Gopalaswamy Betta-A Visual Travelogue

Trip to Gopalaswamy Betta, near Mysore

It was on a soothing evening of November 2010, soon after we completed our Term exams, half a dozen of us sat together, desperately scratched our heads to find a suitable getaway from all the tensions of exams we had. And not surprisingly, it took hardly 30 minutes for us to select a hill station near Mysore. And the place of selection was Gopalaswamy Betta.

GopalaSwamy Betta is a small hill approximately 75 kms from Mysore (a city in Karnataka state in India). It is supposedly the highest peak on Bandipur National Park (a dense forest in South India) and said to have reasonable number of exotic wild species.

Frankly speaking, Monsoon is the best time for visiting this awesome place. But the road conditions were pathetic, having ample twists and turns with enough potholes. And the worst part was, the road was slippery and there were no remnants of tar on the road in most of the places.  

Tick..tick..its 5:30 am in the clock...

We started our journey, the very next day morning from our college (in Mysore) with one car, one Gypsy and over a dozen bikes. 

Drizzle started with a cool breeze, within the first 15 minutes of drive.
6 am in the morning, Cool breeze and soothing drizzle.....what more to ask?? It was quite an indecipherable experience especially for those who were on bikes.

Exactly an hour and a half later, we found a decent restaurant for having our breakfast, which looked nice, on road-side. Thanks to the attractive exteriors, the hotel had. Don't know because of the extreme hunger we had in the morning or because of the early-morning drive, our breakfast session extended for almost one whole hour. 

We left from there after having breakfast, eagerly looking for a sign board mentioning "Sri Hangala", clearly because that was the place from where we should take a right turn from the National Highway. It might be another 20-25 minutes from the restaurant, we reached Sri Hangala inorder to take right turn to GopalSwamy Betta.

On the way to Betta, was mesmerizing scenes on either sides of road amid monsoon. 

As mentioned earlier,  Road to Betta was having enough and more hairpin curves. It was quite evident on some places that these hairpin roads were surely built by breaking rocks of the hill because these rocks were so projecting outwards to the road that it literally squeezed the width of the road.

And needless to mention the width of road on the hair pin curves with uneven and illogical bankings...

Road was narrow with many potholes. Concrete fences were built on the sides of the road in order to protect the travelers from crumbling down into abyss. We cleverly used those fence to stand on them to  pose for photos.

I, was in a bike and, almost completely drenched and dirty while reached atop hill. All thanks to the mercurial weather that brings rain in the first 15 minutes of our journey and the quality roads on the way.

After travelling through these off-roads, we finally reached a temple named Himavad Gopalaswamy Temple which is purely dedicated to Hindu God "Lord Krishna". By the time we reached the temple, rain stopped. It was as if rain had an intention to drench all of us. We kept all our valuables inside the car since we were told by the inherent natives about the potential "high-jacking" by the monkeys in the temple compound.

As many of our friends were busy in spending too much of time inside the temple, we quickly got out from the temple to have some tea and to take some snaps. The below is the snap taken from inside of the temple compound. The surrounding wall with big entrance can be seen. 

Temple is a not so big, ancient structure, having different idols (reminding Madurai Meenakshi temple) on the surrounding walls exemplifies various stories and situations mentioned in the Hindu epics.

The so called "devotees" in our group were reluctant to take cameras inside and these were the very few photos of the temple, which we took.

After passing Temple, awaited was the sheer beauty of nature. It was a long walkway passing every small hill.  

We went up hill in several groups as you can see in the picture.


After walking roughly a kilometer up the hill, we reached a place like this!!!.

Fog was there to say hello in between. Though the hill was part of Bandipur National Park, thankfully no animals were there on the hill.

One of our friends found time to go down (was a little steep though) to take the photo of valleys around the hill. And by the way, the thick dense forest you see in the below picture is none other than Bandipur National Park.

As I said earlier, fog was literally blocking our view most of the time. But it was a nice experience.

Since we were asked to reach the foot of the hill before 4pm (as that was a govt rule) by the guards and temple authorities, we strictly maintained the timings and we reached back near our car and bikes, way before 4pm.

And then we started our return journey to Mysore. But as soon as we reached Sri Hangala, instead of taking left towards Mysore, those from our gang who led us in the front, took right towards Bandipur. 

Clouds looming large while we went to Bandipur..

And it didn't take too long for us to understand that the deviation they took was quite intentional with the justification that Bandipur being just 10kms away from Sri Hangala and we could possibly drive back spending nearly one hour there. 

And within 10 minutes of ride, we reached Bandipur National Park. But unfortunately we were too late to enter in the National Park as it was closed to the public by that time. We took some random photos from there and started our return journey to Mysore.

Gopalaswamy Betta is clearly a weekend getaway, because of its serenity and beauty, for those who stays in Mysore (75 kms) or even in Bangalore (220kms). But surely it is a place we can complete sight-seeings within one day. The other place nearby is Bandipur National Park, but have to reach the National Park atleast by 1 pm or 2 pm in order to enter inside. So plan accordingly if you really want to spend time there!!