ON A HIGH

Shivagange

2010-07-18T10:06:00.001-07:00

The summer after the end of college in 2007 was officially the last holidays for most of us(Except the ones who did masters later). Made lots of plans for many get-together trips and treks but eventually shivagange was the only one that materialized.

Shivagange is a small hillock near Dobbspet in Tumkur district that is famous for a shiva temple and olakala Teertha. There are more chances of finding temple devotees than trekker in this particular hill.

Our normal gang assembled for the trek except couple of folks who went to their native places. In pursuit of a female company to convince her parents for the trek, harini finally managed to find an unlikely companion and we were all set for the trek.

New Characters:

Balakrishna: The most mischievous and funny guy of our group. But shifts seamlessly from comedy stories to horror stories anytime especially when the timing is right(i.e. in middle of forest at midnight). Nature lover and more likely to be found somewhere in north-east of india than in bangalore though he is supposed to be a software engineer working here.

Vinutha: Surprising company for our trek. Very simple and soft-spoken girl. Completed her first trek with us with absolutely no complaints.

The Trek

Date: May 2007
Time: 7 am

8 of us - me, Keerthy, Srikanth, Shreyas, Pavan, Harini, Bala and vinutha started off in 4 bikes towards Tumkur road. Morning rides are always pleasant and after an hour of riding we stopped for breakfast at Kamath Upachar where disaster struck(for only me). After breakfast we were just taking pics including harini riding my famous Enticer ;) when i decided uncharacteristically to try a wheelie. With my enticer not really being conducive to a wheelie took srikanth's discover. Totally misjudging what even 112 cc can do, ripped the throttle and left the clutch and after a fleeting moment of being high in the air literally fell crashing down. However the disaster was not really falling which barely caused any damage to either me or the bike but being chided for the first(and so far last) time by the bike owner, Mr kaams !!

Not long after that, we left the restaurant with me feeling stupid, srikanth sulking and rest having a good laugh about it. Shivagange is about 10 km from Dobbaspet junction and we reached there quickly enough. The entrance to the hill is via a temple gopura where the bikes can be parked.

Most of the trek up has steps carved out of stone so it is hardly a challenging trek. To make it more interesting we generally avoided steps and walked directly on rocks where possible. The most fascinating or rather irritating part of the trek is the abundance of monkeys all around. Unlike other places, the ones in shivagange are rather aggressive and would actually pluck things from your hand/shoulder. Any eatery that is exposed is likely to end up in one of the monkey's mouth. Bala lost his bag temporarily before he heroically retrieved it from the monkey that took it !!

There are few temples along the way to the peak with one famous spot being Olakala Teertha. Basically there is a narrow crevice between rocks where spring water flows and one needs to stretch their hands to touch them. The legend is that anyone who has sinned will not be able to touch it while a pious person would be able to touch the water. Considering that the only person in our group who couldn't touch it was vinutha (and she was mighty upset with that) the legend was dismissed immediately though we had some fun at her expense.

Almost at the peak there is a Nandi statue with a nice view and just beyond that we reach the top of shivagange where of course another temple welcomed us. The climb to the top is not that strenuous even in summer and you would find lots of devotees climbing to the top on barefoot. There are no of small shops along the way selling snacks, buttermilk and cool drinks.

There were nice views all around though it being summer there was not much greenary to be seen. It was quite hot and complaining from harini about her skin resulted in staying about an hour before starting the descent down. Most of the time was spent in posing for pics.

Descent down was quick and reached down by 1. Swapped our bikes and came back to bangalore for lunch. The roads were good enough to easily maintain 80-90 speeds then. Met few other friends - Sharath, Keerthana, Padmini, Rajesh, Kiran and Akshaya who couldn't come for the trek for a rather late lunch in some hotel in Rajajinagar( too far back to remember). The contrast between sun-burned trekkers and freshened up rest of the gang can be visibly seen in the pics !!

Overall a nice short trek that doesn't physically stress out much. A rather short drive and doesnt require much planning.

Route to Shivagange:

1. Take the Tumkur road if coming from Bangalore City. A new alternative is to take the NICE road from either bannerghatta road, kanakapura road or mysore road. This joins the Tumkur road much further down avoiding most of the traffic at yeshwantpur, jalahalli cross etc.

2. Take left at Dobbaspet towards shivagange onto SH3 (there are boards indicating the same)

3. From there it is about 12 km on small winding roads. There are enough boards the guide the people.

Distance from Bangalore - 60 km

Better to Know:

1. Buses from Bangalore to Tumkur might stop at Dobbaspet and one can take autos from there.
2. Since the trek is short no need to carry anything other than water. Snacks and cool drinks available on the way up.
3. Strictly don't carry anything in hand or on outer pouches of bags. Pack and zip up the bags to avoid wrestling with monkeys.
4. If eateries are bought from vendors finish it there itself.
5. There is not really much cover at the top except couple of rocks. So better to reach early in the morning or late in evenings during summer.

