Sui Generis: Chitradurga in pictures!

I have always been a fan of Polaroid pictures - each one telling a story of its own.Here's a blog full of such polaroid pictures of a trip to Chitradurga only because I love looking at them!

Even though I have lived all my life in Bangalore, I had only visited the "touristy" districts of Karnataka - Mysore, Coorg and Mangalore. When we planned the trip to Chitradurga, I was skeptical on what I would find in a place that to me seemed like the "middle of nowhere". I was pleasantly surprised when I reached the Chitradurga fort.A light drizzle on that day made the weather pleasant and below are some pics of the fort and the temples on the fort.

Chitradurga Fort

Temples in the fort

I heard of an interesting story of a brave woman name Obavva who guarded the Chitadurga fort tower while her husband and other soldiers went on a lunch break.The enemies attacked and had to come through the small crevice that you see in the picture. With great presence of mind she immediately hid behind the crevice in the fort and hit at each soldier trying to squeeze through the crevice with Onake, the name given in Kannada to a pestle, a wooden rod used for pounding paddy. In this process, she bravely killed several enemy soldiers. By the time her husband appeared on the scene, she had already dragged several bodies of dead soldiers into the fort wall and was standing around the dead bodies with the blood stained Onake in her hand. This brave act saved the fort on that day from further attacks. This act also earned her the epithet Onake Obavva and the crevice in the fort where she showed her bravery is called Obawa Kindi.

Me enacting the role of Obavva and my hubby playing the enemy soldier at Onake Obavvana Kindi

There were a couple of treks that were very different from what I have ever done. One such was atop the place called "Tuppada Kola" which in Kannada means a pond of ghee. In olden times, horses used to carry Ghee and this trek needs you to go on all fours for a distance by using the footholds engraved in the stone for horse hooves. Below is a pic of a bunch us climbing up on all fours in this stretch.