After reading dozens of blogs and 2 weekends of planning and postponing, we finally set off on what was to be my first trekking expedition. Skandagiri aka Kalwara betta aka Karavala Betta was on top of my to-trek list for quite some time. However due to lack of proper company I never got an opportunity to plan for this trek.
At last during mid April, on the tea table the proposal to trek Skandagiri was laid out. I got an ok from couple of my colleagues, while couple more indicated that this weekend was not good to go. Finally last week the date of the trek was nailed as May 7th 2011, Saturday. The participants myself, Vinay Krishna, my Boss Sreekanth, and my colleagues Vinay Bari and Vinod (Amol could not make it). It was an unilateral decision that we would be going by Vinod's newly purchased Honda City car, and we were all to meet up near Sreekanth's house.
Route: We had two options, one was to go via Nandi Hills & Mudenahalli and the second one was via NH7 and through Chickballapur town. We took the second one though it was couple of Kms longer, because we could drive comfortably on NH7 for most of the journey. We decided to drive up to Papagni Mutt (which is at the foot hills) and then start our trek. Check out the google route map at the link below
Vinod (coming from RT Nagar) picked me up at 4:45AM near hebbal flyover, we reached Swathi Gardenia at 4:52AM. Vinay Bari (henceforth would be addressed as VB) reached Swathi Gardenia (from Banaswadi ) at 5AM. Even though Sreekanth had throat problem he walked out of his apartment gate at 5AM. We took off from Swathi Gardenia restaurant (in Sahakar Nagar on NH7 road) exactly at 5:10AM. Vinod was in good mood and before we realized we were zooming past Devanahalli. The weather was pleasant and the NH7 was clear, without much traffic at that time of the day. Vinod might have touched 140kmph max speed.
Reached Chikballapur town by 5:50AM (about 53kms from starting point). Took a left turn just after the Indian Oil petrol pump (I believe this road is the MG Road of Chickballapur). Drove about 1Km and then took a left turn (right opposite to APMC yard). You will see an arch indicating that this road will lead you to Papagni Mutt. This part of the road is very narrow and not so comfortable. We hit a T junction after driving about 1KM, took the right turn and drove on a village road for about 5kms to reach the Mutt. We enjoyed this stretch of the drive as it was through small village. One can encounter the familiar village sights of cow sheds, hens on the road searching for their breakfast, ladies spraying water in front of their house, preparing it for a rangoli perhaps.
By the time we reached the Mutt (about 6:15AM) we were already hungry. Thanks to the sandwiches packed by Sreekanth's wife, we had couple of sandwiches each, and finished them even before we took our first steps on the trek. We were well stacked for the trek with bananas, sandwiches, nuts, chikkis, biscuits, chips, chocolates, water, Gatorade, nimbu pani etc. Based on what I had read in blogs, I told my friends that we could get a bread omlette on the peak. The weather was just right, but there was a very heavy gush of wind which made us feel that the temperature was cooler. Not knowing where to start the trek, we checked with couple of people in the mutt. They just said, behind the temple is the route which will lead us to the trek. We were excited, and started off (at 6:43AM) on the small pathway right behind the temple compound. Within minutes we returned back as we had encountered the end of the pathway.
Parked our Car near Mutt and ready to take off on our Trek.
We went back to the temple and enquired again, to hear the same directions "go behind the temple you will find the route". After brief discussion we decided to pursue the pathway further and took off again at about 6:50AM. About 50 meters into the trek we realized that the pathway ended. VB and Vinod did some research and said they found some route ahead. We continued further. Form this point on, the pathway was not clear, we literally had to clear the plants/thorny bushes to make our way and move forward. I was not sure if this was indeed the path which hundreds of trekkers take every weekend to reach the hilltop. Others expressed similar thoughts, but whenever we raised this point, VB spotted a way forward and thus we continued the trek.
Is this the actual trek route?
30 minutes or so into the trek, our doubts (that we are not on the right path) grew stronger but none of us were in the mood to turn back. By now we might have crossed a fifth of the hill. I was the first one to declare that I was exhausted. We took a brief break and had a replenishment of energy, thanks to the Banana's brought by Vinod. VB was in no mood to take longer break; he was raring to move forward. We started off again, with VB and Vinod leading the pack while Sreekanth kept an eye on me. The thought of returning back crossed my mind couple of times, but as I was the one who came up with the idea of this trek in the first place, I kept quiet and moved forward.