Kodachadri

2010-02-18T21:34:00.001-08:00

Kodachadri(1343 m peak) was a late addition to our plan of going to NITK Surathkal for their cultural fest in 2008. Going so far (relatively by our 8th sem standards) across the western ghats and not trekking seemed like an oxymoron. Kodachadri is a fairly popular spot for guys willing to trek in western ghats. There are couple of different routes to reach the peak and lots of varying answers as to how long it takes to trek this mountain.

The peak is 1343 metres high and located in Shimoga district. There is a jeep track that goes near the peak for people who want to avoid trekking and there is Bhattru Mane at top where you can get hot food.

About 11 of us from our group had attended the cultural fest at Surathkal which was awesome fun. The special part of it was midnight volleyball one of the days spiced up by shreyas in particular. Bharath was named BD in this trip and got stuck with that name forever. Most of us got temporary tattoos done too and showed it off next couple of weeks when we were back in college. Datta won a photography contest for which he never got the certificate nor prize money(so all of us didnt get treat either :( ) . St Mary's Island was another special part of this trip. Pavan and Goutham decided against trekking as pavan got some work back in Bangalore and they returned directly from Surathkal while the rest of proceeded to kodachadri.

New Characters:

Shreyas: More experienced than any of us in trekking. But surprisingly this was the first time we went on trekking together. Normally ready to take any risk and at home in nature. Probably my only company to literally get high for many of initial treks.

Mohammed Haseeb: If 2 wheels can do it why should the 2 poor legs be used is his mantra. Fortunately there are places that aren't accessible on bike. So he grudgingly accompanies us on few select treks. Shorter the trek , higher will be his enthusiasm !!

Rest of us who went to kodachadri with me were Keerthy, Srikanth, Rajesh, Dattatreya, Bharath and sudhindra.

The Trek

Date: Feb 2007
Time : 6 am

We had a very tight schedule for the whole day leaving from Surathkal to kodachadri and back to Bangalore the same evening. The return bus was booked from Kollur at around 6 in evening. So we had finish trekking and be back by then.

Left Surathkal early morning and took the bus to Kundapura. From there we got the bus to Kollur. Few guys went to the temple while rest just spent the time around. We got to know we had to take a bus from Kollur to Hosanagara that goes near kodachadri gate and start trekking from there and the last bus back to Kollur was at 4 pm. If we missed that we would miss the bus back to bangalore too. So we had to be at full pace at this trek without whiling away time too much at any place. In addition everyone was vague as to the time it would take to actually trek. Answers varying from 3 to 6 hours up.

Took the first available from kollur and in about an hour got off at the point from where there is road going right from where we needed to start trekking. Fortunately every one was ready for the rather quick pace we had to maintain. Initial part of the trek is very easy. Hardly any slope and mostly grassland. There is very wide clear path in this part of trek. We covered this stretch at breakneck speed with hardly any breaks. There are couple of shops towards the end of this plain which we got after about an hour of fast walking.

By that time sun started and the path became more steep. It looked like trekking finally instead of just walking on grasslands. With only haseeb and su struggling a little, rest of us pushed them and continued our march towards kodachadri. After a while we were able to see the peak and there was moderate greenery around. Being February, it wasn't exactly lush nor was it dry. But there was enough forest cover surrounding us. At one end of group Rajesh was eternally on phone (with us gossiping about the caller ;) ) and at the other end Haseeb cursing for making him do it (trekking that is). There was one final stretch of 1 foot wide path with steep drop on one side which was the only risky part of the entire trek. After about 2.5 hours after starting, we reached the house where bhatru stays. Most of us exhausted by then due to the speed we managed.

We ordered food and decided to roam around in the meanwhile. There is a direct jeep path that comes up to this place via a different route.There is a small temple which can be obtained on climbing further from the bhatru mane. The path to this is rather steep and narrow. Me and shreyas went to look for the waterfall which was near bhatru's place. But after few minutes we kind of gave up and came back to have lunch.The lunch wasn't great but i guess anything would taste good when you are hungry and tired. Had quick lunch and decided to start back.

Started back around 2 pm and it was continuous run to the bottom as i perceive it. None of us took any big breaks and just ran/jogged/walked till we reached the road from where we started trek in the morning. There are too many lose stones in the path down and hence the probability of twisting ankle wasn't that high on coming down too fast. By around 3.30 pm we were comfortably at the supposed bus stand and waited for the bus to take us down to Kollur. This was one descent where we didnt enjoy the surroundings that much and focused too much on speed and time. Not the ideal way to trek in general but thats the best we could do then.

