Ex. garbage dump...

Once, this place used to produce 'Tanasi' - A cloth and tanasi used to get exported to Gulf from this place. Many writers referred this place by various names such as - Kukin Tana, Tana Mayambu and Shri Sthanak (derived from A Ganesha Temple). It is also known as 'City of Lakes'. This is a city of 'Thane' – its current name. In this city exists a small garden that I visited recently. The Dattaji Salvi Nature Park (named after former Shivsena leader) is located in Bara Bungla area of Kopri, Thane.

It is a joint venture of Thane Municipal Corporation and The Forest Department. I got a chance to visit this park through 'The Tree Appreciation walk'. These walks are arranged by a group of common people who are dedicated to spread awareness about trees in general public - an uncommon, commendable and noble job.

Clicked from entrance

As soon as I entered the garden there was feeling of calmness and peace that ran through my mind. I am sure that the silence and greenery of this place will refresh your mind too. This garden was created on a dumping yard. It was inaugurated in 2011 and and ever since then it is open for public. There are more than 300 plant species that are planted in this garden including ground covers, herbs, shrubs and trees. A mixture of natives and non-native plants can be seen here. Walls of this garden are made up of local rock of Konkan area - The Laterite. This adds to the beauty of the garden and calmness that you may feel after entering the garden. There are few more gardens in Mumbai city that were created on garbage dumps. Maharashtra Nature Park in Dharavi and BPT/Sagar Upavan in Colaba are two of them. 

Mumbai and Thane - two mega cities of our country do have a 'mega' problem of huge  garbage created every day (on an average 7025 metric tone per day in the city of Mumbai!!!) Do visit this link - http://www.mcgm.gov.in/irj/go/km/docs/documents/MCGM%20Department%20List/City%20Engineer/Deputy%20City%20Engineer%20(Planning%20and%20Design)/City%20Development%20Plan/Solid%20Waste%20Management.pdf

These cities have lack of open spaces, green spaces, clean & pure air but have ample amount garbage... It is really unfortunate that we are not able to minimize our waste. As a matter of fact it is increasing! There is no other animal that exists on earth have created such a mess! Generally, a naturally existing site is selected for a dump yard. When it reaches to its maximum carrying capacity it is converted into a garden. So, a natural patch (either of forest/grassland/mangrove etc.) is selected, dumped with garbage and then again converted in a man-made greenery/garden. There is no doubt that it is better to have green patch on such lands but, the main problem of garbage generation still continues stay there. As per my knowledge, the full proof solution for getting rid of garbage is yet to arrive. Hence, it is better to keep control on waste that we generate by knowingly/unknowingly using excess natural resources. It is not too hard to acquire this habit of minimizing waste. All we have to do is to relate each resource that is utilized to our mother earth; make a note of small changes that we can make in our life style (at personal level) that will benefit nature and act accordingly. As ultimately everything that we use has been sourced from nature.

Pathway

A mouse like!

Trekking – yet another thing that I am not fit for.  So when, a friend of mine invited me for a trek to Khanderi and Underi forts I was not sure about attending. But, then I was told that being Sea forts there won’t be much trekking involved. It will be an easy trek. It was easy indeed and that gave me some time to admire the biodiversity of the region. This is difficult in case of in medium and hard  level treks.

The name Underi is derived from – Mouselike (probably because of its small size and made up of black rock i.e. basalt) and Khanderi is derived from the God – Khanderaya.  Earlier they were also called as Hennery-Kennery.

Prior permission is required from maritime board to visit these forts. A better option is to join some trekking groups that take care of such permission. I went with Youth Hostel Association - India’s Mumbai Unit.

'Thal Jetty'

We started from Mumbai at 6.45am by private bus and it took us about four hours to reach the Thal jetty of Alibaug district. 'Thal' jetty was full of hustle bustle of fishermen and fisher-women. It was a huge tamarind tree that grabbed my attention. It was standing in the middle and looked very old. It has nice sitting area surrounding it which must be used by locals as common place for chitchatting. There on an electric wire above were sitting nearly 8 Drongos devouring the leftovers of fish catches. There was a huge pile gathered of varieties wasted dried fish (fish manure) and it was a ‘fishy feast’ time for Drongos. There were gulls too but they preferred to stay closer to the water (sea).

