Dodda Aalada Mara (The big Banyan Tree) Karnataka, India – A weekend destination from Bengaluru

This is a small weekend spot. We started our journey from Electronic City through the Nice road to Mysore. The big Banyan tree is in Bangalore – Mysore road; exactly in Kethohalli Village.

It’s a giant single tree which is spread across 3 acres (as per Wiki info). It’s the largest tree in Karnataka and the second largest tree in India!! Do you know, this young man is 400 years of age!!

Within 1 hour we reached our destination. There’s no entry fee. Though it was a Sunday, it was kind of crowded. The tree is very bigger than I expected and I was really surprised to know how a tree can grow like this!! The main tree has succumbed to natural disease and the tree will looks like many different trees.

On some part of the tree, we could see an extra support given, preventing it from getting damaged. There’s a security guard who always roam around the tree and will warn the visitors from hanging the tree. Some renovation work were going on, when we visited the place – it seems the authorities are trying their best to maintain and care this heritage.

Beware of crazy monkeys – yeah, a lot of crazy monkeys are sheltered on the tree and they were snatching food and bags from the visitors. So, be care ful if you are roaming with any food packets in your hand. And our little one was too scared of monkeys 🙂

Banyan trees are always part of worships and in hindu religious concepts too!! Yeah, here also we can see a small Siva temple and some people were offering kind of poojas in the temple. 

The most worrying part was the young man has got numerous scars – people used to write their names on the tree. Don’t they have any other place to write their names 🙁

It’s of-course one time visit place from all the hurry burry of city life. The place will give you calmness and you’ll get relaxed too! 

On our way to this spot, on both the sides of the road, there  were few farms and nurseries for both indoor and outdoor plants. All the plant lovers, will love this for sure. If you have enough time when you visit here, just take a walk around and you’ll get some variety of plants 🙂

On our way back, we stopped near a grape seller on the road-side who is selling 100RS for a basket of grapes in a vehicle. We bought a basket of grapes. It was yummy and sweet 🙂