Night Trek @ Skandagiri

Hey Ashwin, I want the analysis reports ready by saturday.. have u run through the application, we need to finish our sanity test and raise alarms with regards unresolved issues. Please ensure tht its done b4 u leave !!!!

" Bloodyhell... u hav to give all the stuff on friday evening itself is it..Ohcrap... Gotta wrk on saturday too..."??"What will I tell Manja... Man I dont wannna miss this trip.. God plzz plzz plzz do something......

"Hey Ravi, The application has crashed. The tech support is not available over the weekend.. We have no option but to push the deadline to Tuesday !!!! (Tht was the engineering team Head,and Ravi is my reporting Boss... )

Oh is it !! thts baad.... I had actually cancelled my plans for the weekend Ravi..... (can u beleive this is whatcame outta my mouth, wen i was actually dying to reach B'lore at any cost......) The next thing i remember is rushing to close my shop for the day... and scooting home to catch the first Volvo to B'lore...

Wat happened earlier in the day .....

Hello.. Hey Manjunath.. (Manja...) Kya hall hai yaar?? Ashwin.. sun... we are off to Skandagiri on Saturday for NightTrekking.... I dont wanna hear anything else, jus that u are joining...

Night Trekking.. Cool yaar.. kaun kaun aa raha hai?? watz the plan??

Our regular gang dude.. Mohit, U, me, Anuj, Abhay, etc etc.. We wil be driving down to the Hills by around 11.30 in the nite from B'lore.... Reach there by around 2 Am.. Start the trek, reach the spot aby around 4.30.. catch the sunrise, and head back to the base. This way we can start off and reach B'lore by sunday mrng 10 am latest...

Wow Manja.. awesome plan.. I am game.. Count me in.. I am booking my tckts to B'lore tonite itslef... c u tomorrow mrng dude... catch u there..chal dude.. c u there..

If u dont make it... Man.. u ll nt c the light ofanother day.. gt it??ha haha.... sure dude... i ll b there.. trust me..

Guess God Did answer my prayers........

And finally I was off... On my way to b'lore.... In the bus i was damn excited.. First of all I was excited abt the fact tht we guys were off on our bikes to Skandagiri.. and from wat I cameto know the roads were jus tooo good !!(We had to take the B'lore international airport highway, which covered a major part of the distance.). The next thing was that we were planning to trek the Hills late in the night.. The eerie feeling itself was a major push factor 4 me.. :)

As planned, all of us gathered at the RMZ Infinity Food court at 11 PM..Had a quick bite at Mac D's and We were off.... By around 12 AM ....All of us had come a loooong way from our initial biking days, esp Manja.. He had graduated from a puny lil 150 CC unicorn to an Ultra macho 500 CC Bullet Machismo... And there was nothing to excite me further.. It was fun riding the two wheelers in a gang.. I had already coined a name for ourselves.. The Night Riders.. he he.. Alryt alryt..this blog is not again going to be on How fast the bikes went, how exciting it was and so on.. Lemme stick on to the night trek itself.. hehe... Bikes anf fast lanes always force me to sway away from the topic... its always a huge effort 4 me to stick to the topic.. Not this time...

Vrrrrooooooooooom.. and we reached Skandagiri.... Easiest way to cutshort the details.. hah !!

It was almost 1.45 Am in the morning wen we reached the base camp. I was surprised to see a lot of bikers and Adventure sport enthusiasts gather up at tht place... and here I wast hinking we were the only ones hu were freaky enough to come out for Night trekking...Silly me..... We were all geared up withTorches, Backpacks, Snacks, Water and all the other stuff needed for our trek..

Guys.. lets follow a common path. We shall not hire a guide?? wat say??This was a unanimous decision though there were minor disagreements .. but finally all of us were game for it... The thought of venturing into the unknown without knowing where the rocky paths would lead us, was in itself exciting. We knew tht even if we get lost in the way, all we had to do was, some how or the other reach the top... :)And we were Off... A half lit muddy trasck lead towards the hills.. Wef ollowed the track..Gradually the street lamps went missing... the small huts and a few vehicles around also vanished, and now it was just us !!!

The Silhouette of the hill we were about to scale under the moonlight was an amazing view... Its majestic hieght and the trecherous path made me doubt my capabilities to scale it !!! But i dint dare say it out coz I didnt wanna be the laughing stock among my friends..... But it was later tht i realised tht everyone felt the same way.. Each one of us at some point in time doubted our own individual ability to scale thehills..

