Shivagange

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.

Maribetta (Bananthi Mari Betta)

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.

SiddaraBetta (aka Siddara Betta)

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)

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.