to have been mined for gold dur­ing the last 2000 years or so. We, of course, missed the bus.

In case you want to ven­ture out to Kolar, it is about 69 kms away from Ban­ga­lore on the Chennai-Bangalore National High­way No 4.

~~ My Kolar Album

Discussion

29 Responses to “A day out in Kolar”

  1. what a fab­u­lous shot, the first one!
    the sheer joy of get­ting wet and cool in the heat :)

    Posted by Charu | May 10, 2008, 9:53 am
  2. superb shot in action…

    Posted by abhijit | May 10, 2008, 10:22 am
  3. Very Nice Accout and Pics :)

    Posted by Anjali | May 10, 2008, 2:07 pm
  4. Its a beau­ti­ful photo… a per­fect shot…

    Posted by sathish | May 10, 2008, 6:52 pm
  5. saw the pic on flickr… i absolutely love it!! makes me want to jump into a pool of water as well…

    Posted by vri | May 11, 2008, 9:30 am
  6. Inter­est­ing. I hadn’t thought of Kolar as a drive des­ti­na­tion till now. I should see your blog more often! Oh, and the pics are as good as ever, of course :)

    Posted by Zubin Saigal | May 11, 2008, 12:08 pm
  7. We, of course, missed the bus.“
    –You’ve writ­ten a golden post about KGF :)

    Posted by Manasa | May 11, 2008, 10:06 pm
  8. @ charu: thanks! was nice to watch the boys hav­ing so much fun!

    @ abhi­jit: thanks!

    @ anjali: thanks!

    @ sathish: hey, thanks man. and are you back in ban­ga­lore? you seem to be trav­el­ling a lot these days :)

    @ vri: me too! if only i could find one some­where nearby!

    @ zoo: thanks! and yeah, you should visit more often ;)

    @ man­asa: thank you, that was a ‘golden’ com­ment too :-)

    Posted by Anita | May 11, 2008, 11:14 pm
  9. Yes, too much of travel these days… plan­ning on a week of travel to Goa in shoe string bud­get next month… plan is to cover Goa from south to north…

    Posted by Sathish | May 12, 2008, 8:30 am
  10. This brought back so many mem­o­ries. In the many years I was in col­lege (near Kolar) I vis­ited these places numer­ous times. Antar­ganga has a spe­cial place in my heart for I had some amaz­ing expe­ri­ences when I camped there.

    Thank you Anita for this won­der­ful visual treat.

    Posted by Kishore | May 13, 2008, 6:27 pm
  11. Anthara­gange, I thought was close to Tumkur some­how…
    Nice pictures…

    Posted by Srikanth | May 13, 2008, 8:47 pm
  12. Nice pho­to­graphic shots with neat expla­na­tion. Even though I stayed so close to Kolar (in Blore), I could never explore the place. I should visit Kolar some­time, when I get to BLore :-)

    Posted by Praveen GK | May 14, 2008, 9:38 am
  13. Hi, I wanted to refer to your blog in my blog which I am writ­ing about “How blog­ging, Online vis­i­bil­ity is going to help Out­sourc­ing and cre­ate more busi­ness.” I under­stand that the ques­tion would be why your Blog as it is totally dis­parate and yes that is the rea­son I wanted to high­light that there are enough indi­vid­u­als who have a pas­sion of shar­ing online and Blogs can be chan­nel­ized for pro­fes­sional growth and not just per­sonal net­work­ing or as a per­sonal chan­nel. I would post my blog under an inter­est­ing com­pe­ti­tion going on with a chance to win $1000 (http://www.limeexchange.com/contest/details/2). Is it going to be alright with you?

