Heart-shaped paddy farm a tourist attraction in Chikkamagaluru

Chikkamagaluru: Although it is not unusual to find people from cities visiting popular tourist destinations stop by fields of flowers, and take photographs and selfies, a paddy farm owned and cultivated by two brothers in a small hamlet in Chikkamagaluru has turned into quite an attraction among locals and visitors alike.
Bamikonda is a hilly hamlet, not too far from Kalasa town, with the few houses dotting the slope of the undulating terrain.It is here that the paddy farm of Krishna Gowda and Vishwanath Gowda is nestled. What makes this paddy farm unique is the shape that the crops have been hemmed into: A heart. Interestingly, that their paddy farm was shaped as attractively remained unnoticed by the brothers themselves till it started gaining in popularity.
“We really did not notice the shape of the field. We shaped our farm in this way to ensure to retain water and fertility of the soil. Someone clicked a few photographs, uploaded them on social media, which went viral. The shape can be distinguished only from a distance, Krishna told TOI.
The brothers’ ancestors settled down in Bamikonda nearly a century ago, and started cultivating paddy at the foot of the hill. Both Krishna and Vishwanath have been tilling the land with bullock-drawn carts.
Divin Mudigere, among the first travellers to have stumbled upon this vista, said, “One gets to Bamikonda by a road that is in terrible shape, more so during the monsoon. But it was a great moment for me, to capture the scene in front of me.”
Meanwhile, owners of resorts and homestays in Mudigere taluk in Chikkamagaluru are more than pleased with the addition of another tourist attraction, albeit a remote one. Owner of a hometay in Bamikonda Abhi Ballal told TOI that Krishna and Vishwanath were his neighbours. “They had no idea that the paddy farm would draw visitors,” he said.