Finally something to blog about

It had been a long time we were planning to go for some outing. Finally the day came. We had decided we are going to go somewhere trekking this weekend. Till saturday we just had a wage idea. Plans were not that solid. Had seen some good pics of sunrise in skandagiri so everybody wanted to do a (midnight?) trek to skandagiri. we were a bit skeptical about the idea of a midnight trek. but after reading numorous blogs about midnight treks to skandagiri we were convinced.

We took a car (ford icon) for rent. RP also decided to come so we had 2 cars and 7 people. Rohit, Royden, Sreejith, RP, Nimmi, Renu and me. We started of at 12 am. There was no much traffic. Enjoyed driving the ford icon. Nobody else was confident about driving so i had the luxury of driving the car. The road till new bangalore airport was super cool. The three lane road with very bright street lights. I could easily touch 110 kms/hr. Didn’t try beyond that, decided to be safe, afterall it was a rented car.

We reached chikaballapur comfortably, the route till there was pretty straight forward. we had some trouble finding the road to skandagiri from there.it was difficult to find somebody at that time of night to ask the way. we took a left from the main road and kept on going some 5km and we were reaching nowhere. it was kindof scary . we tracked back and finally got the right direction from one person. He told us that don’t ask for skandagiri but for kalvarbett. skandagiri and kalvarbett are the same. only then nimmi, renu and rp realized that they had already done a trek at kalvarbett. but they kindof comforted themselves saying that the other one was a day trek but this one we’ll be seeing the scenic sunrise.

We started trekking uphill by around 2:30 am. We got a guide (for rs. 450). It was pretty dark and it didn’t make sense to try trekking without a guide. it would be difficult for us first-timers to find the way. everybody started with full of energy but as we progressed little bit few among us started realizing that its not gonna be that easy. RP even started saying that he doesn’t want to continue and that he’ll stay there itself. then we took some timely rests, and convinced him and proceeded. it started raining slowly and it was very cold. the guide was going in front so easily in his rubber slippers and we were finding it hard with our branded shoes to climb up.

We reached hill top by around 4:45. oh man it was damn cold. and cold wind was blowing. there were lots of people in the hill top. it was like a crowded bus stop (rohit’s words). None of us were able to bear the cold so decided to have a camp fire. there were locals who were doing business of campfire too. we got one for us rs. 80. all of us sat around it and was trying to get some heat from the fire.

Slowly the darkness started going away. All of us were hoping to see the sun rise, but bad luck we couldn’t even spot the sun. It was very cloudy and we missed the sunrise. but then we didn’t crib about it, we decided to try some photography. we climbed upto the small fort(should be the highest point in the hill) and then took pics. we also tried taking pics of we jumping high. it was real fun. we also were trying out different attitude poses. some of the pics turned out really good and few others very funny. we explored a quite place in the hill top and we sat down to have the breakfast. we had carried some bread and some other food items.

We started the descend by around 7:30. It was cold and also lots of mist was there. it was difficult to see things beyond a limit. coming down was much easier. but we had to be extra careful because all the rocks were wet due to the mist. many a times we slipped but managed to keep the balance. coming down was really enjoyable we took lots of time, took breaks, took lots of pics. reached down by around 10:30.

All of us were damn tired and now the only thought was to reach home and jump in to the bed. everybody started sleeping in the car. i was finding it hard to control my sleep, kept some music and kept eating some biscuits to make sure i don’t sleep off . the traffic was more compared to the night drive. so had to drive slower. reached home by around 1:30.

It was a good experience. Enjoyable. Exciting.

Tags: skandagiri midnight trek drive weekend