Kotegudda had been on my 'To visit' list for years. I
don't know much about this place and any traveling friends who had
known this place. This fort sandwiched between Hariharapura and Koppa which
provides a stunningly beautiful, wild, concentrated version of the whole of
this area: verdant highlands, jungle-smothered lowlands, emerald-green lakes -
and of course, its ancient ruins and the enigma surrounding them.
I have long fancied myself as a bit of an archaeology
enthusiast but never done anything about it. These days, I find I'm very
enthusiastic about the idea that there are still extraordinary forts buried
beneath the earth, the solution presents itself in a one-day trip to
visit Hariharapura's most important ruins, bedding down along the way in rustic
Chikmagalore.
Generally these are not as large or impressive as the
public sites, and many have been severely damaged by looters, the
vast thick jungle it looks more like a place where some royal remains have
least neglected ever but as a general rule, the harder a site is to get
to the better its condition will be, and there exist some pretty spectacular
ruins in the dark recessed of Hariharapura’s wilderness areas.
To visit this fort takes a whole day our little group
headed to this place on last weekend, we left our car at village, and we set
off up a narrow footpath with jungle then vast shapes come looming out of the
trees after 1-2 kilometers walk we find 2-3 small houses and we find one local
person who had willing to join us.
Under
the grass and weeds, the fort is stepped proceeding to the hillside walk,
intermittent rain turned to hard most of us were very exhausted and every one
of us were completely drenched in rain, it had started raining pretty hard so the
camera stayed in the bag for first few hours.
No
guidebook mentions this place. Nobody comes. The fort was built
on a hill which is fortified by a deep valley clothed with dense forest. Climbing
up a short steep incline, we dodge around the twisting roots of a dense Jungle and
the only sound apart from our own voices is the birds in the forest canopy and
that push our way through into the first entrance of the ruined fort. There was
once a doom here, but the roof has long since collapsed under the weight of
jungle vegetation. Some of the ancient plaster work appears to be intact.
Eventually
we land and trek through pasture to the top of a small rise. Mosquitoes and Leeches
begin to feast. At the summit I wander among the clusters of ruined buildings,
and I stopped at one of them: a collection of few residential buildings and a
completely collapsed temple premise.
I
sit down and absorb the beauty of the scene, the late afternoon sunlight
spreading a golden hue over the site of this lost land. The wind is pure and
eerie, beautiful birds sing and one particular one around the fort, I used to
follow its call as it moved from top to the valley below. There's two huge
Lakes carved into two different locations one at summit I clamber down a steep
stairwell to the gloriously peaceful lake and another vast lake at western
downer end.
Caecilian- When we
walking towards forest my friend Sunil Kamath encountered two headed snake its tail is very
blunt and shaped like the head! When threatened, Caecilians will hide its head
and hold its tail up in the air and wave it back and forth! Commonly it is
called "Two headed snake". The Western Ghats
are home to several species of Caecilians (Gymnophiona). Caecilians are
legless, burrowing amphibians which mostly live in leaf litter, loose soil,
under rocks and decaying logs.
It is getting endangered in India. Poachers lure common people
that if they capture it, they will give up to one lakh. There are many rumors
that the snake uses a head for 6 months and the other head for another six months.
This snake indeed has medicinal values. When attacked, it lifts up its tail and
predators attack its tail thinking that it is its head. This is a superb
camouflage.
Most
people believe them to have two heads probably because the tail looks very
similar to its head. The body is elongated and smooth with a slimy skin. The
smaller Caecilians superficially resemble earthworms while the larger ones are
often mistaken for snakes. However, they can be told apart from earthworms by
the presence of eyes, teeth and skeleton and from snakes by the lack of scales
on skin. The eyes in Caecilians are not well developed which is most likely to
be because of their burrowing life style. They are considered as rare which is
apparently due to their subterranean habits. To see them one has to search
carefully (usually by digging) and be at the right place and at the right time.
The Western Ghats of India are one of the global biodiversity
hotspots, and a center of Caecilian diversity. Of the 26 described species of
Caecilians from India,
25 are endemic. From distributional records it is apparent that the hot spot of
known Caecilian diversity in India
is the Western Ghats. Of the 20 currently
recognized Western Ghats species, most are
known from the southern part of the range, including seven species endemic to
this area.
It rained pretty hard but as we came back down on very
slippery slopes the sky began to clear and we had some impressive views out off
the ridge. The light was fantastic. It has a sense-of-time by its ruined
structures, the faces of its walls that seem to grow out of its ground,
standing silently and watching – as the jungle and stone continue to play
their unspoken life together.
Accidentally last year found a huge Cave inside the foothill
by local villagers and our guide said it can be reach only after December so we
kept it for our next visit. The entire experience is very nearly what I want, a
ruined fort deep in the jungle, is itself a mystery.