Getting in and out of boat at Underi

Underi Fort

A motor boat took us ahead from here to Underi fort first and then to Khanderi fort. Since there is no accessible jetty for this fort one has to jump on the boulders from the boat. The experts tried to maintain the minimum distance between fort and the boat. Underi is built up by making walls of huge quadrangular rocks kept on each other and gaps in between them filled up with smaller rock pieces. Almost no binding material used to hold them. It’s simply a matter of trigonometry and perfect timing while fixing/piling them together. This fort was built by Siddhis. The fort like many other forts in Maharashtra is in ruined state but, whatever is left is worth watching. Here again my attention was grabbed by a Fig tree first and then the fort. This fort has three fresh water tanks, few escape routes. Afterwards when I did some referencing it has cave with carvings and an underground prison that was used earlier. I didn't see any of these personally. There are few cannons scattered here and there.

Walls of the fort

Cannon @ Underi

Arch. No packing material can be seen

Fig tree

Khanderi fort was built by Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. It is now re named as Kanhoji Angre Island. Kanhoji was a Naval Chief in Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj's time. Khanderi has a light house that was built by East india Company in 1867. (Ref.:  https://books.google.co.in/books?id=k59aVCIlFB8C&pg=PA53&lpg=PA53&dq=Khanderi+underi+name+derived+from&source=bl&ots=VOLmVOmDgw&sig=KMfckmKnbfjLcyA3n9d7ScmC4ww&hl=en&sa=X&ei=fzwAVfalLMTHmAWT7IDYCQ&ved=0CEUQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=khanderi%20light%20house&f=false)

Before visiting the lighthouse we saw a huge rock (probably basalt) giving out a metallic sound when hit by another small piece of rock. It could be because of metal content or it may be having some pores. But, I really don’t know if basalt shows such characters. I will be glad if someone could explain it to me. This fort campus also has few temples with ‘Vetal’ being the most famous and still in worship by fishermen of nearby areas. This fort also has a Christian Cross ad Buddha temple. There are many cannons scattered like that in Underi fort. Three of them are with the carriage. There is a grain storage area too. There was a pair of kestrel flying in the sky, few trees of Indian Jojobe and grass species. One should not expect a great variety from such places but, one must visit these places at least once.

Lighthouse

Cannon @ Khanderi fort

Few more scattered

There are two things that one would notice strongly immediately after entering these forts. First is huge amount of garbage scattered all over including thermocol, plastic plates and to make it worse the beer bottles. The second thing is - useless names marked on rocks. These “souvenirs” must have originated from the visitors who come here to “admire” the beauty of the area. These hopeless habits are ruining the discipline of the forts. A visit to such places should help in making the visitor a better disciplined human being and not to show how bad a human can be. There are lots of things going around in having ‘Chhatrapati Shinaji’s' statue in the sea but what’s the point in having/supporting Chhatrapati’s statue anywhere in the sea when we cannot maintain the dignity of his history? Cleaning and maintaining his forts will be a better tribute to this great hero. Think about it…

Contribution of 'Civilized' people

Some more contribution

Thank you for reading

Hampi hopping

One should give three full days for Hampi main sight visits whereas the badami; patadakkal and Aihole will require at least two full days to cover all the main sights. And… we tried covering all these in three days. Which we managed to achieve to a fare extend. Still it is advisable to keep five/six days for covering these places. There is so much to see and to understand from these places that if you are really interested in it then even 10 days will not be enough for you. Understanding the history, mythology, architecture is not my cup of tea (just like many other subjectsJ). I will probably be the last person who can give any reference or suggestions when it comes to any of these topics. But, I was surprised to know that I was actually interested in visiting Archeological site Hampi – one of the World heritage Site in North Karnataka. The monuments here have both historical and mythological connections. My interest in this could be because in earlier days people used to understand the importance of nature and accordingly the designed their life style. The structure of buildings was in line with the local weather and nature. This understanding is getting lesser day by day. Now days we are trying to control the surroundings as per our needs without even thinking about how it is going to impact on nature and ultimately on us.

Few things are shared here about our visit. Since I am not a right a person to give details on these monuments if you are interested in getting more knowledge on history of hampi then please visit - http://hampi.in/history-of-vijayanagara.

Hampi calling clicked at Bangalore Cant

painting @ bengalore station

painting @ bengalore station

It was last week of February, 2015 - a morning of a very first day after I left my job and I was packing for my trip to Hampi. Our journey plan - catch the flight for Bangalore then the train from Bangalore cant to Hospet (overnight journey) and then reach Hampi by road which is about 45 minutes driving distance from Hospet. And we (me and my 2 friends) managed to reach Hospet station by 9am next day. State transport bus facility is available from Hospet station. There are buses that take you from station to hospet bus stand; from there you can get another bus for Hampi. We spent Rs. 78/- for Hospet station to Hampi for three of us. Our homestay in Hampi was at walking distance from the bus stand. If you are interested in staying hotels then there are options available in Kamalapur and Hospet itself. Since, our next concern along with time was ‘save money’ we decided to opt for home stays that give you affordable, nice, safe, friendly and clean accommodation. Owner of ‘homestay – Mayuram’ Mr. Ravi was very helpful throughout the visit. Only thing was rooms were not provided with drinking water. But, one can get it filled from nearby restaurants. Mineral water is available in nearby shops but we prefer local water whenever out on camps/journey. Mr. Ravi suggested some good breakfast joints which indeed turned out to be very good. We were looking for local cuisine of Hampi and got ‘appams’ and coffee for breakfast. Locals here serve foreign cuisine more because there are lots of foreign visitors.  It was quite unfortunate that the options for local cuisine were very few.

