A Day drive to Gudibande fort & Vatadahosahalli Lake

A short drive from Bengaluru to Gudibande | The Crew: Prashanth, Pallavi, Pavan, Chaitra | The Drive: Honda Brio

Background: So it was almost the peak end of January in the year 2022 and both me and my wife were bored sitting at home and following our regular routine. Despite our love to travel we had to stay at home due to the third wave of COVID-19 that had become horrendous.

My wife’s exams got postponed by a week and we got a weekend that did not have any work related stuff on out to-do lists. We had been planning to go out for a while and started googling places near by and believe me we got about 30+ places to visit. After a while we finalized that will visit Gudibande and Vatadahosahalli lake which is close by the fort. We called my brother in law and checked and they were in too so we finalized that we will hit the road on Sunday Feb 6th 2022.

About the place: Wikipedia to make life easy(for me 😄 ) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gudibande

The Day: We woke up around 5AM and got ready and left our place around 6AM, it took us about 30-35 mins to reach their place and they were ready. We spent few mins chatting and hit the road by 7AM.

South India's staple breakfast :) 

Road that never ends

Since this changed our routine by a huge margin all of us were really hungry and I had already decided that we are gonna have our breakfast at the famous Nandi Upachar on NH7. Despite being really crowded the service was pretty fast and within 10-15mins we had finished our food , however we had zero network in the hotel and had trouble in closing the bill.

We hit the beautiful national highway soon after breakfast and as usual the road was butter smooth and I had no reason to drive below 100KMPH 😊.

We missed taking the left near Peresandra and had passed it despite taking the service road. We were lucky enough to find another inner road that led to our destination. We found some really beautiful village road filled with good landscapes and farms with lot of yellow flowers, the hot sun made the flowers look almost like gold and it was wonderful to watch it. Just before you reach the fort you will encounter a massive waterbody (no not the vatadahosahalli lake) the gudibande lake which is a treat to watch. Be mindful to not stop your car for long time here as the traffic gets high by a line of cars stopping behind you.

Gudibande Lake

Within no time we reached the places and found good place to park our car.(Note: The parking is free and there are lot of kids and beggars who will approach you for money, you can ignore and pass)

The climb and errors: We started the climb and since we were really unfit the ascend was pretty slow, plus the heat of the sun was too damn high. It was this time we had also experimented to vlog the entire journey but as usual the rookie mistake kicked in and our action camera had died even before we reached the location. It took us about 45mins to climb to the top where there were a lot of people who were enjoying the view from the top. Each side of the top has a different view and you can easily spend about 1-1:30hours there taking pictures and enjoy the view from all the angles on the top of the fort.

After spending some good time on the top we started coming down and believe me you legs would vibrate a little while coming down, it did not take more than 30mins to come down and we started drive towards the lake. Lake is about 7-8KM from the fort and we could not find the actual entrance so we took the exit we could find and got in to the water.

We spent good time at the lake and started our journey back home🙂 . Since we stay in south Bengaluru it did take us a while to cross the traffic filled roads and reach home.

Advice time: For the folks planning to visit the place I would suggest you to carry/follow :

• Water from home as buying bottles out side will only result in plastic dump.
• A cap/umbrella would be helpful as the heat was too high.
• Goggles are a big Yes.
• Food is optional, but would recommend you to carry some snacks.
• Comfortable shoes: This is your choice, I did it with sandals but folks with me wore good shoes.
• Do not try to over speed before you cross Nandi Upachar hotel as cops would be waiting to catch you , plus not safe too if you are not in control.

A humble request would be to not litter at the location 😊 lets be mindful of our planet and our future generation. If you visit the place do let us know your experience.