Madhugiri - Goravanahalli

We picked Madhugiri as a destination for our Feb 6 trip. Madhugiri is about 40 kms from Tumkur. It has the second largest monolith and a fort is located at the top of the monolith. Fort is attributed to HyderAli.


Raj, Kavitha, Darshan, Vinay, Bhushan, Pushpak, Joe, Dhanya and me set off. Raj n me were on the car and rest on bikes. We started at 5 am and met rest of the group at Yelhanka.

We stopped for breakfast at Kamat. As we approached Madhugiri the monolith rock began to reveal itself from behind the trees. The rock stood proud well aware that it is the second largest monolith and dream of every trekker. It looked magnificent. We reached Madhugiri at 10 am, parked our vehicles at the temple, at the base of the fort and began climbing.

Initial stretch had steps and well defined paths, nothing exciting about this stretch. After about 30 minutes steep rocks began to show up. Little steps were made to help the climbers. First rock seemed fine but second rock I was on all fours, third rock looked deadlier and I decided to call it off. Rest of the team proceeded. Kavitha joined me after 15 minutes; Raj, Joe and Darshan joined us in another 15 minutes after they were chased by a group of monkeys; remaining group conquered the fort.

We had a decent lunch at a small eating place at the base of the fort. If you are planning to go to Madhugiri make sure you call lot of water. You will not get anything there.

We started back from Madhugiri, on the way we decided to stop at Goravanhalli. Goravanhalli has a Lakshmi temple.

The goddess is said to have self originated on the rock. The temple is extremely crowded on Fridays. To our luck it was a Saturday and the Lakshmi temple was not at all crowded. We got kumkum archane done, pleased the way it was conducted. Free lunch is provided everyday at the temple.

We wanted to go to the blackbuck reserve but it had already crossed 5 pm, so headed back to Bangalore