<![CDATA[Welcome To Zach Studio!!!]]> Freewebs http://zachstudios.webs.com/zachstravelblog.htm <![CDATA[Devanahalli and the Tipu's Fort - A forgotten monument.]]> Devanahalli is a town in the state of Karnataka in India. The city is located 30 kilometres (19 mi) outside the city limits of Bangalore. Devanahalli is the site of the newly constructed Bengaluru International Airport, the second largest in India.

 

History of the Geography (place):

Tipu Sultan was born in Devanahalli in 1750. As one reaches the town from Bangalore, one finds a scant signboard and a stone tablet surrounded by fields proclaiming the birthplace of Tipu.

Also present is the Devanahalli Fort, built in 1501 by Mallabairegowda (before Tipu's time), which remained in the hands of his descendants until the mid seventeenth century. In 1749, the then Dalwai of Mysore - Nanjarajaiah, attacked the fort and occupied it. Later, the fort passed into the hands of Hyder Ali and subsequently Tipu Sultan. In 1791, Lord Cornwallis laid siege to the fort and took possession during the Mysore War.

The house once owned by Tipu and Hyder Ali can be seen to this day. Dewan Purnaiah, a high ranking official during the time of Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan, also had a house here. However, the state government, the Archaeological Survey of India and other organizations have neglected to maintain or restore these historical structures.

When Tipu came to power, he renamed the settlement "Yusufabad", which did not prove to be popular.

Tourism:

Although Devanahalli is just an hour's drive from Bangalore, there is as yet very little tourist traffic. This may change with the impetus provided by the Bangalore International Airport.

The Venugopalaswamy temple is one of the older temples to be found within the strong walls of Devanahalli fort. The sculpture in this temple may be compared with that of Belur and Halebidu. The courtyard is spacious; the walls of the temple depict various scenes from Ramayana, and the pillars have beautiful statues carved on them. Other temples are dedicated to Ranganatha and Chandramouleshwara.

In concluding, I feel it would be great and convenient if the tourism department and the acheology department take good care of this fort for public. If the fort is maintained well it can attract more people and could be made a tourist spot. Thank you.

 

Source: Wikipedia.

Posted by: Dennis Zach.

]]> http://zachstudios.webs.com/zachstravelblog.htm?blogentryid=3840381 2008-8-14T21:02:00-0100 <![CDATA[This is Zach's Blog!]]> I have created this blog for my photoshoots. I will be writing reports on every photoshoot that I go for. These photoshoots are nothing commercial, they are just my own shoots when I go when I have nothing else to do.

You can type your comment on the for thr reports and expres your ideas on it. I hope you will love my blog very much. 

]]> http://zachstudios.webs.com/zachstravelblog.htm?blogentryid=2806198 2008-7-30T07:35:00-0100 <![CDATA[Talkad trip with my office friends.]]> This is a report for a trip which I went along with my colleagues to a place called Talkad. Talkad is a place around 150 kms from Bangalore close to Mysore. Talkad is a small place on the banks of river Kaveri. This is a typical place where you can see something like a sea shore and sand as seen in a beach..... but there will be no waves!!!! You can hire coracles and take a short trip on the river. Talkad also hosts some historical temples just a short walk from the riverbank, recently unearthed by archaeological department.

Talkad is an ancient town buried under centuries of sand. It is situated on the left bank of River Kaveri at a spot where it takes a sharp bend.Once the capital of Gangas, had around 30 temples which are buried under sand.Only the Dravidian style Vaidyeshwara temple is visible above the ground.Recently ASI has excavated Keerti Narayana Temple.

Talkad is 45Kms from Mysore and 150kms from Bangalore, located in T.Narsipur Taluk. Nearby tourist spots are Shivanasamudram(Bluff) Falls, Somanthpur, T.Narsipur and Malavalli.

We had a neat plan for this trip a week before the trip. It was on the 27-07-2008 (Sunday) we had left for the trip. It was just a one day trip though. Who came for the trip? Answer:
Adarsh and Naveen.           Kavitha and Naveen.        Sagar, Naveen, Kirti and Pallavi.

Me of course behind the camera.

It was a special trip for all of us as Kavitha was quiting our office and going back to her native and so we all wanted to give her a nice send off.

I would like to convey my special thanks to Naveen and his mother......I'll tell you why.

Naveen was the man behind this trip, he was the one to bring out the thought of this whole trip. He did more than just thinking in fact, he booked a Tempo Traveler (T.T.), he took over the financial part of the trip like collecting money from us and using it for purchasing stuff like food, snacks. beer and much more.