underground shiva temple

underground shiva temple

underground shiva temple

underground shiva temple

Agama

Day 1 - We started our sightseeing on foot at around 10am.  The sun was marking its presence more generously. We decided to go straight till the sister’s stone and cover the monuments that are located after it so, first we landed into ‘The Underground shiva temple’ also called as ‘Prasanna Virupaksha’. My attention was captured by an agama probably a Peninsular rock agama. I managed to click some photographs. But, then one gentleman approached to us with curiosity of what we were looking at and then he tried getting closer to the agama to have a better look and as expected it ran away for its life. (this gentleman for no reason, informed us that he is from US; can go near 'that creature'; and there wont be any problem for agama. But, it seems agama didn't care about both Indian and Americans).  So, we shifted focus to main aim – the temple. Earlier, the temple was half buried due some calamities and now it has been excavated. It holds water in area surrounding the shrine. There was huge Nandi statue kept at the corner of the outer mandapa. This temple like many other temples is not in worship. As many of them, are either ruined naturally or by the other emperors who did not believe in the religion existing that time. The ‘water walk’ turned out to be a pleasant surprise after roaming under harsh sun. This water had some fishes and tadpoles. I tried to capture the picture of shivling for which I used flash and few insectivorous bats flew out of the main shrine which was in dark. I didn't disturb them afterwards. (Please note: I cannot stop myself from looking for biodiversity of the area doesn’t matter where I am standing). A friend of mine who is a history post graduate gave information on stone carvings, sculptures and paintings etc of all the monuments we visited. It was indeed a very hard work those people did in earlier days when there was lack of modern technology. The use of local stone with correct use of direction sense kept the interior of structures cooler than outer side, use of window pannels in such way that enough sunlight enters the outer area of the shrine, storing rain water, making water channels in such a way that water reaches all parts of the town and gets stored properly are few examples of how well learned they were about the use of natural resources. Their observation power was fantastic too. One can see the sculptures of various biological forms carved neatly along with the historical and mythological characters. These can be seen all over the place. They knew that documentation was important too. The inscriptions on many walls of various temples were proof of the same. We found these on Hazara Rama temple first and later at many places.

rain water harvesting@hazara rama

On day one we managed to visit on foot - underground shiva temple, masjid like structure near watch tower, nobleman’s quarter, hazarama temple, zenana enclosure, royal enclosure. Then at around 4 O’clock in the evening we reached Queen’s bath. We were about to enter the premises and we saw an empty auto coming in our direction. We asked him if he could take us to the vittala temple, malyavanta hills, pattabhirama temple and drop us at Hampi? He agreed. He took Rs. 350/- for all this. We went to ‘Pattabhirama‘ temple first and it was simply beautiful. There was no one else in the premises. So, we took a lot of time in exploring every inch and corner of it. By the time we reached ‘Vittala’ temple complex they closed the entry for the same. It was 5.45pm. So we went to ‘malyavanta’ hills. It is a sunset point. Here too we reached after sunset. Since, our aim was not to see the sunset we were fine with it. This place has lots of shivalings carved one after the other in two rows on a huge stone on top of the hill. These rows were separated by a deep notch bearing water. The evening wind was soothing.

Inscription @ hazararama

near masjid

lotus mahal

rock gecko

Hathi shala band stand

lotus mahal

hunting scene in royal chambers

step well. canal system

rows of shivlings @ malyavanta hill

In night we continued our search for local food. We came across one hall that was serving food on banana leaf. At first we thought we found one food joint the way we wanted but, I sensed something wrong. There were few people standing outside. We inquired about the things happening inside. It was a ritual being carried out after losing person in the family. We apologized and went into the restaurant that served us general food.

Journey to aihole patadakkal and badami

Aihole temple complex

Aihole temple complex

Aihole temple complex carvings

Aihole temple complex carvings

Next day we kept for Aihole, Patadakkal and Badami visit. We started at 6.30 in the morning in a hired vehicle. After having breakfast at Hospet we went to Aihole. Maximum journey was on highway with nothing much interesting to look around. Aihole has a temple complex. The structures and carvings of temples were somewhat similar to that of Hampi. After finishing the regular sight we saw one board of ‘Stone carved Shiva temple’. While we were on our way our driver- Pampapati mentioned that he has never been to this temple.