Jus around 20 min into the darkness, the inevitable happned.. We were lost!!! There was no way Up or forward. We looked around and we could see a few torch lights flashing a looong way up, bang opposite to us.. We were on our way to a forest rather than climbing the hill... But somehow we managed ourselves to get back on track..

It was a wonderful Nostalgic feeling for the three of Us.. Mohit, Manja andMe !!! The three of us were immediately taken bak to our college days where we had challeged the Beautiful Chamundi Hills to conquer the Watch Tower.. :)It was like reliving the experience all over again for the three of us,only for the slight difference that we had trekked chamundi with at the mercy of a bright and shiny sun, and here we were trekking in the dead of the night to be the first ones to capture the initial rays of the Sun !! But then as we proceeded the tuff and slippery paths made us realise it is much more than wat we had scaled a few years back...I feelt as if the Skandagiri Hills dint want us to reach the summit and was talking to me in my mind,.. try this rock u freak.. i bet u cant .. U are goingto give up.. This is Skandagiri.. it aint gonna be a cake walk ...remember that.. :) i was lik... alryt... itspersonal now !!!! and put in all my vigour and energy, only to find myself flat on the bushes jus 10 min later..ha ha.

After a continuos climb of almost 45 min, we decided to take a break..Or lemme me put it this way.. We were FORCED to take a break. Big huuge boulders became comfortable double cot beds for us.. All the dudes were flat on theirbacks.. The toughest part is to restart the trekk after the smal break....No body was ready to start off again..Personally it took a loot of effort for me to motivate myself to resume uphill... The way uphill goteven more tougher, with the forests becoming a lot more denser and tracksmore and more slippery....

All of us were walking in a line, with each one of us closely following the one in front of us as the visibility was very poorwith only 4 torches guiding the way for a pack of 10... The best part was no one wanted to be the last one to walk. Guess the hollywood movies are to blame here, where they show the last guyalways being the first one to vanish or to fall into trouble. It was fun to watch the guys racing against each other so tht they are not the last ones inthe pack" :)

And finally .. a gruelling 150 minutes, several " man i cant do it anymore" - Breaks, and multiple Fotography stops later, we finally managed to reach the top!! It was an overwhelming feeling.. We had finally done it.. The first thing I did was, take off my back pack, spot a perfect place to lay at rest my over exhausted body. I was lucky enuf to find out a wonderful place.. It was almost at the edge of the cliff, with chill winds carassing all over. There was a beautiful start studded night sky waiting to be appreciated by us.. It was a fantastic experience... I was in a bedroom higher than the lesser mortals, with Natures' air conditioner bringing the temperatures way down, forcing me to forget it was the last week of March,plus a fantasctic view right above me..I couldnt have asked for more... Oh well except for a Blanket or atleast a Jacket. (It was getting unbearabily cold and all I had was a Roundneck Tee and a Nike tracks to fight the chill winds... )

I was in for a pleasant surprise whrn I saw an Old man, must be in his late sixties, in a blanket inside a small makeshift tent, ready to offer us Tea, Bread omlette and guess what, Maggi!!!! I was shocked when I realised that our Dude 65 (A name i coined for our old man), trekks up the hill every friday, saturday and sunday nights jus to offer these refreshments to people like us !!! Things people do for aliving... Though I enjoyed evey bit of theBread Omlette and the tea, there was a part in me which felt sorry for the Old man !!!......

Ashwin .. Get Up man !!!! The sun is about to rise.. dont u wanna see it.... get up.. get up.. Abe uth be !!!!!

God. Where am I... How come I feel so cold in Chennai... 2 min later. I was back to my senses..Oh yeah.. I am at the top of Skandagiri... I ran with all the excitement to the spot from where we could see the perfect sunrise. The wait was eternal.... And finally we couldspot the Golden Globe slowly rising up.. It was beeeaautiful.. Giri and Anuj had set the mood right by Playing --"Sunrise from the Horizons" on their mobiles. After the sight I thought..Man this was worth the effort !!!

That was it.. Our lil adventure trip ended here... We jus took a break for some time, and decided to head our wayback home...This trip had given me wonderful memories that I will defenitely treasure forthe rest of my life...

I know it has been a really loong post.. hope you are still awake by the time you have reached here.... :)

Me signing Off !!!