We got the bus at 4 and man how these guys drive in ghats. We were sitting in last couple of rows of the bus and for every turn from left to right or vice versa which was taken without even a faint application of breaks we fell to the other side. The question of what happens if there is opposing vehicle wasn't much on the driver's thoughts i suppose. Irrespective of how you drive to be confident on someone's driving isn't easy and it was actual relief to reach the base safely. Not surprisingly, we were well in time for the bus back to Bangalore. Had food at a hotel and took the bus we had already booked at 6.

Route to Kodachadri:

1. Buses from Bangalore to Kollur via Shimoga goes via Kodachadri gate.
2. Buses from Bangalore to Kollur via Mangalore reach Kollur via different route. Get down at Kollur and catch bus to hosanagara.
3. Can go in a private vehicle too. Self-driven cars parking might not be safe though.

Total Distance: 400km from Bangalore

Better To Know:

1. Accomodation need to be booked before hand in bhatru mane or PWD houses available there.
2. Camping in tents also possible.
3. Mobile signal available most of the trek.
4. Rainy season is supposed to be more fun.

Maribetta (Bananthi Mari Betta)

2009-10-06T03:11:00.000-07:00

A unique pattern i have observed in trekking is the fact that majority of them seem to be from IT or other technical domains. This observation is from the blogs i have read (which could be only because only IT guys are into blogs !!) but also from the groups we have met while trekking at different places. Considering that probably less than 1% Indians work in technical field, it is fairly surprising to encounter so many guys and girls from tech field while trekking.

So maribetta was different trek in the sense it was biggest group among the treks we had done till then, included girls for first time and included some who just wanted to know what this craze called trekking was all about :) . We were planning on a bike trip for a long time and to combine it with trekking is the most ideal way to spend a day !! Due to diversity of the gang interested this time, we decided to search for a smaller trek and after going through numerous blogs, we finalized upon mari betta.

Mari Betta is a small mountain near kanakapura that has a durga temple at the peak(hence the name) . The peak is not that high compared to other popular trekking spots around bangalore but the way to the top is fairly thorny and confusing at places. Datta who was supposed to come till previous day fell ill and had to cancel at last moment and as a result srikanth had to ride alone (which he was extremely happy with - please ask him why) on his fairly new discover. So it was 11 of us - me, akshaya, bharath, harini, keerthy, keerthana, kiran, padmini, pavan, sharath and srikanth on 6 bikes !!. Lots of new guys with only 4 of us having trekked often before.

New Characters:

Lots of them this time(Not sure if i even have good close up pics of them ..so my anticipatory apologies to them)

Keerthana: VTU gold medallist in 2007 ( I should get a treat for that !!) and part of our gang from first sem. Extremely level-headed and practical except when she is with her boyfriend(who later became her husband - I guess treat cancelled). Has lots of varied interests.

Padmini: Another old(!!) member of our group. Her favorite hobby is just to pester others about what they did interesting recently(what and all can a person do ??) . A decent trekker though she hasn't done it often. Easy going and very good listener.

Bharath Raj (aka BD): Gadget guru with lots of free T-shirts(courtesy his brother and dad). Surprisingly good trekker. Can talk for hours about nothing, so a good company on trips :) - whenever he decided to make an appearance that is.

Sharath(aka sherry): Impersonates everyone from Raj Kumar to our HOD. Crazy about and extremely good at cricket. Purchases mobiles as often i as buy shirts(or may be even more frequently)..and finally hates trekking like anything :) (He came to this trek just to be with someone mentioned above ;))

Kiran: His looks totally belies his enthusiasm for physical activities. Even his first bad experience at this smaller trek didnt deter him from trekking KP later. Hardly loses temper and extremely good at making people sleep by his real-life stories (unintentional of course).

Harini: Has an extremely annoying but interesting habit of changing rapidly and totally shocking rest of us. Loves trekking and is very good at it. Easily matches most of the guys in her stamina levels. Was initially hyper-sensitive and later became hyper-active(She claims she is mature now :) )

Akshaya: Another person who probably dislikes thought of trekking :) . Avid blogger and a radical.

Uff..coming to actual trek now.

The Trek:

Date: Jan 26, 2007 (yep republic day)
Time: 7 am

Everyone except srikanth assembled at keerthy's house(which more or less is our standard assembling spot). Everyone turned up on time except me and we left around 7.30 after i got couple of uncomplimentary looks for new hair style(it was bad ..) . Srikanth joined us at konankunte cross.

The kanakapura road is fairly decent stretch and was fairly pleasant to ride the bikes. The highlight of the bike ride was Harini's really unnatural pillion position(tilting 30 degrees to the right while the bike was going straight !!) and yet managing not to fall in the entire trip. Wish we could have taken pics of that. We reached Kanakapura in an hour and had breakfast. Maribetta was supposed to be only 4-5 km from kanakapura road. But when asked people around, hardly anyone seemed to have heard of it and got lots of confusing responses. Finally one of them mentioned that it is popular more as Banantha Mari and not as maribetta. After that it wasn't that difficult to find the starting point. There are few houses before it and we parked our vehicles in one of the houses.

