Kavaledurga, The impregnable Forthill

Bhuvanagiri Durga (Kavaledurga) - The impregnable fort.

Kavaledurga is a beautiful place which i have visited many times, going through my old photos I thought this place needs to be highlighted and an article written on it.

Kavaledurga is a magnificent fort located on a hill at an attitude of 1541meters. Among the many forts of Karnataka, one that cannot be missed is Kavaledurga in Shimoga district.There are interesting stories and fables tagging this fort many temples of various deities. According to Hindu legends, this place is called as Parashuram Kshetra and was famous in Krita Yuga. In Treta yuga sage Agastya and Valmiki had stayed here. In Dvapara Yuga there are legends which tells that the Pandavas had stayed at this place for a while. Bhuvanagiri durga is also mentioned in the Skanda Purana by the name Kavya vana and Kapila durga.

A large fort was constructed at Kavaledurga around 9th century ad, which boasts of beautiful architecture & great construction plans at that time. This fort lying amid the green mountain ranges. This fort is around 8 Km in circumference and had fort walls which were 30 to 40 foot with watch towers at selected spots. This fort had 2 types of defenses with 2 line of fortification surrounding the village beneath the fort and 5 line of fortification surrounding the fort. The village fortification is no more but can be seen at few selected spots.

This Fort is ruined to a large extent and what remain are two fortresses and the Mylaareshwara shrine. There were 15 temples of which only three temples are visible today are Sri Lakshmi Narayana, Kashi Vishwanatha and Shikareshwara  The remains of the ones splendid and magnificent royal palace with Darbar hall takes us back to past. We can also see the remains of the Jail, Ammunition house, swimming pools, Ghalige Battalu (An ancient copper pot used for time measuring before the arrival of modern clocks and watches) and the Royal horse and elephant stable.

From the image of ‘Nagadevathe’ it shows some treasures were hidden still we can see this in one temple wall.

We can see Islamic style doorway in Kashi Vishwanatha Temple. Original doorway may changed into Islamic style during Hyder period.

The uniqueness of Vishwanatha temple is that there we can sight two stone pillars in front of this temple. Normally we cant find such things in other South India temples.

Our Team visiting Lakshminarayana Temple .The Lakshminarayana Temple on the top of a huge rock in the fort premises still remains strong. As you move on, you can come across the ruins of Darbar Hall and Queen's private swimming pool.
One time this empire also very colorfully and wealthy like this photo which captured from one of the beautiful pond on this fort. This fort has 7 lakes and is always full with water till date even in summer. Rain harvesting technology was used by which all the water accumulated used to flow from the top of the fort to the bottom through a specially constructed water channel. Even the natural water flowing from the mountains through the dense forest was made to flow through the water channel into the lakes. Even today the water flows from one lake to another through the underground channel and gets accumulated into the big lake below the fort hill and from here it again flows through a channel through the village and joins another big Manmade lake, Thimmarasa Nayaka na Kere.

Ruined Palace view on the way to hill top.

History- A small fort was constructed at Kavaledurga, near Thirthahalli at around 9th century AD. The king of Belagutti, Cheluvarangappa strengthened this fort in the 14th century. Later on the fort was in possession of Tholaytama and Mundige brothers and was called a Kauledurga as it was situated near Kauli village. This fort was later on acquired by Hiriya Venkatappa Nayaka a Keladi king in the 16th century and he constructed seven battlements to protect this fort and renamed it as Bhuvanagiri Durga. This place was annexed by Hyder Ali in 1763. This place was later called as Kavaledurga and is still know by that name. There is a folklore that as Hyder Ali had left a group of soldiers to take care of the fort and they were called as Kavalu dararu in the native language and thus the name Kavalu Durga gave raise to Kavaledurga. This place was later made a Taluk headquarters and continued to be one till 1882. Later on the taluk HQ was shifted to Thirtharajpur or the present day Thirthahalli in Shimoga District.

As you keep on exploring the once glorious place, you come across a small cave-like structure in which you can find fresh water throughout the year.This is called as "Gadaa Theertha" because it was supposed to be dug by Bheema's Gadaa (of Mahabharata fame). There are one or two small ponds formed out of rocks in the fort premises. If you are a good explorer, you can also find a statue of "Aadhishesha" (the divine serpent) on the way. There is another place called "Tupaaki Buruju" which probably means that this part of the fort was meant for ammunition and guns, as "Tupaaki" means "cannon" and "Buruju" is a fort. 

