A short cycling trip to Munninagara Dam

On 22^nd  Aug 2015  early morning  at 6.15 am, myself  and  my brother in law embarked on  a cycle trip to  Munninagara dam situated  in Sommanahalli  off  the Kanakapura  main road.  It was at a distance of  25 kms.

As we were about to leave the house, it had started to drizzle.   But we were quite determined to embark on our cycle journey which we had planned a few days before.

After touching the Kanakapura road and crossing the nice road flyover, the road had hardly any traffic. In the early morning chill  and the fresh air filling our lungs we started  feeling good and we  passed  through  areas like Mallasandra, Thataguni, Kaggalipura and  took  a  left  turn from  kanakapura road at  Acharya  Patshala  college into the  villages.  After  cycling  about a further 8 kms  we  reached our  destination the  Munninagara  dam.  The backdrop of Munninagara  Dam is  the  thick Bannerghatta  forest.  

As  we  were  cycling  off  from the Kanakapura  road  into  the villages, we could see the lush   greenery  on either  side of the road  and  the small  curving and  the serpentine  road  was a  treat  to  watch.   We felt we were in the country side of Europe. We hardly saw people along the way and only the lush greenery was our companion.

At  some of the villages  we  were  greeted  by  our  canine  friends, who seemed to be irritated  by the early morning appearance of city goers.

After reaching Munninagara dam, we took a panoramic view of the entire surroundings.  We had an exhilarating feeling on reaching our destination. The dam on one side had a barbed wire fencing to prevent Elephants from entering and destroying the paddy fields on the other side. The barbed wire had electricity passing in it which was sufficient to prevent animals from going across.

We were talking with a local person, who explained that there were 120 persons in the village adjoining Munninagara dam.  He also mentioned that during evening times on some days, Elephants  can be spotted on the other side of dam  quenching their  thirst.

After spending about half an hour there, we started our cycling back to our house.  We reached our house by 10.00 am.

The small trip revealed that there is lot of greenery on the Kanakapura side not far away from our maddening city. We  have to  use  a slower mode of  transport like  cycling or even trekking  to  inhale  the  beauty of  the countryside  at a leisurely pace..  We could also get a view of the simple village life as we crisscrossed many villages on the way.   On the whole the 50 kms cycle ride was a small and a memorable trip  which helped  us in soothing   our frazzled nerves.