Mekedatu, meaning “goat’s leap”, is a location around Kanakpura district near Kaveri river. The river flows through narrow gorges, resulting in high speed streams.
There’s a place named Sangam, 3.5 kms before Mekedatu where Kaveri and Arkavati river merges.
We need to cross the Sangam and take a bus available at regular intervals, to reach Mekedatu.
This is the first trip I’m having in my new elite i20 along with my wife, my friend and his wife. The trip starts at 11:00 am from Hosur road, Bangalore. This is my first car and I’m not a pro when it comes to driving, so you can imagine the expression on everybody’s face as I am driving first.
The plan is to drive from Hosur road to Kanakpura through NICE road and then switch places with my friend, as the road from Kanakpura towards Sangam is not that good and we will encounter few hairpin bends as well.The drive is smooth if you ask me still I can see others on their toes. On reaching Kanakpura, my friend comes on the driving seat. That’s when everyone takes a sigh of relief and few even drifts off to sleep.
If you love nature then you are definitely going to like the drive from Kanakpura to Sangam which is full of greenery on both sides of the road. On the way we have to pay entrance fee twice, one for gram panchayat and another for the forest department. After all the drama we reach Sangama which to our disappointment is nearly dry even in the second week of July. The locals and few over-enthusiasts are still trying to make the best out of it. We enter the water carefully avoiding our clothes from getting wet and start taking pictures. An hour passes in all these and then we cross the river to board the bus to Mekedatu. The only other way to reach there is to walk which we avoided due to extreme heat.
If Sanagam didn’t disappoint us enough Mekedatu definitely adds to it. There’s nothing to look, just an end of a rock with railings to see down the dried gorges. I read numerous blogs which elevated my non-existent expectations about the place, but all crashes on looking at this.
We see a couple of people down, near the gorges and then find the way to reach there. The most difficult part to go down is to convince our wives. On successfully conquering the hurdle, we start to climb down through the broken stairs. On reaching down we climbed the rocks and took some more pictures. On getting exhausted with the scorching heat, we start crawling back up to the bus stand. We have to wait for 45 minutes for the bus and another 15 mins to reach to the bank of Sangam. We cross the river again, though we didn’t bother about getting the clothes this time as we just want to reach the car ASAP. We reach the car and bid final adieu to the place.
On the way back we decide to go to the Art of Living ashram which is on the way to home. I am back on driving seat so everyone is on alert mode now. On reaching the place we feel like this is the best decision we took the entire day. The place greeted us with a beautiful pyramid shaped prayer hall.
On entering, the guard informs that we can’t see the complete ashram as it’s beyond time now but we can visit the prayer hall, which was our only desire. We enter the building and explore all the floors. I am amazed to see such architectural beauty. We roam there for an hour and then left for home as we all are tired now.
To summarize the day, I loved the driving part and the Prayer hall. Mekedatu could have been better if there had been more water in the river. The almost dry river kept us off from seeing the actual beauty of the place described in multiple places over the internet.
KD Chronicles - Travel Blog 