Thippagondanahalli, or TG Halli for busy people, is around 35 kms from Bangalore. Two of us bunked office one day (things you do for the love of photography!) and decided to bike down to this place exclusively to flex our gear. I knew shooting macros was my best bet, while my partner, Kiran, came with a 75-300mm lens to shoot birds. We chose Friday as the day of our road trip because Saturday and Sunday would mean mingling with noisy tourists.

We met up at 7:45 AM near my place, 25 minutes behind schedule, and took the Binny Circle > Sirsi Circle > Magadi Road route. Traffic was relatively ok, but Magadi road and onward got a little bad and busy. It had rained the previous evening and the roads were slushy. But soon leaving the outskirts of Bangalore, we had a refreshingly smooth ride with great weather, minimal traffic and good asphalt to keep company. Since both of us didn’t know the route to our destination we stopped often to get our bearings. It turns out that TG Halli is just one straight road all the way from Bangalore on Magadi Road. But it was a good thing we asked our way around because once you cross the BWSSB entrance that you can see from the road, you’ll surely miss the small mud road that actually leads to the river side. This is the only unofficial entrance and it didn’t seem like we required any kind of permission to enter from here. We didn’t really bother entering from the BWSSB entrance because our intention was to get near the water in search of flora and fauna.

IIRC, it was around half past nine when we parked our vehicles, after biking for a minute into the forested path, to cover the rest on foot. The walk was short - probably 10 minutes. We first crossed a small entrance that leads to one end of the TG Halli reservoir dam, and then came to the water side. We got our gear out and split, doing our own thing. I was chasing small winged insects while Kiran began chasing the big winged creatures.

The reservoir has a submerged temple, which at this time of the year was clearly visible due to the low water level. It was quite a sight to see an ancient monument in the middle of the water - looked dramatic and all. I knew this would make a nice subject for some landscape shots. Closer to the water, shrubs with tiny flowers were abundant and the whole place looked very serene. I was enjoying myself, but for the heat and the frustration of having to chase those pretty butterflies. Losing my patience over those restless dragon flies and butterflies (they always posed tantalizingly on some shrub - only to fly away after a brief moment), I began shooting landscapes.

When you go some place to do what you love doing, you don’t realize time go by. We had spent couple of hours in the same area, and except for a brief walk towards the other side of the lake, we had both kept ourselves busy clicking. The dam wall gets really high as you walk further, but we were in for a surprise when we got there. In the entire three ours we had spent, we hadn’t seen a soul. But as we neared the dam, we could hear a dude shouting from a loudspeaker. He was telling us to buzz off. Picture this - you are near the river bed, you have a 2 story high dam wall around 300 meters behind and you began setting up your tripod when you suddenly hear a boom on a loudspeaker and a menacing voice directed at you. It felt like the wall was speaking to us, but of course not - BWSSB probably thought its easier to have 1 security guard and give him a loudspeaker than have 5 or 10 patrolling the area. I didn’t like the tone of the dude’s voice because he it sounded like we were crapping on his lawn or something. Also, we never really saw any sign that said no trespassing, so officially we hadn’t committed any fault. But our man, sitting on his high seat (literally), found it appropriate to shout at his using a loud speaker and we decided not to mess around, lest our cameras get confisticated. So no shots of the dam, and not spending any time, we just started walking back. It was 12 pm by then and getting very hot. So we decided to leave.

All in all, TG Halli is a good half a day trip from Bangalore. I would like to visit the place once again to catch the sunset, because I can envision the temple in the middle of the river looking awesome with a fiery sky in the background.