9.30 am.

Started trek. Initially there is large stretch of mud road from where we can get a view of 2 mountains with a valley in between. We started towards the valley from the right side. After climbing for few minutes we reached what looked like a dead end with a very steep mountain wall in front us. Keerthy went ahead with finding a way up the mountain with total disregard as to how others will climb it even if he could manage it. After climbing few feet and forcing us to take a pic of his dare-devilry, he literally slid downwards without much traction from the mountain. Me and Pavan also wanted to pose for pics so climbed few feet as well. Eventually we figured out that this was wrong way and came down.

11 am.

Same position as we were before and now we started moving towards the left mountain that appears smaller. I climbed one small stretch and reached the peak and again came back down due to lack of further route. Temperature was fairly high already and the newcomers ' enthusiasm was dropping at exponential rate. We found few school kids who had holiday due to republic day who were going to the durga temple at peak. They helped us with the route and we were ideally supposed to go through the valley and not through the mountain at all !!. From the position we were, it took some deviation to reach the valley with the path filled with thorny bushes and some steep rocks and constant climbing as well as going down. Few of them especially padmini and kiran got major treatment from the thorns.

The kids were confident however and so we followed them. After 30 odd minutes of pushing Kiran and Akshaya (courtesy keerthy :) ) , they weren't willing to come up further. Added with this Sharath's acrophobia, they decided they had enough. Though padmini and keerthana were still in condition to continue with trekking, they decided to assist the rest in going down than coming up. So we split up into 2 groups - Sharath, Keerthana, Padmini, Akshaya and Kiran going down and rest of us following the kids up. ( The guys going down had their own share of adventures including getting frightened out of their skin by a snake and getting scraped by thorns all around).

1.30 pm

After about an hour of moderate trekking in hot sun, we reached the durga temple. After contemplating whether to continue trek further to the higher peak(the taller mountain on the right side) , we opted out of the option due to time constraints and the fact few of friends were waiting down. So just had the packed lunch. Few went into the temple and after some rest, we decided to get down. Now having taken more than half day primarily to wrong routes, we weren't really sure how long it takes to go down.
Since the kids were still with us, they pointed the direct route through valley down (which were supposed to use to come up as well) and due to now-acquired habit of running more or less while coming down, just trekked down at rapid pace.

3.30 pm.

Harini stunned us during the entire climb and descent with her 0% complaining and never slowing us either way. Bharath was good for his first trek with us as well. The descent took around 30-40 minutes at best. The path was lovely with mostly trees all through giving a feeling of walking through a jungle. We were at the house with the bikes around 4 am and heard the interesting adventures from the guys who had come down earlier. In a way it looked like they had more fun than us as we didn't really have that great views from the peak.

So spoke for a while, got on our bikes and left. Reached bangalore fairly early than what we had planned.

Route to Maribetta:

1. From Bangalore, take the Kanakapura Road and go to Kanakapura around 45 Km from Banashankari.
2. From Kanakapura, take the road towards Ramanagara(Mysore).
3. You should find this after 5-6 km. Better to ask people around for starting point of the trek.

Total Distance: 50 km from Bangalore.

Better To Know:

1. Better to go via bikes/cars. Of course buses can be availed till kanakapura and since this place is fairly close to kanakapura, one can hire autos till destination.
2. Need to pack food as nothing was available near the temple.
3. Mobile network was available.

Yaana(aka Yana) & Jog Falls

2009-05-02T08:01:00.000-07:00

Yaana is situated in the evergreen forests of the Sahyadri Range of Mountains. It is known for two gigantic rock formations of a height of 90 meters and 120 meters respectively called "Mohini Shikhara" and "Bhairaveshwara Shikhara".It is a fairly popular place for trekking/visiting. All people like us saw some pics on the internet and were enamoured by the twin towers and decided to go there only to return rather disappointed - more of it later..

This is probably our first multi-day trekking trip and was not in our plans at all. One of our lecturers (actually our favorite !!) was getting married in Shimoga and we decided to go along to the wedding and jog falls as most of us had never been to it. With Yana being close by it looked like it would be perfect.

We had new additions to our group as well.

New Character:

Sudhindra(aka Su): His josh for trekking can be obtained from the fact that he never came back trekking in any our future trips :). Extremely jovial and sporty and a poet as well. His combats with avinash are the best to watch.