The view of the Western Ghats and the Varahi and Chakra rivers are mesmerizing, recently our archaeology departments too have taken the initiative and some interest in rebuilding the fort and preserving our heritage sites, there are interesting stories and fables tagging this fort many temples of various deities can also be seen here. Many sages who have done hard penance in these hills have left a great positive energy. 

Varahi back water beautiful view from top.

 For more details about this place kindly refer this link- 'Kavaledurga Histry' in Kannada.

Valikunja (Ajjikunja)

Valikunja

The hills beacon us like we belong there in its lap one more trek organised by Mangalore YHA this weekend to ‘Valikunja’ near Kudremukha national park situated 1039m above the sea level.

As per our plans everyone reached Andaru village late evening & Ramesh Kamath sir’s local friend arranged for very tasty food & shelter at a local school. Sudeer from our group took initiative to arrange program & take responsibility to get permission from Kudremukh National Park department.

We started our journey through one mud jeep track; we went on slowly on this long, winding, steep road in the middle of thick tropical forest. Forest guide told us that this road was constructed long back when the Government wanted to estimate the proposition of Uranium some rare earths (Bangargudda) on this mountain range. Might be they found that it won’t be profitable to undertake mining Uranium here or might they didn’t find anything here, they abandoned the project and hence Valikunja was saved from devastation.

Dense forest completely covered this mountain and we had to climb 9.5kms non-stop up in this jungle. High moisture content in this weather almost all the animals found in these forests of South India could be seen here also. Deer, tiger, leopard, wild pig, sheep, fox, wolf, monkey, variety of snakes are the common animals found in these forests. Even we saw Elephant & Bear mud’s in several places; the varieties of birds are also seen here. We took sufficient water from one small stream before entering the open place.

After that we came to an open place where we could see grassland. Wherever we see it was full of lush greenery & mountains were really amazing. There was cool fresh breeze. This is a typical feature of Shola tropical forests, which characterize the Western Ghats of India. Grasslands cover the peak even though the whole mountain is covered by dense forest. We rushed towards grasslands like mad.

Next 6kms tough walk in open grassland was pleasant last stretch to the peak was a little dangerous with slippery rocks we reached the peak. The clouds were slowly uncovering the mountains and the view was splendid.

Really it was excellent experience we should thank for last night rain which had on this place & also cloudy atmosphere. Otherwise it would have been little difficult ,a slight drizzle had started by the time we descended totally exhausted walking around 30kms at a stretch it was one kind of an experience where body mind soul all are strengthened to give a living experience.

Pancharbi and Kela Arbi Waterfalls

Last trek when we visited DanaGundi waterfalls we had planned to go to this place, but the locals over there suggested it would be better if we went after rainy season as it's located in dense forest, so we decided December would be the right month to visit this place.

One early Sunday morning we decided to go to this place on our bikes we left early in the morning, with a wonderful pleasant weather our bike ride was very nice highly energetic and fully charged we reached the village Mala after a tough trek on mud road a hard track we reached an estate we parked our bikes near the estate and started our trek.

We saw many small streams as rainy season had made it's mark a wonderful stream on the way and we followed the brook walking in streams can be extremely wonderful but very dangerous too since rocks are very slippery and a single neglected step could land any one in big injury and once in such a dense forest getting help is a dream.

Further down the stream wading through it with great difficulty lot of confusion we reached bottom of Pancharbi falls. It was a beautiful fall which falls from 100ft water was extremely cold and nobody was ready for a bath, we had our breakfast relaxed enjoying kamath sir's banter near the beautiful cascading waterfall, some of us decided to go up the fall though there was no way we some how managed to make one and reached the place WOW! What a splendid view we had from the top.

We returned to the village & finished our lunch at a local hotel after that roamed around few places surrounding ‘Mala’ village.

By evening we reached Kodange Mala village, our teammate Sudheer had heard some unknown waterfalls nearby so we decided to go there we managed to locate the falls and spent rest of the day there, Manjaltar River created a cascading beautiful falls called “Kera Arbi (SirikalaGundi)”between two rocks.

We had some kind of adventure going up the falls & to another side of the falls and enjoyed our fete, altogether we had a wonderful time a very enjoyable weekend trip to remember.