SavanDurga( aka Savan Durga)

Time to move on to my first bike trip (actually considering that everyday i was traveling almost 40 km daily up-down to my college, everyday is a bike trip). This was in the beginning of 4th Sem and we decided on bike trip due to the pretty bad experience on Bus to Mekedat. Rajesh suggested Savan Durga as a nice place to trek.Savan Durga is a Monolith Rock around 1200 m high near Magadi.

New Characters:

Srikanth(aka kaams) : Highly enthusiastic trekker. Probably the person with highest stamina though he doesn't exactly look like that. Check out his blogspot for his rather drab view of same stuff: http://srikanth-darpana.blogspot.com/







Rajesh : With rajesh around, excitement[aka accidents mostly] is guaranteed . He ll be first to discover if there is any signal in any mountain as cell phone is his best buddy, whether we are in college or top of mountain.




THE TREK

Date and Time: February 2005 - 7 am

First thing as soon as we assembled at around 7 in the morning somewhere near Vijayanagar, we realized that no one brought their cams( i remembered this after scanning my harddisk and finding no pics of this particular trip only). So the pics here are all borrowed ones [;)]

6 of us - me, Keerthy, Srikanth, Avinash, Datta and Rajesh left on 3 bikes - My Enticer, Keerthy's Splendour and Datta's Nova(which he refused to let me ride even though i offered to exchange Enticer for Nova !!! ) . My bike was still fairly new and totally enjoyed the ride. We took the Magadi road which was pretty good and reached Magadi in an hour. Had breakfast there and packed some stuff for lunch too(which we later realised wasn't enough at all). In about 20 minutes from magadi, we reached the base of Savan Durga(Since the hill had a fairly famous temple, most locals knew the directions well). Parked the bikes near a temple behind which was the starting point for the ascent of the Savan Durga at around 9.30 am.

You ll be confronted with a breathtaking view at the foot of the hill itself. Fairly steep looking and high mountain. Started the climb enthusiastically. There are directions and arrow marks most of the way. Just following them would ensure that we don't get lost. There was one particular point where there was very steep portion of mountain in which some had expressed his love via painting their names ..me and Keerthy did try to climb that portion unsuccessfully ..wonder how that guy did that ..love overcomes height too [;)]..

Climb was real fun. It was fairly steep at places. We reached the top in little less than 2 hours. There is a small temple at the top and nice views all around. After some time we realized that we had planned on a 1-day trip and it was still not yet 12. So we set about looking around to see if we could probably reach one of the other peaks that were visible from Savan Durga. Found one that looked reachable(damn optimistic thought) and started getting down the valley between the 2 mountains. After a while, we had get down a very steep slope which we did by sliding down and reached a dead end. In the full enthu we had sliding down, we forgot that sliding up was not an option and hence had to struggle really hard to come up. Avinash as usual never listened to anyone(who asked him not to get down) and had to take multiple tries with every time he tried climbing up, he used to slide down. Eventually we came up to the temple without accomplishing our mission of trekking to neighbouring peak , had lunch and started the trek down Savan Durga.

Since Savan Durga is a fairly small climb, getting down is even easier though we need to crouch and use our hands to get down as well at couple of places. We also had a major accident while getting down though. What happened was i started running down the slope at some point and Rajesh too did the same thing. But our speed only increased and stopping was becoming very difficult. I finally stopped but Rajesh didnt. I just turned around to see Rajesh almost coming directly at me at fair speed. Me being no hero didnt even think of stopping him(We both would have went down i guess due to impact). Instead just moved a bit, let Rajesh run along his path which he did for some without stopping and reaching close to edges of the hill. Just when we thought we were going to witness major disaster, Rajesh did a brilliant move of basically falling down as that was the only way to stop his downward journey. Ended with only minor bruises and major scoldings from others.

We got down finally around 2 pm. Since we still had time we decided to take a different route while coming back. Took the road the joins the Mysore road and first went to Manchinbele dam which was ok at best and then went to Big Banyan Tree on Mysore road. Spent some time there - though we realised we were at wrong place at wrong time. It was evening and most people there were either couples or families. So left there pretty soon and reached home by 7pm.

I was overall a pleasant and adventurous experience and though i went on later to much larger treks later, Savan Durga remains one of my favourites.

Difficulty Level: Moderate

Time Taken for the Trek: 3 hours ( 2 to climb and 1 to come down)

Route:

1. From Bangalore, take the Magadi road(towards Magadi). Magadi is around 60 km from Bangalore.
2. Take the left turn just before Magadi town that leads towards Ramanagaram.
3. Proceed around 10 km to reach Savan Durga

Distance: 70 km from Bangalore

Better To Know:

1. Private transport as though buses are available to Magadi - It will be difficult to reach Savan Durga from Magadi.
2. The rocks would be difficult to negotiate during rains - not much vegetation to take support while climbing/getting down.