The Trip:

Date and Time: May 2006 9.30 pm

Day 1:

Took the bus from Majestic to Sirsi. Nothing special on this bus ride(compared to our previous journey to talakadu) except avinash who kept sleeping on one old

guy's shoulder. The road was pretty good on the whole and most guys got few hours of sleep at least (except me the poor soul who can't sleep in the bus :( ). We reached Sirsi early morning around 6 am. There is a bus that leaves from Sirsi to Kumta at 7 am. We caught the bus and got off at Vaddi Cross. There is a path from here to Yana that is motorable for some distance but not completely. It is exactly 12 km from here and there are milestones as well as boards that indicate the distance regularly. We started walking with full enthu as it was still only 8 and the path was almost through a forest kind of region with lots of trees around.

Now though we were all from Computer Science dept, we were still far from being net-savvy. No eat, sleep and breathe internet(a state which we eventually reached). So we had not done enough research about this place(other than seeing 1-2 pics) and what we knew from someone' some friend had went to this place some time back etc kind of stories and all of us thought we will be starting trekking( as in climbing up and not on flat surface) soon and continued walking. It was frantic pace and sun was not yet burning us, so in an hour we covered 6 km and took few pics here and there. Still there was no sign of any climb at all. Each sighting of a mountain was welcomed by the gang with anticipation that we were going to ascend that(though they didnt actually match the pics we had seen). But ended in dissapointed. After a while motorable road ended and we had to follow a small walkable path.

After exactly 2 hours after we started, we finally saw the 2 shikaras. They were visible from a distance and it was awesome. Pavan and Datta went full on with photography while me, keerthy and srikanth were in awe as to how we were going to trek this mountain as it looked fairly vertical !! We thought it was worth the long walk we had ..We reached the base of the mountain and there were quite a lot of tourists many of whom had hired jeeps and tempos to come here instead of hiking like us. That is where it hit us. Much to our chagrin, we got to know that this was the destination and the end of trek not the beginning as we had hoped. Without nothing else to do and totally disapointed, we just looked around the mountains and few caves that were there and took lots of pics. After some break and lunch, we were left with option of walking back and catch a mini-bus to Kumta. With no enthusiasm left and moderately tired we decided to catch the bus that was supposed to come to Yana.

We waited - asked someone - waited again - continued this cycle for some time as no bus was coming and there was no fixed bus stand there as such ..it was really hot and we walked further in the hope of atleast hiring a jeep in the nearby village. The path was made of hot red soil. By 2 everyone was sapped out and just laid on some grassfield and couple of guys even slept off. Me and avinash(who surprisingly had the best stamina left) went looking for a jeep and after knocking multiple doors eventually got a person who was ready to take us the main road where bus comes. He was asking for 800 for 13-14 Km ..I totally left it to gupta to bargain who did a tremendous job considering how tired we were and we paid 600. It was a rocky ride on one of worst roads possible and we reached main road from where we took an open tempo to Kumta. Finally there was some breeze and it was a cool ride in more sense than one. We reached kumta and took bus to Shimoga and driver was dead fast at times even there was some ghat section to cross. Slept in a hotel that night totally exhausted.

Day 2:

Hoping for a better day, we got up next day and went to the marriage for which had come in the first place. It was a nice place and our lecturer was looking seriously beautiful in her traditional attire. Had awesome food and left for Jog Falls. It took couple of hours from Shimoga to Jog again crossing Sagara which we kept crossing to and fro and reached by 3 pm.

Now we knew it was May and summer and were not expecting tons of water there. But when i was actually staring at Jog Mountains, i actually asked my friend if we need to walk further to reach jog as i could see only mountains in front of me !! Eventually one of guys asked me to focus on supposed Rocket falls and i could see a thin stream that resembled more of someone pissing from top of mountain than any falls i have seen. After Yana, this was double whammy ..With nothing to do and more than 3-4 hours left, we decided to go down. So we finally Trekked !! it was nice steep path to the bottom and we went directly under one of falls as there was hardly any force and not much danger. Spent some nice time and started steep climb up. Sudhindra who till now thought trekking was a synonym to walking had his most difficult time and refused to climb after a while and it required all of gupta's swearing in telugu to push Su to reach the top again. We emptied one shop of all his lime-sodas and the event is memorable still for Gupta getting high on 'Shoda'

Some guys took bath in some public bathhouses while rest waited and we eventually boarded the Ksrtc bus which we had booked at 7.30 pm and reached bangalore next day morning.

And ya it was Sudhindra's birthday the previous day and he ll never forget Jog falls.

Overall somewhat dissapointing trip though the Yana Shikaras are an impressive sight to see.

Route to Yana:

1. From Bangalore take the bus to Sirsi - around 430 km

2. From Sirsi, you ll get buses to Kumta that pass through vaddi cross - 40 km from Sirsi

3. Get off at Vaddi Cross and walk to Yana - 12 km

Alternative option would be to take bus to Kumta and take a jeep directly to Yana to skip the hiking part.

Distance to Yana: 480 km from Bangalore.

