DEVELOPING GUNDLUPET AS A MAJOR RAILWAY HUB

 GUNDLUPET is a township at the crossroads of Bandipur forests some one and a half hours journey from Mysore.For good or for bad the broad-guage railway link on this sector is upto Nanjangud thereafter the railway link extends towards Chamrajnagar.

Gundlupet has a key strategic role  as buses towards Ooty and towards Calicut have to pass through this township. A broad guage railway link to the township of Gundlupet will have many advantages more than anything else it will ease the population load on Mysore Bus stand and also the Mysore railway station.Instead of travelling to Mysore interim populace could directly travel to Gundlupet  by train and proceed to Ooty or Calicut by bus. A major Government bus stand can be planned at this place with pathways and link to the Gundlupet Railway Station.

Railway links to places like  Sultan battery (Ganapativattom) and Vythiri in Wayanad through the forests can also reduce travel time to Calicut and other towns in Kerala. The Government is planning a tunnel from Meppadi in Wayanad to Anakampoyil in Calicut through the Western Ghat mountains the tunnel being some ten kilometers long..the tunnel could also accomodate the Railway line.

For reasons unknown such a project has not been undertaken as the time and expenses to lay such a railway line  would not be much considering it is level land and  could help propel  the economy of this sector.

MANATHAVADY IN WAYANAD

 

The name Manantavady rings bells in my mind.In October 1983 or so S V Giri and myself reached at around 8pm  the old Calicut bus stand to board the 9pm bus to Bangalore but the bus was full and I still remember the blunt way in which the bus conductor shut the door of the bus and the bus took-off almost instantaneously...we waited upto 2:30 am in the Calicut bus stand under difficult conditions to board the early morning Karnataka SRTC super delux bus that would reach Calicut from Ernakulam around this time. Eventually we did board this bus reaching Bangalore at around 11 am.

The irony of the situation is that at  9 pm  there were several buses parked in the Calicut bus stand bound for Manantavady. For all Practical purposes we did not know where this place Manantavady was. Many people who visit Calicut for the first time would be in such quandary and must not make the oversight that we did.

Manantavady is a town in the Wayanad district of Kerala up the Western Ghat mountains.(Kalpetta is another town close to this place). It is a town on the same axis as Virajpet or even Madikeri. The principal fact of the matter is that Manantavady is relatively very close to the city of Mysore. Manantavady has a small befitting Kerala SRTC bus station. There are two routes from Manantavady to Mysore. One through Nagarahole forests through H D Kote (HeggadaDevana Kote) which should take three hours and another route through Gonikoppal which should take some four hours. Manantavdy also has a link road to Tellicherry.

Any one stranded in Calicut bus stand can try this route too to come to Bangalore. Calicut to Mananthavady to Mysore and to Bangalore.

R S KRISHNASWAMY(RSK) AND MYSELF

I met R S KRISHNASWAMY or RSK as he is known in the board room of MSRIM perhaps in the year 2004 or so for the first time where he was teaching Marketing and Gandhian Thoughts,subjects he used to teach in a spirited way and no sooner came to know he was a confidant and  friend of the children of  O K Nambiar and went to school together with them in Mysore.   He is the nephew of  R K LAKSHMAN the noted Cartoonist and is an alumnus of the National Institute of Engineering Mysore and a college mate of  the founder of Infosys Mr. Narayana Murthy. His son Chetan Krishnaswamy was on the advisory board of the Institute for some time.

NH 209 FASTER ACCESS TO GUNDLUPET

GUNDLUPET is one of the key hubs near Mysore which leads to Kerala and Tamil Nadu and as of now for all practical purposes the access to GUNDLUPET is via Mysore. A faster access can be mulled which needs exploration as a concept. Note the National Highway 209 through Kanakapura which has faster access to Chamarajanagar and hence GUNDLUPET  which must reduce travel times to a large extent. This corridor must be explored in practical terms.

WAYANAD NEAR BANGALORE

There is a less known tourist spot near Bangalore, more precisely near Mysore.It might be wrong to say less known as by the day many people are becoming aware of this Tourist destination.

Wayanad till the 18th century was less inhabited and the name Wayanad comes from Wayal-nad which means a land of many feilds.Wayanad has a very ancient history less discussed which links it to the Jain religion..this needs more research but possibly Jain monks took to this place for stay and penance.Wayanad is adjacent to Kodagu or Coorg and many roads link  Kodagu with Wayanad.

How to reach Wayanad? Take the Ooty highway from Mysore that goes through Nanjangud and then into a place called Gundlupet..at the Gundlupet check-post turn right into the Bandipur forest. Some one and a half hour journey from Gundlupet one reaches SultanBattery a key town in Wayanad.

The total travelling time from Bangalore to Wayanad could be some six hours or so.Sultan Battery ,Mananthavady and Kalpetta are the key cities of Wayanad relatively close to each other..there are many tourist spots in Wayanad which are less glorified by general public but none the less formidable.There are many smaller towns in Wayanad too like Vythiri and Panamaram.

WODEYAR / WADIAR THE ROYAL DYNASTY OF MYSORE

The Wodeyars also called the Wadiars are the royal clans based in  Mysore whose geneology encompasses various ethnic segments presently dominated by possibly Rajasthani descent.The growth of the Wodeyars could be traced to the fall of the Vijayanagar Empire in Srirangapattana.

My speculation is that the earliest Wadiars had some links with the more powerful Kolathiri dynasty of Malabar and in principle could be some form of an offshoot. I was planning some time back to dedicate a full fledged Blog to the various aspects of the Wadiar dynasty.

Kindly explore the exact dates but Raja Wodeyar is the founder of this dynasty in the mid seventeenth century based in Srirangapattana who took control of the Srirangapattana fort and conducted the administration there upon and even holding Dasara  processions at the present location of the daria daulat palace.The Dasara processions were imported into the Deccan mainland from the customs of Malabar.Many Wodeyar kings thereafter ruled over this feifdom which must have been a relatively small kingdom but none the less prosperous with agriculture flourishing in the Cauvery river basins.

For nearly forty years upto 1799 the Wodeyars were dethroned from power and confined within the Fort ,some of them as ordinary citizens with limited privileges and others in formal bondage.These forty years saw a transformation from the basic lines on which the Wodeyars conducted themselves by becoming more friendly with the various communities that helped them during their bondage.Note that there was a harlem in Srirangapattana that housed destitute women who belonged to various ethnic groups in the country and the uncertainty surrounding the various English upsurge from time to time made many feel anxious.

In 1799 the kingdom was handed over to the Wodeyars by  Arthur Wellesley to the Wadiar queen and Mummadi Krishnarajendra Wodeyar who was a small boy given the title of King who would operate under the aegis of Dewan Purniah.

Again from 1825 to 1875 the direct rule of the Kingdom was taken control of by the English..and from 1875 to 1947 various Wadeyar Kings were at the helm.The most recent of these Monarchs are Krishna Rajendra Wodeyar who ruled upto 1940 and thereafter by Jayachamarajendra Wadeyar.

The Wodeyar dynasty of Mysore have no doubt left a legacy in this part of the World largely in the fields of Education and their synergy with the English and team work led to harmony on one side and development of unprecedented kind on the other.