Friday, September 21, 2007

Skandagiri - The Kalavaralli betta ..

The idea of exploring skandagiri was initiated by our dynamic Project Manager Mr Raghu, this had come up in our company lalbagh(Its our company cafteria ).



Let me quickly introduce the place "skandagiri", it is green marshy hillock located in chikkaballapur district of karnataka,Hmmm... its around 60 KMs off Bangalore
Young @ heart, a team of 5 members finaly okeyed for the trek and the day was fixed. It was on september 2 2007 and the weather was cloudy. All of us ( Raghu, Yajneshwara, Naveen and Myself ) had gathered at 6.00 AM in Jaynagar 7th block.
I was a pillon rider to Raghu, later Shaik Joined us near hebbal. We had heavy breakfast at a darshini in yelahanka.



Journey to Chikkaballapur on the newly constructed 8 lane road was awesome, we never felt that we should stop in between for a break. We reached chikkaballapur around 8.0clock.
You might wonder what Skandagiri means to the local people. Actually skandagiri is called as kalavara betta. I believe Kalavara was the name of the local ruler in the past.

We had stuffed enough eatables and water bottle in our bags. Parking for two/four wheelers is avaliable in the foot of skandagiri, You can a find Papagni matt at the base of skandagiri. The road was muddy because of heavy downpour on the previous day.
One can see the mighty hillock at the base as an easy approachable way with spiral path. From the base, this hillock looks like an easy doable trek, but i have to eat my words back after reaching the top. All we have done that we had underestimated this hillock.

Initially we had met a villager and asked for the route, he just pointed his finger towards the hillock probably we misunderstood his directions or our bad luck, we started to ascend the nearby hillock to skandagiri.
This was our first mistake, because of our over confidence within ourself.
After climbing the bushy hillock for an hour we came to know we nowhere can reach skandagiri from this route. As we could see that a thick creamy cloud had already covered the western side of skandagiri. Man !!! the time was just 11 AM.

After much thinking we had to descend, to our luck we could see people still making towards the hillock luckily somehow we managed to get onto the right track.

It was getting more sunny and we finally reached the top at 2.00 PM. We knew that we had missed the early morning mists because of our misadventure. We could see bunch of trekkers enjoying the lovely scenery, We had our snacks and rested for a while capturing beautiful scenerys in our camera's meantime the weather was warm and bit cloudy.

Finally after resting for a while we decided to descend, and gradually weather turned into cloudy and the place turned out to be a totally dark. Ah...suddenly...it started to drizzle ...we ran for a cover, and all of a sudden there was a heavy downpour we were all drenched. The surface became more slippery and somehow we managed to grip the ground.
Alas !!! we were in the heaven, all of a sudden we could see the thick clouds surfacing gradually on us. It was dream come true for us. Minutes to pass, we were all covered by the thick cream of mist, it was unforgottable moment for all us. We danced, and merely enjoyed those those unforgetable moments for an hour.
It was getting darker and we decided to reach the base at the earlist.
Each one of us had rejuvented with this trek, We left skandagiri around 6.30PM. Back in bangalore we dozed off with the thoughts of creamy mist in our mind. Yeah, Kalavaralli betta is a place for the people who want to disappear in the creamy mist and be a part of the nature.