    Posted by Rajiv | May 14, 2008, 6:48 pm
  14. Had been to Kolar once, didn’t do any sight see­ing. Last time I cov­ered Chen­nai Ban­ga­lore by Bike I trav­elled via Hosur… Next time will travel via Old Madras Road and Kolar…

    Posted by Shrinidhi Hande | May 16, 2008, 9:36 am
  15. The first shot was exem­plary. Just got out the whole delhi heat out of me(anyways i was sit­ting under and ac)

    But nice writeup

    Regards,

    CA Ashish Ahuja, FCA
    Indian Char­tered Accoun­tant New Delhi India
    Indian Com­pany For­ma­tion Delhi India

    Posted by Ashish Ahuja | May 18, 2008, 3:21 pm
  16. @ Sathish: good, good! but goa in sum­mer! best of luck :)

    @ Kishore: you’re most welcome!

    @ Srikanth: thanks!

    @ Praveen GK: you should yes. it’s worth a visit!

    @ Rajiv: sure! do i get a treat if you win though? :)

    @ Shrinidhi: you should!

    @ Ashish: thanks! gosh, delhi. ban­ga­lore is bad enough!

    Posted by Anita | May 19, 2008, 10:22 am
  17. Nice post , came here from JK’s his­tory car­ni­val. Lot more of his­tory hid­den at Kolar , from the myth that its gold fields sprout from mayavi marichan’s golden deer mask , which even­tu­ally landed up at kolar after he was killed by Rama; the british bring­ing peo­ple from arcot to work in mines as locals were fear­ful of rak­shas of the depths , to the indian space research set­ting up a secret research base deep down the mines where they make inter­est­ing things like nuke crack­ers. :) well the last one was out of my imag­i­na­tion. who knows ?? there are some under­ground activ­ity hap­pen­ing at kolar from 1965 , prossi­bly the rea­son why its closed to public.

    Posted by Devanampiya Piyadasi | May 19, 2008, 4:39 pm
  18. @ devanampiya: thanks for all the his­tory! i am sure there’s a lot of hid­den facts that we don’t know about! very inter­est­ing, i must say…

    Posted by Anita | May 20, 2008, 7:52 pm
  19. Hi Anita, You really brought back to me my mem­o­ries of Kolar. I was born and brought up in Kolar — now retired and set­tled in Bom­bay. I remem­bered my child­hood days stand­ing under the water­fall from the Nandi bull’s mouth at Anthara­ganga. As a youth I have explored the 7 vil­lages on the Shatashringa Par­vata — the Anthara­ganga Hills are known as. When­ever I go down south I do make it a point to visit Kolar, though I do not have any rela­tions there! Thanks for your write up and the won­der­ful pics which made me go down mem­ory lane.

    Posted by Arthur J. Lewis | May 22, 2008, 6:00 pm
  20. @ arthur: that’s awe­some! i’m glad i could bring back some of those mem­o­ries for you!

    Posted by Anita | May 25, 2008, 8:50 pm
  21. I liked your blog

    Posted by Bharat | June 17, 2008, 4:20 pm
  22. Nice arti­cle, Great pics… Just for this I think I am gonna visit kolar today…
    Stay beautiful…

    Posted by Jithendra | June 20, 2008, 11:25 am
  23. Thanks for vis­it­ing my home town. Hope you enjoyed the glory of the lost city.

    Posted by Prasanna | July 11, 2008, 3:20 am
  24. nice infor­ma­tion photos

    Posted by vittal | August 14, 2008, 10:36 pm
  25. Nice Post..Very Nice pics too..One thing good about Kolar is that its very near to Ban­ga­lore, the drive is very smooth with the new high­way in place. I like the hilly land­scape just before Kolar!

    Posted by Abhijit Borah | August 12, 2011, 4:02 pm
  26. We had been to Kolar recently..
    Because of time con­straints missed few places. Plan­ning to visit again..

    http://relivingmyfavouritemoments.blogspot.com/2011/08/date-of-travel-nov-11–2010-mode-of.html

    Posted by Suma Ramesh | January 30, 2012, 7:42 pm

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. […] Anita makes a day trip to Kolar, where she vis­its a few inter­est­ing tem­ples, includ­ing one that has around around 86 lakh lingams. […]

    Kolar | DesiPundit - May 12, 2008
  2. […] On a trip to Kolar, the place where every­one used to go for gold, Anitha finds history. […]

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