In Peace

Its been like over 2 months that i vanished from my blog.. Got into a hectic workzone . i know it is upto us to prioritize and take control.. and and ...
Well kind of the first phase of this hectic schedule has got over and hence decided to go to kollur to visit the mookambika temple which I have been doing from last year.
We reached there 8 am in the morning and then went to visit the temple. finised the Dharshan and then went to see Sowparnika river and the shankar ashrama. We were then looking around the hills that was covered with fog and commented on the beauty. The auto guy who was taking us around heard us and mentioned of the place kodachaadri that was just 40 kms from there.
I knew of the place but did not know it was so close by. We decided to take the trip as our bus was only in the night. There are jeeps around, who take you to this spot. These jeeps needs a minimum 8 people to make this trip and this being the off season getting 4 more people was looking difficult...atleast the wait was longer. We decided to book the whole jeep and start. George was our driver. The first 25kms was zooming and then came a track which said

Kodachaadri - right------>>> - 15 kms.

We just thought it would be as zoomy and had no clue what was in store for us. The Drive was just amazing... coz simply there was no road.. just rough tracks and in all the years, there is no attempt to even tar it. It is as simple. This zone is the reserved forest area covering 4400 acres of land. Non commercial, no hotels nothing.
The path was muddy with heavy rains and the road looked more like minzed Clay and these jeeps were minsing it better and better.
At one point the back wheel got stuck... but then no worries, we had george... george of that jungle with us , who just did some tricks and we were back again trying to climb up.
One thing I must admit, knowing to drive , who ever drives really needs the nerve to stay steady... its a crazy path believe me.
We then reached a place on top of the hill called mugilupete... Have you seen that movie of Ganesh 'Gaalipata '
It was shot in this place called "Mugilu Pete" means Cloud City... . So people who have seen that movie and that song, I don't need to describe further. He stopped the jeep. silence all around.
clouds touching us, fog, mist and natures best beauty around. i just started walking up the hill further and turned back to see, that i could not even see the jeep 3 feet away from me.
We had not even taken our camera... coz we did not plan for anything other than the temple visit.
Luckily , thanks to technology and savvy mobiles.. managed to capture as much as I could. From there we went another 1.5 kms ahead to the main place , believed to be the place where shankaracharya did his penance. There is a temple Huliraya ( tiger) devasthana ( temple). Tiger God temple and a small hotel run by the priest himself.
Hot hot rice, sambhar and rasam. Awesome taste for that chill weather and then a cup of hot coffee that had the smell of being heated on firewood.
There are just 2 families who live there, the priest and his brother and their spouse. We then started from there and again came down to this spot where we earlier stopped. Just went around and round... wanting to see as much as possible.
Felt awesome being away from that jungle of noise, work, hectic schedules , crazy life to this jungle of just peace and peace and beauty and the most fresh air that I could have ever breathed in my life.
I am hoping nature remains intact here and we dont have the iron ore and other stuff going out... :-)

I m sure going back there shortly.