Fort Midigeshi

Date : 9/10/2009
History : The name Midigeshi is made up of 2 words Midi or himmadi-which means ankle in english and keshi means Hair. So there was once a queen who ruled this place who had long hair till her ankles and hence the name Midikeshi or Midigeshi.This place was steaming with political activity in its hey days and also has seen lot of bloodshed.History dates back to 9th century but Midigeshi gained prominence in the 16th century.

Source : My guide to history- Mr M.R Vijayashankar Metikurke

Started the day a little late and i was the culprit this time,i was late by about 25 minutes on this trip.Packed breakfast,fuel stop @shell and headed towards the nice road.I was joined by Pratibha and her friend Kiran on this trek.At about 8:30 am ,we were slighlty ahead of Devarayandurga when we decided to have breakfast,stopped the car and hogged on the
idlies that we had got.It was pleasant morning with lots of birds around the place.

We reached Midigeshi at around 10 am.An old man was curious to know as to why we were there ,he suspected as a part of the central govt employees who have come to assess the place :) .We convinced him that we had come there to see the fort,he insisted that we take a guide to show us the place.

Puttaraju would be our guide for the day,he said that he would join us in 10 minutes since he had to have his food,till then we decided to explore the ancient venkateshware temple at the base of the fort ,a small yet beautiful temple ,we finished clicking pictures by then Puttaraju -our guide was waiting for us show us around.Initial climb is a easy ,though one encounters loose gravel at certain places.

This fort can only be climbed from one side,after the intial easy clime,one encounters a steep cliff,one has to be careful while climbing this part of the fort.After this is there are is a fleet of steps.The steps slide towards one side and are very smooth in some areas ,one has to very careful here.Also one has to be careful not to look down from this place ,one can see the steep ascent made which can be hair-raising to say the least.We enter the the main entrance gate of the fort here.One can see the majestic strong walls of the fort with the the gun-slots and the canon points





















As we moved further ,we could spot the ammunition storage area,we decided to explore it ,a 3 roomed area which was once the house of several types of ammunition.It is slightly tricky to approach this area since this place is lower than the ground level except for the roof ,there was dense undergrowth all around ,so we had to walk over the doom of the roof to enter this place.Finally we headed towards the summit -were one can spot the Minaret which is basically a tomb of erstwhile ruler

One can also checkout the rooms to stay one of which has a bathing area as well.Another important aspect of the rooms is that they have a small opening on the roof which was meant to be a natural ventilation opening ,a latch to this seems to be missing according to me.

Two huge ragi storage areas can also be spotted here.At the other end ,a little downhill is another living area with a water storage area.This water storage area has never dried till date apparently according to Puttaraju.We decided against exploring this place since the route was quite a steep climb down .

We took a deep breath sinked in the moment ,sun was blazing down ,puttaraju suggested that we start back since it is going to get more hot by the time we go down.We slowly started our trek downhill.Downhill was easy ,Puttaraju suggested we remove our footwear since it might be very slippery.We reached the base of the fort by around 1 pm.We drank water from the borewell
nearby and decided to rest as the sun was just blazing down.As soon as we settled down we spotted quite a few birds there -the priced catch was the woodpecker

According to Puttaraju,wildlife spotted by him include Bears,civet cat,fox,leopard-which has also killed livesstock

We also checked out an old jain temple -Bhagawan Suparshwanatha in the kayotsarga posture,renovation is underway at this temple now ,the folks where more than keen to show us the idol which was kept in a adjacent building.By now we were exhausted ,we headed to the nearest shop and gulped down some cold drinks which was when the body came back to normalcy :)

We had some lunch @ madhugiri and headed back .On the way back we decided to check out Goruvanahalli Lakshmi devasthana ,had darshan there.There is a dam called teetha ,relaxed there and headed back to bangalore .All in all a good day spent.

Acknowledgement : This place was first written by Srinidhi Raghavendra in deccan herald.