I thought, Vinay why did you come up with this brilliant idea of trekking? On any other Saturday morning at 8AM you would be drinking your morning cup of milk while reading Bangalore times. But this was not to be a normal Saturday morning, we were on our way trekking the famous Skandagiri hill, and it looked like we were not on the regular trek route. I came out of my thoughts and continued behind my friends.
At about 7:35AM we hit a huge rock, and we had to do a 60+ degree vertical climb (or should I say crawl?). VB was the first one to clear it and it was a rather difficult climb for him. Next was Vinod's turn and then Sreekanth's. I was famished, as I stood there my stomach declared bankruptcy; it just did not allow my body to take another step. This must have been the effect of not having proper Breakfast before the trek. The climb looked just impossible to me. So I declared that it would be the end of my trek forward. I shouted that I would just wait for them to complete their trek and join them on their way back. Sreekanth (who had done few treks himself before) assured me that we were not going to come back the same way downhill and he was sure there was another better route for us to go back. That is when I realized that we had already hit the "point of no return". I wondered how people trekked this hill especially the girls. I remembered several blogs which wrote about girls trekking this hill.
Near vertical climb enroute to the peak.
Looking back, Did we climb this rocky Terrain?
I might have stood there for about 10 minutes, had 2-3 gulps of Gatorade and regained my energies. With some encouraging words from my friends sitting above, I resumed my climb. The instructions were clear, do not stop in between just continue and climb till I crossed this huge rock. I did just like I was advised, without resulting in any tense moments. VB siad "Bread Omlette tho nahin mileaga" (We will not get Bread Omlette) on the peak. He felt there was no way one could have carried all the materials to prepare an omlette through this difficult terrain. We spotted an odd Coke can, water bottle here and there throughout the trek, which kept us going forward. Once we crossed the rock I sighed with relief. One Q crossed my mind though; did we clear the hardest part of the trek? As if VB heard my thoughts, he shouted that we had hit another difficult terrain.
Last man coming out…Vinay K
This one looked more difficult even to the great VB. However he was determined to clear it and found a way forward. This time we had to lift ourselves up with the help of the trunk of a plant and several roots which were hanging around. VB assured us that if we slipped and fell we would not roll down much further since we would be stopped by the bushes/plants, thanks to encouraging words of VB. VB was the first one to move forward and cleared this big rock, followed by Vinod and Sreekanth. Sreekanth offered to take my backpack just so that I would be able to lift myself up with lesser difficulty. I felt lighter without the backpack and was able to clear the next rock without much difficulty. I was literally hanging and climbed up by grabbing on to the roots as my friends did.
VB leading us from the front!
Once we all cleared this rocky terrain we took another 10 minute break, replenished ourselves with banana, Nimbu pani and Gatorade. At this point we spotted someone at the summit and it gave us immense energy and we felt that we would have cleared 3/4ths of the hill. All four of us continued the trek, and climbed up stepping on bunch of grass patches for hold. Another 10 minutes of trek and we cut across a pathway. That is when we fully realized that we did not take the regular trekking path, but we just climbed the hill perhaps taking a very difficult route. We then continued on the pathway and saw a group of girls and guys climbing down. We checked with them if they camped up on the hill for the night. The answer was NO, they started off on the trek after we started and they were on their way downhill while we were on our way to the summit (thanks to the difficult rock climbing we were involved in).
Refueling our batteries!
One of the girls warned us, that the difficult part of the trek was ahead of us. We just smiled and said we were coming from a near vertical rock climb and there was no way the next part would be difficult. Another 5 minutes of trek we reached a rock (at 9:30AM) which looked like the summit to us (but was not). We spotted large stone pillars lying around. All four of us just lied down on the large stone and just enjoyed the awesome view which was in front of us. For the first time during the trek I looked around and admired the beauty. Vinod declared that it was time to take a Kit Kat break. We relaxed for about 15-20minutes and felt much better to take our trek forward. This was the first place where we saw some directions (in white paint) indicating the way towards peak.
Now we joined the regular trekking route...see the directions
We resumed our trek, in relaxed mood, appreciating the beautiful view which was presented to us. 5 more minutes of trek and the sight of a small temple like structure made us realize that we reached the peak. Here we were after a grueling 2Hr rock climbing, root hanging, stem grabbing trek and all the pain vanished once we got a 360 degree view of the surroundings from the peak.
