Talakadu

Talakadu is a small town on the banks of river Cauvery in Mandya. As usual it is famous for its temple known as Lord Kirti Narayana temple or Vaideshwara temple.The place is inundated with sand which apparantly has its origin on a woman's curse(there are scientific explanations of course). Talakadu wasn't the most exciting of places that i have visited but i remember this trip more for events during the journey rather than the actual destination. Talakadu didnt excite the entire gang either - so only me, keerthy, srikanth and datta went ahead with the plan.

Due to previous bike trips we were still enthusiastic about bike trip, but keerthy was planning to go to Kollegal directly from Talakadu, so we decided to go in bus( again and again we make this mistake !!)

The Trip

Date and Time: February 2006 8 am

We met at Banashankari Bus stand and took the bus to Malavalli via Kanakapura. Bus was crowded as usual and it took around 2 hours to reach Malavalli. Next was the difficult part of finding the bus to Talakadu. Enquiring around and walking for some time resulted in us reaching a junction where apparantly few buses and sand lorries come. Sand lorries might offer lift for some money it seems. So we waited in hot sun - all we saw was policemen taking bribes from some lorries( I guess sand mining is illegal). Waiting for Bus

Finally an overcrowded bus came - by overcrowded i mean really overcrowded. Entire bus was filled and we had to climb on top of bus and it was crowded on top too..it was fairly interesting to travel on top of bus with every swerve the bus makes shaking some of your confidence in the driver. Honestly it takes great driving skills to drive with 50 people on top of bus on some usual semi-tarred and semi-mud village roads. After an hour or so we reached near talakadu and had to take an auto to the final destination.

Reached the spot around 12. It was really hot. But there were hundreds of people playing in the Cauvery river. Water was varying from knee level to sometimes chest level. We could cross the river - around 100 yards wide after lot of trepidation as me and srikanth didnt know swimming then. We reached the other end and hoped keerthy would take the pic(he refused to cross the river and instead offered to take our pics). But he was so busy ogling that he totally forgot us and from 100 yards he couldnt hear us either. On the right side is the culprit who didnt take our pics


After playing in water, decided to go look at the sand dunes around the temples. There are many temples and most were half-covered by sand. Another rumour(or myth) we heard from locals was that every 12 years, the temples would be completely uncovered and cycle would repeat. The sand was really awesome and we played like kids there for long time doing all sorts of jumps and dives onto sand(See the pics for Keerthy-Srikanth's Matrix style parallel dive pics) Keerthy and Srikanth

Yours Truly

Evening came, had to again figure out how to go home. On keerthy's advice we decided to go to Kollegal as there were lot of buses from Kollegal to Bangalore and keerthy anyway was going there. So took a jeep till a place( i think it was Harale). The driver was totally drunk and was driving over humps as he wished. We were really pissed off and i was really tempted to take the driver's seat. Finally we reached the destination and took the bus to Kollegal. The conductor gave us mini-heart attack by telling that last Kollegal-Bangalore bus was around 8 and the bus we were on might not reach on time. But fortunately the bus to Bangalore goes in opposite direction, so he actually stopped the bus and let us the board the opposite bus going towards bangalore(except keerthy who continued to kollegal). We were really tired, sat on steps of bus and called up home that we ll be reaching in couple of hours.

But day didnt end so easily. Few kilometres before Mandya, the bus stopped for some time. There were many vehicles in front of us and no one was clear about what happened except that there was some riots happening. Since no one else in the bus seemed interested at all and were sleeping mostly, me datta and srikanth decided to investigate. After walking for almost 1 km of vehicles, we reached the centre of action. There were atleast 50 odd people with full gear - i mean with long sticks and torches shouting and arguing. What happened was that a KSRTC bus hit a sugarcane truck going in opposite direction. Though there were no casualities, sugarcane truck with most of sugarcane was kind of destroyed and all the villagers to whom this belonged wanted immediate money and totally stopped the traffic. And they did look dangerous !!. So we made our way back to bus and told the driver this. Since we were also in KSRTC bus, he was kind of scared. So we suggested going back and taking a long route. He actually listened to us and after further consultation with conductor turned back(which was also difficult due to no of vehicles behind us) - He was a real pro in driving ..We took some inner route to Mandya and from there took Mysore-Bangalore highway to reach Bangalore without further events. Uff ..we reached Bangalore after 12 pm and slept over at datta's place as me and srikanth didnt have any enthu to find a bus to our homes.

Route:

1. From Bangalore take the kanakapura road to go to Kanakapura - around 50 km
2. Continue further to Malavalli - around 40 km. Till here the roads are good.
3. From Malavalli take the road towards Kollegal.
4. After 10-15 km take a deviation to right towards talakadu. There are few signboards. The roads were pretty bad from hereon.
5. Destination can be reached in about 20 km

Distance: 130 km from Bangalore

Better to Know:

1. Buses are pretty irregular. So better to take private transport. If bus is the only option, there are only 2 options - Take the bus to Malavalli and then take a bus to talakadu or take a bus to kollegal and take a bus or hire a jeep to talakadu.
2. There are many roadside shops for snacks and beverages.
3. Cell phone signal was available couple of years back so it should be better now.
4. It was hot even though summer hadn't officially started.