Ramanagara, known as the Silk City of Karnataka is situated at about 60 kms from Bangalore. It is a small town between Bangalore and Mysore but has many attractions. Some of the main attractions are Asia's largest raw silk market, Vulture Sanctuary and the famous Sholay hills.
You should start from Bangalore early in the morning to enjoy the cool morning breeze and definitely to avoid the notorious Bangalore traffic. Once you leave the highway the rural stigma of the place is mesmerizing.
We started our day with a small trek on the Ramadevarabetta hills or famously known as Sholay hills (Ramgarh of movie Sholay is actually Ramanagara :) ).
This place is a paradise for Bird watching as you see a lot of exotic bird species.
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| Paradise flycatcher |
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| blue Rock Thrush |
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| Yellow-throated Bulbul |
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| Hoope |
The Sri Rama temple is located on top of the hill and near a pond. You can view other neighbouring hills and complete Ramanagara from top of the hill.
The hill is also home to two of the endangered vulture species in south India and hence is declared as a Vulture sanctuary and VSZ (Vulture safe Zone). This implies in 100 km radius of the village no Diclofenac should be found in cattles (Diclofenac is a veterinary drug which is fatal to vultures. If a vulture eats from the carcass of an animal that has been treated with this drug during its lifetime then probability of survival becomes zero). Local people helped us in spotting Long billed vulture and Egyptian vulture. The size and flight on these birds is breathtaking.
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| Egyptian Vulture |
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| Long billed vulture |
Next we visited Cocoon market or Raw silk market, the largest of its kind in Asia. There is not much to do here but to see the initial stage of silk production and the magnitude of the business. We got a chance to speak to a silk businessman who had recently bought tons of cocoons to process silk out of it. 6 -7 Kgs of cocoons (priced about Rs. 450/Kg) yields 1 kg of raw silk threads, which is then dyed and processed. The merchant was kind enough to let us carry a cocoon souvenir (which still has live silkworm inside the shell :-O)
We were all exhausted and wished to head straight back home but the trip would have been incomplete without a sumptuous meal at Kamath.