Better to Know:

1. At Yana, there are no hotels/shops etc. So it is necessary to carry food.

2. Unless the road has improved in last couple of years which is unlikely, it will be difficult to reach Yana on a private vehicle like car.

Talakadu

2009-02-16T14:18:00.000-08:00

Talakadu is a small town on the banks of river Cauvery in Mandya. As usual it is famous for its temple known as Lord Kirti Narayana temple or Vaideshwara temple.The place is inundated with sand which apparantly has its origin on a woman's curse(there are scientific explanations of course). Talakadu wasn't the most exciting of places that i have visited but i remember this trip more for events during the journey rather than the actual destination. Talakadu didnt excite the entire gang either - so only me, keerthy, srikanth and datta went ahead with the plan.

Due to previous bike trips we were still enthusiastic about bike trip, but keerthy was planning to go to Kollegal directly from Talakadu, so we decided to go in bus( again and again we make this mistake !!)

The Trip

Date and Time: February 2006 8 am

We met at Banashankari Bus stand and took the bus to Malavalli via Kanakapura. Bus was crowded as usual and it took around 2 hours to reach Malavalli. Next was the difficult part of finding the bus to Talakadu. Enquiring around and walking for some time resulted in us reaching a junction where apparantly few buses and sand lorries come. Sand lorries might offer lift for some money it seems. So we waited in hot sun - all we saw was policemen taking bribes from some lorries( I guess sand mining is illegal). Waiting for Bus

Finally an overcrowded bus came - by overcrowded i mean really overcrowded. Entire bus was filled and we had to climb on top of bus and it was crowded on top too..it was fairly interesting to travel on top of bus with every swerve the bus makes shaking some of your confidence in the driver. Honestly it takes great driving skills to drive with 50 people on top of bus on some usual semi-tarred and semi-mud village roads. After an hour or so we reached near talakadu and had to take an auto to the final destination.

Reached the spot around 12. It was really hot. But there were hundreds of people playing in the Cauvery river. Water was varying from knee level to sometimes chest level. We could cross the river - around 100 yards wide after lot of trepidation as me and srikanth didnt know swimming then. We reached the other end and hoped keerthy would take the pic(he refused to cross the river and instead offered to take our pics). But he was so busy ogling that he totally forgot us and from 100 yards he couldnt hear us either. On the right side is the culprit who didnt take our pics

After playing in water, decided to go look at the sand dunes around the temples. There are many temples and most were half-covered by sand. Another rumour(or myth) we heard from locals was that every 12 years, the temples would be completely uncovered and cycle would repeat. The sand was really awesome and we played like kids there for long time doing all sorts of jumps and dives onto sand(See the pics for Keerthy-Srikanth's Matrix style parallel dive pics) Keerthy and Srikanth

Yours Truly

Evening came, had to again figure out how to go home. On keerthy's advice we decided to go to Kollegal as there were lot of buses from Kollegal to Bangalore and keerthy anyway was going there. So took a jeep till a place( i think it was Harale). The driver was totally drunk and was driving over humps as he wished. We were really pissed off and i was really tempted to take the driver's seat. Finally we reached the destination and took the bus to Kollegal. The conductor gave us mini-heart attack by telling that last Kollegal-Bangalore bus was around 8 and the bus we were on might not reach on time. But fortunately the bus to Bangalore goes in opposite direction, so he actually stopped the bus and let us the board the opposite bus going towards bangalore(except keerthy who continued to kollegal). We were really tired, sat on steps of bus and called up home that we ll be reaching in couple of hours.

But day didnt end so easily. Few kilometres before Mandya, the bus stopped for some time. There were many vehicles in front of us and no one was clear about what happened except that there was some riots happening. Since no one else in the bus seemed interested at all and were sleeping mostly, me datta and srikanth decided to investigate. After walking for almost 1 km of vehicles, we reached the centre of action. There were atleast 50 odd people with full gear - i mean with long sticks and torches shouting and arguing. What happened was that a KSRTC bus hit a sugarcane truck going in opposite direction. Though there were no casualities, sugarcane truck with most of sugarcane was kind of destroyed and all the villagers to whom this belonged wanted immediate money and totally stopped the traffic. And they did look dangerous !!. So we made our way back to bus and told the driver this. Since we were also in KSRTC bus, he was kind of scared. So we suggested going back and taking a long route. He actually listened to us and after further consultation with conductor turned back(which was also difficult due to no of vehicles behind us) - He was a real pro in driving ..We took some inner route to Mandya and from there took Mysore-Bangalore highway to reach Bangalore without further events. Uff ..we reached Bangalore after 12 pm and slept over at datta's place as me and srikanth didnt have any enthu to find a bus to our homes.

