Secrets of Shivagange

Well, How many of you googled "Trekking around Bengaluru" or "Weekend trek around Bengaluru" etc. I bet you "Shivagange" will be listed in all the pages you surf through. Let me take you through this place.

Shivagange is around 55km from Bengaluru and we can reach via road and train. Going through private vehicle is preferred as it is a bit far from Railway station and Bus Stand. If you want to reach through train, you can take a train from Majestic and get down in "Dobaspet". From there we need to take local transport like Auto or sometimes Bus. So it will take around 2-3h to reach from train(Including the journey from Dobaspet to Shivagange) and around 2h if we prefer own vehicle. But trust me, early morning Bike ride to this place will be awesome.

Since this place is quite near to my house, I have visited many times. The trek level is in-between Medium to Hard level. There are no dedicated parking slots, but they will take some entry fee to let us in. Apart from named as a Hotspot for trekkers, it is also known for its sacredness and as a religious place. There are many fascinating facts like:

1. Usually we know how to make ghee out of butter, but the specialty of this place is if we spread ghee on the idol(Shivalinga) after some time it will turn to butter.

2. The hill looks different in different views. If we look into it we can see as Shivalinga from one direction, Shiva Nandi from other direction, Lord Ganapathi from West and a huge snake from North.

3. The water found in the caves is identified as Ganga water(And hence the name) and there is also a old story that somebody offered their baby(placing it on banana leaf) to this river and it floated through the caves and somebody rescued it near Tumkur.

4. This one is a rumour - If we look into the old times where King Vishnuvardhana ruled this place, there was a dancer named "Shanthala". Due to some reasons she committed suicide by jumping from the tip of the hill. The crops which are grown in the spot where her dead body was identified still yields blood red in color.

Likewise every place has its own uniqueness, we just want to have patience to explore it !!

Moving ahead, there is a temple at the beginning of the trek and we can see sooo many monkeys ready to attack us and snatch out bananas or any snacks we hide 😁. Initial trek will be easy, we just have to climb some 250 steps till we reach "Olakallu thirtha". So basically this place is a dark cave inside which we can find a temple. There is a place inside it in which we need to put our hands inside a hole(Grinding store) and it is believed that whoever is pure can get holy Ganga water and whoever doesn't get it has committed sin 😆. Being hydrophobic I never even attempted putting my hands inside (Apart from this I also have a fear of what if somebody just pull my hand from inside 🙊).

Most of the people stops at this point usually. But the actual trek starts after this point. We may feel tired if we trek after 11am, so better plan it early in the morning. But not to worry, there will be many pitstop on the way. After 1.5km trek we can find two ways. One takes you to Nandi and other takes you to the tip of the trek.

The huge Nandi is made of a single rock and we can go around that statue. The thrill factor is we if we want to move around we have to walk on a single iron rod (back of the statue) and one miss step, you are gone.

So after seeing this we can reach the top which will be like around 500m. The view from the top will be awestruck and people like me(who are thin) gets a feeling that we may be blown off by the strong wind😄

Its a good place to relax, clear the mind and we can find many people visiting this place from different states. Since it is also a sacred place many families will be climbing to offer their prayers to Lord Shiva. I was astonished by the seeing few mothers who carried their child while trekking. Come on yar! I myself couldn't manage me climbing the hill top, took many breaks in between, but look at the power of these women!!