Patadakkal temple complex

I really wonder why people don’t visit this. It is a small place but the very first cave temple I saw in the journey so far. There is a sculpture of ‘Shiva performing 'Tandav’ in one side of the cave. Then we visited Aihole fort which is one the way to Patadakkal. The climb to the fort passes through residential area. It belonged to particular tribe. Their clothing was different to Karnataka one... More like Maharashtrians. Many of them keep their animals in their houses. After Patadakkal that has similar monuments we went to Badami. It has cave temples. Caves here still show the some remains of paintings

Shiva cave temple

on the roof and walls. My friend said they used vegetable colours in those days.  These caves are in three stages. Pampa savovar can be seen from these caves. There are few temples surrounding it we tried covering maximum we could. We only missed one Shiva temple which was on higher elevation We covered three forth of the way and saw watchmen returning down after closing that temple as it was nearing six in the evening. The official time to close this temple was 6pm but they closed it at 5.30pm and hence there was no point in moving further. We returned back. It was 9pm when we returned to Hampi

Badami pics

Anjaneya Hill

Statue of Krishnadevaraya

sugriva cave

The last day was kept for remaining Hampi monument visit. We decided to cover other side of the Tungabhadra river first. We started our day at 6am with ‘Korakkal’ ride. It was too short (about 5 minutes) but memorable and expensive too (Rs. 200/- since we booked it for early morning. Otherwise it starts from 8 am and the charge is Rs.20/- per person). After crossing we walked for a while and then found one auto he charged a lot (Rs.600/-) to show all the places. Since we had no other option we went ahead with it. First we went to Anjaneya hill - a birth place of Hanuman.  It is a sunrise point too. However, we saw the sunrise while climbing the hill. There are more than 500 steps to climb and once you are on top of it, it gives nice views of North Karnataka’s topography (boulders).

We wanted to see Krishnadevaraya’s Palace. But, it is closed for visitors. One can't go inside. Some renovation was going on. The palace / house was so simple (no beautiful carvings on it) that a thought came to mind – ‘He must be very humble and simple human being and probably down to earth as well’. (please note it is just my feeling. I don't know the reality). Then we visited sugriva cave. Here I tried to explain to my friend about the mythological story of rama, hanumana, bali, sugriva etc. but, then I realized that my knowledge was little more than zero. Hence stopped from going further with the story and advised her to Google it. We returned to Hampi in motor boat. It was 9.15am when we reached back to the home stay.

Gejjala mandapa on the way to Vittala temple if you go on foot

Bhojana shala

Bhima statue at bhima's gate

After taking rest for few minutes, we started exploring this side of the river where we stayed. There were many things that we did not see on day one. The Vittala temple premise is worth visiting. The best sculptures can be seen here. Then we went to hemkuta hill, sasivekalu ganesha, ugra narasimha, matanga hill, virupaksha temple etc. We saw bhima’s gate and

Pushkarni on the way to vittala temple

 bhojana shala on the way. My friend was not really keen on visiting matanga hill, but ultimately agreed. And it was again worth visiting. The path goes through the boulders. We got a nice aerial view of entire Hampi and were really happy that we could cover so much. We thanked our driver – Pampa for giving us the encouragement to climb. We returned back by 4.30pm after covering 95% of our listed monuments. Thanks to the book that my friend was carrying with her about Hampi and badami. It helped a lot in searching the sculptures and identifying the temples as we did not hire any guide anywhere. Certainly hiring a guide will always give you detailed information but, we waned to explore it with our own vision.
Vittala temple complex

inscription @ vittala temple

Achyutaraya temple

achyutraya temple

Ugra narasimha

Monolith shivling

cavings of climber @ krishna temple

View from matanga hill hampi bazar

Achyutraya temple from Matanga hill

Virupaksha temple

200 years old paintings

Dhol hanged in Virupaksha temple

Random pics

Bhima's gate

window panes

Goa beach

Before leaving Hampi we made a plan to re-visit this place again with at least 8 days in hand.

Our bus to Goa was at 6.30pm. It dropped us at panjim bus stand by 5.30am. We visited nearby places in Goa since, we had some time in hand before we catch the train (2pm) for Mumbai. This train was supposed to reach Mumbai at 11pm but, there was some problem with railway lines due to off-season rain. Hence we reached Mumbai on 5am next day.

That's all about our Hopping :)

Us