Picnic at Hesaraghatta Lake

Egged on by a “not so bad” response to the travel writings so far .. I have friends to thank for that.. and most importantly the detailed statistics that Google gives me about my page.. I must say that between the two, google takes the cake for weightage ... J

So here I am and a bolder me that now will try to revisit the trips that I have been on last year and refresh the memories. It is a challenge to feel the same way as when you are actually on the trip versus on the anniversary of the trip.. But I am going to make the attempt anyhow.

Here we go, so it was one of those weekends where a few friends have been discussing on where we should go for a picnic.

There were a few candidates and as you may have guessed from my style by now, I sort of bulldoze travel planning conversations.

A few options we considered were Bannerghatta National park, Bheemeswari, Mekkedattu, several small resort’ish places on Kanakapura road.

But the back of my mind I had Nrityagram set. So I had this hidden agenda in my mind to consider several and then by order of elimination pitch the idea of why Nrityagram is the best out of all.

Nrityagram is a dance village located in Hesaraghatta. It is a lovely setting surrounded by trees and if you are during visiting hours you can observe the dance classes. Now I am a dancer so you can guess why I would lean towards this.

I was searching up on how to plan this and then gave my itinerary idea (below) to the guys.. (My husband and a dear friend of ours)

We start early Sunday morning : 7ish

Stock some bread, cucumber and carrot and some salad spreads on Saturday.

Get to Hesaraghatta (Grasslands) by 8am Have a picnic breakfast.

Spend couple of hours.

Nrityagram opens at 10:00 am. We visit Nrityagram, spend an hour or so there and head back around lunch time

All counter proposals welcome….

First things first the last sentence was just a rhetoric, I wasn’t expecting any counter proposal J

So this was pretty much the skeletal plan .We agreed on the outline (well that was a no brainer duh!)

And this is how it turned out to be.

We also had another couple friend of ours with a daughter same age as ours join us.

We decided to start around 7 and meet midway. Now, our daughter is not a great fan of road trips. Her threshold is 5km and then she gets sick. But boy! She was so geared for it. With her eye only on the goal.

After a good deal of navigational issues (I had no part there!!), we arrived at the first stop. So this got added after the itinerary was planned. There is a peacock reserve park at Byalkere, close to Hesaraghatta and I promised my daughter she could go see peacocks. The woods are lovely, the walk pleasant in the morning and you are far removed from the city’s blaring. The kids had a lot of fun. Even though we didn't have any peacock sighting.

We spent around 45 mins and then back to the cars to hunt for a picnic spot. The original idea was Hesaraghatta grasslands as the picnic spot. We were driving and we could see a lake (not the lake we eventually went to) and there evolved the idea of picnic by the lake instead of the grasslands. Well, it was also influenced by the fact that we were pretty much lost and had no idea which way the grasslands were.

Guided by the locals, we arrived at a place where we could park the cars and the Hesaraghatta lake right in front of us. We found a nice spot to set up our picnic table and mats and settled down.

Hesaraghatta Lake is a man-made lake/reservoir, built across the Arkavathy river. The weather was lovely, clear sky, breeze by the water. And the grass so green. 

Hesaraghatta resservoir

Picnic spot - with meadowy grass

We settled down with our fancy picnic table (Courtesy to Anu and Ganesh our friends) and we had colonies of ants to keep us company through our breakfast. We made our sandwiches, from scratch. We played ball with the kids. 

Throwball... :) Literally

I got it!!

And thats how you play!!

UP, UP and up in the air

It was a lovely picnic and a great way to spend the Sunday morning. We wound up towards mid day 12ish when the kids started getting sleepy and headed back to the city. Yes, you notice we skipped Nrityagram. The calm at the picnic spot was so good to trade and we stayed back. That ones for another Sunday..

For those that would like to do something similar

·         If you want to follow the same itinerary : Here is the route : http://goo.gl/maps/j7yOl

o   This is from Jalahalli cross, Peenya. And the directions towards Hesaraghatta lake

o   What to do : Laze around, bird watching

·         Alternate : you can visit Nrityagram. They are open for visitors till noon. And breakfast/lunch at Taj kuteera :

o   http://www.nrityagram.org/

o   http://www.tajhotels.com/Leisure/Kuteeram,Bangalore/default.html

·         Our Native Village at Hessarghatta : This one’s an experience to savour, hopefully I get around to writing this.

o   http://www.ournativevillage.com/

o   What to do : Check in and enjoy the idyllic setting and relive the good old days.