Route:

1. From Bangalore take the kanakapura road to go to Kanakapura - around 50 km
2. Continue further to Malavalli - around 40 km. Till here the roads are good.
3. From Malavalli take the road towards Kollegal.
4. After 10-15 km take a deviation to right towards talakadu. There are few signboards. The roads were pretty bad from hereon.
5. Destination can be reached in about 20 km

Distance: 130 km from Bangalore

Better to Know:

1. Buses are pretty irregular. So better to take private transport. If bus is the only option, there are only 2 options - Take the bus to Malavalli and then take a bus to talakadu or take a bus to kollegal and take a bus or hire a jeep to talakadu.
2. There are many roadside shops for snacks and beverages.
3. Cell phone signal was available couple of years back so it should be better now.
4. It was hot even though summer hadn't officially started.

SiddaraBetta (aka Siddara Betta)

2008-12-14T04:23:00.000-08:00

Having experienced the joy of looking at the world from the TOP(thanks to Savan Durga), i was looking forward towards another trek near Bangalore. So were the rest of the gang and we started looking around for places(though summer was about to peak). Rajesh again came up with the place- Siddarbetta. However this place isn't that popular and we didn't really get that much information before hand as to how to reach the place. So we had to find our way little bit. It is Sacred Place where siddaru(Holy spritual men) made meditation and worship of Lord Shiva and there is a Shiva temple at the peak.

No new characters this time. Same old gang with Datta missing.

THE RIDE

DATE AND TIME: April 2005 7.30 am

We assembled near Vijayanagar as usual(Hotel Indraprastha became more or less our starting points for all the trips) - 6 of us - me, Srikanth, Keerthy, Rajesh, Avinash and Pavan started on 3 bikes - Enticer and 2 splendours.Rajesh had given an approximate estimate of 60-70 km on Tumkur Road(He proved to be a software engineer even before he completed BE by this rather wide off the mark distance estimate).

We took the Tumkur road which was splendid to say the least for bikes. I did touch my enticer's top speed of 105 kph on that trip. We reached the flyover before Tumkur in a short time and started enquiring this place. As expected most locals never know anything near to them(this is same everywhere). Another important confusing fact is there are apparantly 2 Siddarbettas .. one near dobhaspet and one near koratagere which we went. So at Dobhaspet we took the right turn to korategere and went along that route which wasn't great. After around 45 minutes we reached korategere and after further enquiry took a left turn to siddara betta.

THE TREK

Now, it was summer and it was almost 10 am when we started the trek. As it can be imagined it was hot and though the mountain wasn't as steep as Savan Durga and hardly risky, we still took more than a few breaks before we reached the peak in around hour and half.. Siddara Betta is more famous for its caves than the trekking ..So decided to go into the caves as well..

There are many guides there who charged around 250-300 for 1 hour of cave-exploring..he stated that it was impossible to explore it ourselves without getting lost ..possibly a marketing gimmick ..but nevertheless we took the guide and started the cave exploration ..

It was awesome !! there were some real low rise rocks where we had to literally crawl ..and even though sun was burning outside, within the caves it was really cool ..After an hour or so, we came out. Some guys went into the temple while we were taking some pics and then had lunch we had packed from home. Leaving immediately after that, we reached the starting point back in about an hour.

Since it was still 3 pm, while coming back we decided to go Devarayana Durga on the way back. There are motorable road till the top and there was no trekking as such. We just went on bikes till top, took few pics and started down again. There was about 5-6 km of hairpin bends and really sloped roads which was fun to ride. I totally scared srikanth sitting behind me by putting the bike in neutral while coming down(damn dangerous) and reaching speeds of upto 70 kph without even starting the bike(probably this incident prompted him to buy his own bike so that he needn't take risks with guys like me!!!)

Otherwise the trip was incident-free and we reached Bangalore by evening 7pm. Overall a nice experience which was not too tiring even in peak summer.

Difficulty Level: Easy

Time to Trek: 2.5 hours(1.5 to climb and 1 to come down)

Route:
1. From Bangalore, take the Tumkur road and keep travelling till you reach dobhaspet(you ll cross nelamangala on the way) after around 55 km.
2. At dobhaspet, take the road towards the right(SH3) that goes to koratagere(and madhugiri).
3. After 40-45 km, on reaching Koratagere , keep going on the same road towards madhugiri. After about 2-3 km, take the left to reach Siddara Betta

Distance: 110 km from Bangalore

Better to Know:
1. There is another Siddara Betta much closer on Tumkur Road(near dobhaspet itself), which the localites would confuse you about.
2. Better to take food and water..nothing much available at the top
3. To go in bus, need to take bangalore-tumkur bus and then from Tumkur take the bus going to Madhugiri or Koratagere.

SavanDurga( aka Savan Durga)

2008-12-09T05:00:00.000-08:00

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.

