Ramanagara: Silk City, Vulture Sanctuary and Sholay Hills

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.

Visit to Bannerghatta National Park

On the lazy Sunday morning I along with my friends –Aditya, Shiva and Vipul, left IIM Bangalore campus to check out Bannerghatta National Park. Before starting we googled for directions and reviews and it really helped. We now knew that we need to catch bus no. 365 that will directly drop us at park’s gate.We reached there around 11 a.m. but by that time queue had already taken shape of the largest reptile :P It would have easily taken 1-2 hrs had we also lined up. I did some “Jugaad” :P and we got the tickets of grand safari in minutes. Now we have to wait for the forest bus which came in about 15 min.

Grand Safari
I was praying that there should not be any children or girls in our bus because they cannot keep quite even for an hour. But as it was Sunday so I guess God was also sleepy by that time. Finally we started for a 16km safari. Bannerghatta National park is divided into fenced zone and roads covering every part of zone. So citing is almost sure. In around 15minutes bus reached in dense forest area and we started spotting animals. Spotted dear, Sambar, Ducks were among the first few. I took out my camera and figured that I did the biggest blunder of the day. I forgot the batteries at my place…ahhh. Luckily I had an extra set in my bag but it was not fully charged.

Shivsamudram Trek and waterfalls

It was my 2^nd free weekend in Bangalore and I along with 3 other friends Aditya, Vipul and Satyam, decided to go to Majestic Shivasamudram Waterfalls. While deciding the place I asked many bangalorians about whether it is the right time to go there as it was midsummer. Most of them either said no or said they don’t know. Oh what the heck, finally we decided to go ahead with the plan. We hired a cab and reached there at around 12 in the noon.  It was a sunny day and at the first site the place looked only OK as neither the valley nor the fall was visible.

Tree plantation at Tsunami rehabilitation center

Tuesday morning, as I opened my mailbox I saw a mail with the subject: GO GREEN. Because of my natural curiosity I opened it, it was a call for people to help in planting trees in a near by community center. As a Satyam foundation and SocialBond Volunteer I and my friends reached there. It was only 10 minutes walk away from office. First thing we saw was a huge gate saying “Annai fathima child welfare centre”.

As we entered we saw lots of energetic children running here and there and looking enthusiastically towards us.

We were around 10 peoples from our company. First we spotted the suitable places all around the campus for plantation and then we selected the plants according to the place. We divided ourselves in 3 teams to speed up the work. Finally we started the digging. I was clearly able to see more quickness and enthu in children from most of us.

They were helping us in digging, watering the plants and then safeguarding them by making a brick boundary around them. My team Noor, Aditi and me we planted 4 trees of gulmohar and a rose plant. After finishing the task we tried to interact with children and came to know about there routine and life. Head master over there told us that even in the absence of good teachers and resources children are doing really well. 1 boy over came 2nd in Tamil Nadu state board exam. This reminded me of the saying “where there is a will there is a way”. I noticed an old age home inside the campus but didn’t notice any movement in there.

May be I will visit that place again and find out more about it. Ok leave it for now and let me tell you further. We finished our plantation and gathered in the corridor for group photo and distributing chocolates to kids.

When we were leaving the two kids who were in our group were shouting “chalo ok bye”. We replied, waved and moved on ….