Jayamangali Blackbuck Reserve

Jayamanagali blackbuck reserve is located at Tumkur district and is around 3 hours drive from Bangalore. What is the first thing which comes to your mind when you hear blackbuck? For few of my friends the answer was Salman Khan.😂

We had started early and reached this place by around 6.45 AM, the right time to watch a sunrise. The drive inside the reserve is offroad. The roads do not have any tar. We spotted couple of blackbucks. They were quite shy about us. We had to switch off the songs and went really slow to spot them.

One thing we missed about the place is we were not sure of what to expect there. So please take the deviations in the road and explore the place. The buildings in the place are under repair when we reached there. Hope it won't be like this for a long time.

Penukonda Fort

Penukonda is small town in the Ananthpur district of Andhra. I had noticed this place when I had gone to Gandikota and wanted to check this place. Later when I read a travelgoue in which the author has visited this place I also wanted to visit here.

And this place has come into my radar multiple times. I learned that the rulers of Hampi had taken Penukonda as their capital after the fall of Hampi. All this together made me check this place.

But today the current state of the place is real sad. The place has lot of tourism values but is left uncared for. And the shocking news was when we enquired the locals about the spots to visit. Almost all the people we enquired mentioned there is nothing to see here. Gagan mahal was locked and we entered few fort walls to explore the place. We were only welcomed with cold stares by people around us.

Gingee fort

This trip was one of the CouchSurfing community event. You can find the details of the event here.

Gingee fort was on my bucket list from the time I heard about it in 2010. It has taken eight years to remove it from my todo list.

When I found the event on couch surfing, I wanted to try it for sure. It was a nice chance to meet new people and know a lot about their travels. But I was also bit hesitant to drive with a couple of strangers. But anyway the travel turned up real good.

So the plan was to leave Bengaluru as early as possible and reach Gingee fort by 9 when they open the gates. It gets really hotter in this area, so the earlier we go its better.

I started from my home at around 2 in the morning and picked up two folks on the way to our meeting point at Ecity. It was a bit strange to get a stranger into the car late in night. But Ravi filled me with his travel stories and within few minutes we got accustomed to each other.

We had to wait for few more folks to join us in the meeting spot. Once everyone arrived, we started from Bangalore in 3 cars.

Once we hit the smaller bad road towards Tiruvanamali, we were surrounded by fog all around. Visibility had come down to less than a metre. Driving in this weather was a group activity with all the persons in the car looking out for turns in the road, potholes and vehicles coming in the opposite direction.

This road was an embarassment for me as one of the friend in the trip was just saying about how good Tamil Nadu roads were and I had to take her in this road.

Each person in the trip had their own favorite stories to tell. One interesting story was by a guy who had backpacked around Kanyakumari. It was interesting to see places you are so familiar with through a different set of eyes.

A small pit stop near a lake

We made an unplanned stop at Tiruvanamalai temple. The temple town was waking up for the day. We had breakfast in Tiruvanamalai and started to Gingee fort.

The sun had already risen and the temperature was reaching its day time peak when we started the climb. Gingee is a group of hill locks typical of the deccan plateau.