Victorious team! (L to R) Sreekanth, VB, yours truly & Vinod
While we were walking around enjoying the view, Sreekanth checked out the temple like structure. He came out and slowly said "guys, how would you like to have bread omlette?" I was surprised for a second and just rushed inside, what was a small temple, to find one guy sitting there with a stove, bread, eggs, oil, cup noodles, flask etc. Here's a guy (Amarnath) who was running a mini food stall on the Skandagiri hills we all were excited, Vinod ordered 4 double bread omlettes.
Amarnath and his mini food stall.
Panoramic View of the surroundings! Courtesy Olympus Master 2 software
While we walked around calling our families on phone and letting them know that we reached the peak and were safe etc, the bread omlette's were getting ready. Vinod said "Kuch meetha ho jai", Sreekanth carried few Dairy milk bars and we celebrated our victory with dairy milk chocolates. Couple of guys arrived at the temple and ordered for bread omlette's. They said Amarnath spotted us quite early in the morning, since we took the difficult route we took longer than the other guys. The bread omlette was quite filling; we followed it up with a cup of hot tea. It was quite windy, Amarnath warned us, do not go near the edges as the wind was blowing hard.
Hot Hot bread Omlette… As usual VB leading from the front!!
Amarnath said that the temple was for lord Ganesha. The temple was quite dark and smelly; I saw newspapers spread inside on the ground, indicating that people might have slept inside. I spotted a nandi, which indicated that the temple could have been made for lord Shiva, and rightly so I spotted a shiv lings kept in one corner. The sanctum sanatorium had a big stone base on which there was a Ganesha idol. Amarnath mentioned that there would be about 50-100 people camping on weekend nights to spot sun rise. He gave us some info about the hill and its surroundings. We took few group photos and as we started feeling the heat we decided it was time to head back. We started our downhill trek at 11:00AM, which meant that we spent about 1 hour on the peak. Since Amarnath did not accept credit cards, we paid him 180Rs in cash (for 4 double bread omlettes and 4 Tea's).
Inside the Lord ganesha temple!
Putting my photography skills to use...a view from inside of temple
We took the much travelled pathway on our way back. It looked pretty easy to us, about 30 minutes of downhill trek we decided to stop for few minutes. Had some nuts, Britania cake and almost emptied all our water. After 5 minutes of break we took off and reached a small rock formation at 11:42AM, which looked like a small cave. It was quite cool under the huge rock boulders so we decided to enjoy the spot.
Cave like formation gave us much needed coolness and shade!
A 10-15minute break under the boulders made our day. We resumed our downhill walk just before Noon and reached the Papagni mutt at about 12:30PM. We were surprised to see a nicely marked trek route all along during our way back, as against the difficult terrain without any signs that we took while climbing uphill. There was a small water tank near the temple where we freshened up little bit, before hitting the road in the Honda City.
The trek route which we had taken to reach the hill top (marked in red color)!!!
Do’s and Don’ts: Have a good breakfast before you start the trek. Carry enough fluids, and sufficient quantity of healthy snacks/fruits. Carry some first aid like bandaids, ointment, moov spray, hand sanitizer etc. Start as early as you can, just to beat the heat. Wear comfortable pair of dress (ladies avoid sarees), and good shoes, a cap, sunglasses, a good camera to capture all the fun moments.
The trek route starts behind the “Bhojan shala” and not behind the temple as we were told. You will find a 300mts kucha road and at the end of it a decent path for trek. Rest assured, Amarnath will make sure you get a good snack in the middle of nowhere.
We drove back while several questions were popping in our minds, What if we encountered some danger while climbing the rocks? What if one of us got hurt during our stunts? What if we were stuck in the middle? Etc. Etc. I felt happy that we were back in the car, safe and without any major incident.
We drove back through Chickballapur town and in few minutes were zooming on NH7 back to Namma Bengaluru. After a well deserving lunch break in Bhagini Grand restaurant (just after Chikka Jala) we reached the Sahakar Nagar meeting point roughly at 2:30PM. Vinod dropped me at my home exactly at 2:50PM; it just took me 2 minutes to get fresh up and crashed on the bed for a good long zzzzz...
