A Road Trip
I had to travel to Belagondanapalli, a small hamlet on Hosur-Thally road, about 40 odd kilometers from Bangalore, on an official trip. Though that area is one of the business hubs of Tamil Nadu, I had been cautioned against expecting any semblance of city life. The other city-slickers like me were vehement in their comparison of that place to anything from a barren desert to an overgrown jungle. So, it was with an air of zilch expectations that I started out on this trip in an Indica, with a rather nervous driver, who had the bizarre habit of backing out of an overtaking manoeuvre when it was about 80% completed.
Driving down Sarjapur road (to avoid the traffic on Hosur road), I realised how small a city Bangalore was. We were just a few kilometres from Koramangala, the image of modern-day Bangalore and which wouldn’t have been out of place in any big city of the world with its malls and hip crowd, and all we could see were open fields and grape plantations with an odd marble and granite dealers exhibiting their wares by the roadside. Only the sky-scraping apartment complexes coming up hither and thither betrayed the fact that we were not far from the IT hub of Bangalore. At Sarjapur, we took a right turn to take the Attibele road and it was an apposite time to switch off the air-conditioning and draw in the windows for the atmosphere her was as pristine as I’ve ever seen. An enroute temple in the shape of a mace, dedicated to Lord Hanuman, caught my attention and my friend caught it on his camera phone. Just minutes after Attibele, we crossed over into Tamil Nadu without even a perfunctory check at the border and immediately were greeted by posters and banners of the “Rising Sun” and the “Two Leaves”, a reminder of how politics dominates the scene there.
Belagondanapalli didn’t disappoint me. It was a small rural community, with a few shops and houses. We stopped for breakfast at what we had nicknamed “The Taj Hosur”, which was nothing more than a few tables and stools under a tiled roof. The breakfast was good and cheap, as is expected in most of Tamil Nadu. Even though I would have liked to traverse the fields and chat up with the locals, my work kept me busy for most of the day and on subsequent trips over the next few days to that place, I couldn’t help wondering if I could ever live in such a place, away from the hustle and bustle of city life and decided to give it a try a few decades down the line, after I retire.
Driving down Sarjapur road (to avoid the traffic on Hosur road), I realised how small a city Bangalore was. We were just a few kilometres from Koramangala, the image of modern-day Bangalore and which wouldn’t have been out of place in any big city of the world with its malls and hip crowd, and all we could see were open fields and grape plantations with an odd marble and granite dealers exhibiting their wares by the roadside. Only the sky-scraping apartment complexes coming up hither and thither betrayed the fact that we were not far from the IT hub of Bangalore. At Sarjapur, we took a right turn to take the Attibele road and it was an apposite time to switch off the air-conditioning and draw in the windows for the atmosphere her was as pristine as I’ve ever seen. An enroute temple in the shape of a mace, dedicated to Lord Hanuman, caught my attention and my friend caught it on his camera phone. Just minutes after Attibele, we crossed over into Tamil Nadu without even a perfunctory check at the border and immediately were greeted by posters and banners of the “Rising Sun” and the “Two Leaves”, a reminder of how politics dominates the scene there.
Belagondanapalli didn’t disappoint me. It was a small rural community, with a few shops and houses. We stopped for breakfast at what we had nicknamed “The Taj Hosur”, which was nothing more than a few tables and stools under a tiled roof. The breakfast was good and cheap, as is expected in most of Tamil Nadu. Even though I would have liked to traverse the fields and chat up with the locals, my work kept me busy for most of the day and on subsequent trips over the next few days to that place, I couldn’t help wondering if I could ever live in such a place, away from the hustle and bustle of city life and decided to give it a try a few decades down the line, after I retire.
The Hanuman Temple, shaped like a Mace.
Sunset over the fields
The "Taj Hosur"
She's the reason I was there
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