Most of us will associate Nelamangala as nothing more than a transit point on the outskirts of Bengaluru, en route to more popular destinations on NH-4 (Tumkur, Chitradurga, Hubli, Belagavi, Pune, …) and NH-48 (Hassan, Mangaluru). To this effect, on the first day of a long weekend, the cars heading out of Bengaluru on the Yeshwantpur-Nelamangala tollway either went on straight on NH-4 or turned left onto NH-48, at this transit town. We had other plans – exploring a less known lake close to this very transit point. Thus the plan was made to spend an early morning in Nelamangala. I came to know about this place because of a tip from friends and we all set out, starting at 4am from Bengaluru.
To start at 4am, means waking up at 3:15am, and this, is akin to midnight to many people. And they might say, what’s to see in the night? Its dark! Well, that’s not incorrect. But, the night turning into day is not a spontaneous event. Its a gradual transformation, one that is both beautiful and calming. The proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, that’s the night, starts at the ‘V’ end of the VIBGYOR and slowly progresses towards ‘O’ (yes, it skips some colors in between – good to know you’re actually reading 😉 ). The time spent in this transformation are aptly named blue hour and golden hour (no, they do not necessarily both last a full hour each). Enough of my generic rant now.
We reached the lake by 5:30am. It was still dark, and everything was in gray-scale. After going thru a village, disturbing some cattle on the way, we seemed to literally be on the lake bed. The summer heat is already at full swing this year and the water levels were low. Even though, this was a rather decent sized water body, the water had receded quite a bit and was shallow for most of the area. There were lots of barren trees jutting out of the shallow waters. There were lot of birds happily camping on the lake bed, a fact we realized after our footsteps managed to disturb a flock of winged creatures to startle and fly away – sigh. Good morning to you too, and sorry 🙂 I did not have a telephoto lens and limited myself to shooting landscapes only and enjoy the calmness around in-between shots. Here are two images from this place.
Shades of morning
A bird wades thru the shallow waters
I could feel the depth of early morning light & calmness. Good click:-)