Shimoga and Jog Falls Trip details

It has taken some time to actually come up with this blog giving the details of my holiday. The reason being that the snaps took so long to develop.
I had been to Shimoga in train and stayed at a hotel very near to the station. Since we had planned for the trip to Jog falls the next day, we had a whole day to have a look at what Shimoga had to offer...
Well nothing spectacular, There were a few tourist attractions according to the hotel person and we hired a taxi and headed out...
We wanted to see places called Koodali, Mandagadde bird scantuary, Tunga or the Gajjanur Dam,Sakarebayalu elephant camp and Agumbe. We headed out to Koodali cos the other places were in one route and this one the opposite direction.
Koodali was some 10-15 Kms from Shimoga and once we were some 2 Kms from the city the adventure had already started. There was a protest by the villagers against the authorities for not constructing good roads. We had to waste a lot of time till the senior office arrived. It was just a matter of few mins then and we were back on our way...
Koodali in nothing but a Prayag of 2 rivers. It also has an ancient temple on the banks of the river. Nothing much to offer though.
Then we headed back towards the other tourist places...
The Tunga dam generated hydroelectric power and was a good view. Since it was a very hot day we did not spend a lot of time there...

The ancient temple at Koodali

The Tunga or Gajannur Dam

On our way we also stopped by a Shiva Temple (unplanned stop). It was a newly constructed statue. Then we went to the Mandagadde bird scantuary, well it is not worth calling a scantuary. It was very small having a hundred birds or so and nothing much. Good for the birds but not so exiting if you are a tourist. There was the sakarebayalu elephant camp which had no elephants at that time of the day as they had been taken into the forest for work...

The Shiva temple and an Egret in the bird scantuary

We headed straight for Agumbe then, which is supposed to be the Chirapunji of the South with very hig rainfall in the year.. There is a sunset point where we can see the sun setting at the arabian sea, even though Agumbe is very far off from the coast of arabian sea. Well we had no sunset sighting cos we had been during the end of rainy season while the clear sunset is visible from january thruough the summer season.

Once there we had enough time and had a few snacks when a guy there suggested we go to Shrigeri which was 25 Ks from there and then return to Shimoga by night, another unplanned visit and we had a great time there. The temple in itself is huge and very ancient, being one of the ashrams of Shankara Charya, it has a lot of history associated with it. The river by the Temple has some very huge fish and that is the biggest ones ive seen in my life and the best part is that they are at an arms length away from you.

Shringeri Temple

From Shringeri we headed back to Shimoga to have a good rest in the hotel, but the adventur was not over yet, we had to go through some very bad road with no lighting and with not many vehiles plying. The driver was very good to negotiate that kinda road and we reached the hotel safe and sound.

The next day we left for Jog falls early in the morning. The hotel guy told us to stop at Sagar and keep our luggage there. We had an onward journey to Gokarna that day so had to carry our luggage and leave for Gokarna that very day, so we stopped at Sagar, kept out luggage there and then proceeded to Jog Falls. This is the first time I was visitng Jog( as far as my memory knows) and was very exited. The jog in iteslf was huge. The water was ok and it was thundering down the 942 feet. We decided to walk down till the very bottom of the Jog falls and have a look at that tooo. Some very beautiful sights of the Jog falls, A monkey that stole our snacks and a hard time climbing back to the top. There are 1400 steps till the bottom of the Jog and along the way I was very saddened to see the garbage and the plastic disposed off by tourists and shopkeepers alike. It was a very sad view. There was an amazing wildlife in and around the Jog, some hundreds of varieties of butterflies, snails, birds dragon flies and monkeys. I even got to see and take snaps of the Langur. I took its snaps for the first time and they were really patient with me allowing me to withing 10 feet of them...

The Langurs and the Might of Jog - See the guy in the pic

My Parents and the Jog at the backdrop

You can actually cross over from one side of the outlet of water fall to the other. Thats the place where the song from Mungaru male was shot( that is what they told us).

The top view of Jog

After seeing the Jog, we had to go back to Sagar, and from the driver of the KSRTC bus we came to know that the bus to Gokarna actually has to pass the Jog falls and go ahead. He told that we could have actually got our luggage here and taken the bus from Jog itself. But bad luck, we went back to Sagar and were in the Nick of time to take the bus to gokarna(that is what they told us), but the bus was going to a place 10 Kms short of Gokarna and taking a deviation to Karwar. We then managed to reach a place called Kumta. On the way to Kumta bus stand, the bus driver and conductor of our bus stopped the Gokarna bus mid way on the road and enabled us to catch that one. We reached Gokarna at some 9 PM with a tiring day behind us and some adventure to go with that all....

We had a great day though... and the next day at gokarna awaited us...