Mekedaatu(aka Mekedat)

2008-11-23T08:37:00.000-08:00

Everything has to have a beginning - a humble one i would say and thats how the trekking trips started.
3rd Sem Engineering. Our group of under-sized guys(as you ll see in the pics) decided we need to go a trip somewhere for the weekend. Dont remember for certain, i think Pavan suggested the spot. Atleast i had not heard of that place before. Anyways we decided to go to Mekedaatu that Sunday.

First the characters(other than me of course).

Keerthy - His yes is almost assured for any kind of trip (courtesy his rather cool parents of course) - All you have to say before any trek is that ' I read in some blog that they took 6 hours to climb' - He ll immediately plan to finish the trek in 3 hours - His speed being legendary among our group

Avinash Gupta - Might compete with all south indian heroes for his one-liners. His trekking capacities are at best left unspoken (Sorry maga).Unofficially the entertainer of the group.

Pavan(aka Boda) - Most enthusiastic about treks atleast he went to US . Spends half his free time planning on next trek(most of the places he picks are unheard by rest of us) and rest of the time playing cricket or badminton.

Dattatreya - Used to see most of the places via his camera lens instead of his eyes till he decided that photography is best left to amateurs and not for experts like him.

THE TRIP:

Date and Time: Probably October 2004. Morning around 8 am

This being our first trip, we didnt want waste our time convincing parents to let us go in Bikes. So we assembled in Banashankari Bus Stand and took the bus to Kanakapura at around 8 in the morning. Man was it crowded !! We somehow squeezed in and waited for the crowd to reduce which never happened. In about 1.5 hours we reached Kanakapura and had our breakfast. Caught a bus going towards Sangam which was way less crowded than earlier bus and reached Sangam around 11.30. The roads were pretty good all the way.

Now, Sangam is kind of the starting place for mekedat. All the vehicles are parked here and you ll have to cross the kaveri river to start trek(more of walk i would say) to mekedat. The river had fair amount of water - varying from 1 feet to 4 feet depth of water. Anyways, we crossed the river and had an early lunch - each one of us had packed so much, with everyone assuming someone else might no get it, that in the end we had to give some of the home-cooked food to dogs !!

Also, there is an option of taking a mini-bus to the top (mekedat) from the place where we crossed the river. But we decided to walk .Started the trek at 12 - it was fairly hot and we did this for about 30 minutes and we were seriously bored in our first trip. It was almost like walking on road except that it had 5 degree inclination and was mud-road. Dont know who came up with the idea but we decided to go offtrack. We just got down from the road onto the right sloped area and proceeded from here. And this was the most exciting phase of Mekedat trip ..For about hour and half we just continued on excursion crossing streams of water, small whirlpools and finally climbed back onto the road just before the summit.

Now, the summit is Mekedat(Supposed to mean Goat Crossed It). This place is actually pretty beautiful. Though however the valley between two mountains which the goat is supposed to have crossed is around 60-70 feet wide !!! We just hung about there and decided to make it to a huge rock ahead of us where there were only couple of guys. It was while climbing this fairly steep rock, that avinash asked me to help him climb up. What happened eventually was that combination of his weight and gravity resulted in me going down instead of him coming up !! Well almost our first mishap and nothing happened and we reached the top to find one guy fishing (thats what he claimed he was doing) - Remember guys he was on top of rock may be 100 feet high and fishing in the fairly fast flowing river below - Must be a damn lucky guy if he really caught fish.

One important point is that last bus from Sangam back was supposed to be 4 pm. So left around 3-3.15 and walked down -this time on road. For some reason Pavan and Datta ran almost half the way while the rest of us took easy. Reached Sangam at around 3.45 and waited for the bus. Will never forget that waiting though as it went on and on. For some reason that bus didnt come at all. There were few TTs and Cabs and we asked i dont know how many of them to drop us somewhere to some town - All of them claimed to be full - Finally one of the Vans offered to take 2 of us. So around 6.30 Pavan and Datta went in that van. Me, Keerthy and Avinash walked further towards someother nearby bus stop and waited.. again ..Some bus did eventually come and we came to Bangalore in the same route as in morning at around 10.30 in night - Made a strict resolution that we are using bikes next time and never again depend on Bus.

Also, in 2004, there was absolutely no signal of any cellphone network there - might have come up now.

So, this was our first adventure - slow start - good interval scenes but ending up in rather anti-climax

Difficulty Level: Easy

Route :

1. From Bangalore, take the Kanakapura Road and go to Kanakapura around 45 Km from Banashankari.
2. From Kanakapura, take the road leading towards Sangam around 45 km from Kanakapura
3. From Sangam, Cross the river - Either walk or take the mini-bus to Mekedat around 5 km

Total Distance: 90 Km from Bangalore to Sangam

Better To Know:

1. Better take Private transport - Bus facility is pathetic at best.
2. Cell Phone didn't work few years back.
3. There are small shops around for food and snacks - though better carry from home if anyone is concerned about quality.