Thanks to his mom for waking up early in the morning to cook some delicious Biryani for us. The Biryani was very tasty and we carried it with us for the trip, as we were told that there were not much of facility for food there in Talkad but it was totally different as you can see some food vendors at the entrance of Talkad ready with hot cooked food.
Let me begin with the action of the trip. It was 5.00 am in the morning on Sunday (27-07-2008) when Naveen and myself woke up. After freshening up, we had a small Pooja for the vehicle before we could leave.

We left home at around 6.00 am to pick up the rest of them. Kirti and Pallavi were already waiting for us in Domlur and were very angry with us because we reached there late making them wait for long. Few minutes later Sagar and Kavitha showed up at the place. From here we headed towards Mysore road and reached there by 7.00 am.
Mysore road was too good drive on. The road was smooth, clean less traffic and the driver was happy to drive on this road with full throttle.

On the way we reached a small park kind of a reserved place at around 9.00 am to have our breakfast. There were a lot of monkeys disturbing us here while eating. This place seemed to be visited by people travelling on this road to have their food as we could see many groups of people coming in with cooked food to eat here.

 
And then after breakfast we had a small photo shoot in the same park:
Immediately after breakfast we started on wheels towards Talkad. We played music and danced in the vehicle, had loads of fun. Naveen was the main entertainer for us with his awesome mimicry, jokes and of course.
 
We passed by some beautiful fields and hills on the way. The drive was just awesome, the breeze was gushing and was cool. The weather was just fine and cloudy. I just still can't forget those mesmerizing view I had from the window while travelling towards Talkad. We passed by small villages, fresh green fields with those deep brown mud and gigantic hills.
We then encountered with the worst part of our journey........ roads were horrible after this place called Malvalli. I suppose there was road construction happening here this time. There were a lot of potholes on the road with sand flying over and stones all over the road. While passing this side get ready for some bumpy ride after Malvalli till Talkad.
After the big ride we finally reached the place Talkad at around 11.30 am. This placing was rocking. The weather was kind of confusing but yet beautiful, it was sometimes sunny and sometimes cloudy, it was too breezy though.
 
We first had a small stroll around the place to check the surroundings and the river. I couldn't wait to get into the river and so I was the first one to run into the water.
We played, played and played in the water for a long time. We played Frisbees and throw ball in the water. We had a lot of fun playing in the water and was very memorable for all of us. We might have spent nearly 3 hours in the water but still felt not enough.

Finally we felt hungry and came back to the vehicle to have lunch. Before that we had some beer and fish fry which we bought from the nearby shop.

After lunch we were actually clueless as to what to do, whether to go back home or spend some more time there. It was then a lady who came and introduced herself as "Maariamma" and said she was one of the guides here and she could guide us to the nearby temples which were buried under the sand of Talkad.

This is the best part of Talkad. We went along with "Maariamma" to the temples. There is actually a big historic story about Talkad and the temples. Maariamma told us the story about Talkad and explained about all the five temples.


Maariamma works here as a guide since 10 years and knows about this place in and out. She was a very funny lady, the way she spoke was very humorous. She spoke in Kannada but with a different accent which I have never heard of and was hard to understand. She even speaks few sentences in English which sounds very hilarious. Some of her English sentences were like this:
1. Come theese saide. (come this side)
2. Hello, thaank you, bye.
3. Come theese saide, pollow me. ( Come this side, follow me)

Naveen just could not stop laughing at her speech. I was so crazy about her speech so I started recording all that she spoke in my phone. She also gave each one of our boys some names of some Kannada actors, like Naveen - Ganesh, Adarsh - Upendra and Me - Sudeep!!!!

After visiting the temples, we reached the vehicle and left Talkad at around 5.45pm. We took the same route which we came by. On the way to Bangalore at around 7.30 pm we stopped at Madur to have some light snacks at the famous hotel "Madur Tiffanys". We boys had some beer here and the famous "Madur Vaddas".

After a short break we immediately left Madur and reached Bangalore at around 10.00 pm. The ride was quite slow as there were a lot of traffic while coming back. We dropped everyone safely back home.

It was a great trip for all of us. At the end of the trip we all had great memories in mind and were also very tired and just wanted to fall on the bed.


This is the end of the report. Will get back to you'll soon with more reports. Thank you.
 
 
Posted by: Dennis Zach.
]]> http://zachstudios.webs.com/zachstravelblog.htm?blogentryid=3791857 2008-1-03T15:00:00-0100