Sri Ramakrishna Vidyashala - Biodiversity, Playgrounds, Pool

Biodiversity, Playgrounds, Pool

The verdant 69-acre (280,000 m2) campus is flanked on the west by a T-shaped four-storey building whose terrace offers a panoramic view. That main building was declared open in 1953 by the statesman C. Rajagopalachari. The 33.3-meter open-air swimming pool, one of Mysore's oldest and finest, was inaugurated in 1957 by India's first Prime Minister, Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru.

There are 22 playgrounds for soccer, hockey, basketball, volleyball, and kho-kho, and a cricket pitch. A couple of small cottages, called kutiras, by a scenic pond in the campus, are used for meditation by visiting Ramakrishna Math monks. There is an automated laundry and a mechanized dairy housing 50 cows.

The campus hosts about a thousand species of flora including rarities such as a North American Giant Redwood and a Thai tree that blossoms every twelfth year, as well as plantations of sapota, arabica coffee, elephant grass (Saccharum ravennae), coconut, and silver oak. The campus is a sanctuary for nearly four hundred species of birds, including migrants such as the cormorant. An index of the campus fauna is available on signs to the left at the gates.

On the southeastern corner of Vidyashala's campus is located the Ramakrishna Institute of Moral and Spiritual Education, popularly called "Vedanta College," which offers a Bachelor of Education program and whose prayer hall is topped by a distinctive Pallava-style gopuram visible from about five kilometers around.

Vidyashala hosts an award-winning company of the Thirteen Karnataka Battalion of the National Cadet Corps (Army wing).