Mysuru: It is the monsoon season and after a long time the dams in the State are full. Krishnaraja Sagar Dam (KRS) near Mysuru and the Brindavan Gardens inside it, one of the most famous tourist attractions in the country, is filled with people from morning till evening throughout the week and on weekends, the crowd almost becomes unmanageable.

The scene was no different yesterday as nearly one lakh people from all parts of Karnataka thronged KRS from morning till evening. Another major attraction apart from the illuminated Brindavan Gardens, is the illumination of the crest gates (from where the water gushes) in the form of the national tri-colour with more than 500 LED lights, which is adding to the glory of the dam.

The mobile phones of each and every visitor was clicking the coloured spectacle as the water in different colours of saffron, white, green, red, purple, yellow and navy blue came rushing with full force from the opened crest gates.

As the evening progressed, the density of traffic increased with people from Mysuru, Mandya, Hassan, Chamarajanagar, Kodagu, Bengaluru and other parts coming to Brindavan Gardens in taxis, buses, private cars, two-wheelers and maxi-cabs. There was chaos as with this unexpected rush the traffic moved at snail’s pace.

The visitors, right from infants to ninety-years-olds, including women and children, were caught in the melee but everyone was found thoroughly enjoying themselves once they saw the waters and the sound it was making coming out of few of the 48 automatic gates installed in the dam built in 1924, all their frustration and fatigue vanished.

Hundreds of vehicles line-up

The sudden influx of vehicles created huge parking problems. They were parked haphazardly all over the place on the roads leading to KRS. The traffic was lined-up to nearly four to five kilometres and it took two hours to reach the dam.

In this melee, an ambulance was also stuck and people themselves cleared the way for the ambulance to pass through.

The Karnataka State Industrial Security Force personnel providing protection to the dam, the KRS Police and the District Armed Reserve Police, who are involved in controlling the traffic, were taken by surprise and were unable to control the traffic as their number was not sufficient. As a result, both the public and the Police were put to a lot of inconvenience.

Since the traffic increased from four in the afternoon, Dy. SP Vishwanath, Srirangapatna Police Station Inspector Ravindra, Sub-Inspectors Byatrayagowda,

Puneeth, Suresh, Pramod and the rest of the staff worked till late in the night to clear the traffic on the narrow two-way road from Pump House to Belagola.

People also thronged Venugopalaswamy Temple at the Backwaters of KRS. It took nearly three-and-a-half-hours to drive back to Mysuru, said one of the visitors.

Hongalli village doubles as parking lot

Hongalli village adjoining KRS has about an acre of land and the villagers there offered the land free for the parking of tourist buses and cars.

Former Hongalli Gram Panchayat President Nandini Lokesh, speaking to Star of Mysore here this morning, said that this is the first time in her life that she had seen such a vast flow of humanity in KRS. “I came to this village about 17 years ago after my marriage. It looks like this is the first time that I have seen so many people visiting KRS. We have even allowed free parking of buses and cars in the vacant nearly one acre of land the village has and that is the least we can do as people have come from distant  parts,” she said.

Their family grows coconut and paddy in the field adjoining the river and many visitors thronged their field destroying the crops, she said and added that even though they suffered some loss, it was compensated by the unbounded joy on the face of visitors seeing  the gushing water.