Bangalore ASCENDers

Bangalore ASCenders 10th Birthday

noreply@blogger.com (Jinu John) — Wed, 17 Apr 2019 14:49:00 +0000

Bangalore ASCenders 9th Birthday

noreply@blogger.com (Jinu John) — Tue, 17 Apr 2018 08:20:00 +0000

Monsoon Trek to Tadiyandamol

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 26 Mar 2017 14:27:00 +0000

Monsoon was at the peak, all rivers & lakes were flowing across the valley, the entire range was decorated by green carpet, many small waterfalls on it glory, mist, rain, wind, leaches made the trek more beautiful and challenging. Spontaneous variety of food-snacks throughout the journey!!! Yes it was Tadiandamol weekend trek with BangaloreAscenders on 27 – 28^th June 2015.

Tadiandamol is the second highest peak in Karnataka located near Kakkabbe, Virajapete Taluk, and Kodagu District. It was a very special trek for me since my close friend Suresh organized the event. The person who has motivated me and because of whom I am now mad about treks, thank you so much Suresh. Secondly thanks to Shanthi Prasad, a wonderful person who made me join this trek.

I had been to the base point of the trek Nalakhand Palace thrice before this; however I was not able to venture it. The main constrain was that I was with family on vacation. This was one of to-do list of my treks since a long time.

26.06.2015

When I saw the preparatory mail by Suresh where he clearly assigned each and every individual to get certain things. The list was endless and great effort by my friend but just got a shock, I asked myself “Are we going to trek? Or any party celebration”.

The grocery items listed below:

Name	Item Description
Karthik	Ghee 250gms x 2 Pkts (Nandini only)
Shanthi Prasad	Tomato/ Vegetable Soup Packets for 25 persons & Tarpaulin
Vidyasagar	Knife 1
vivek bhat	2 Breakfast & 1 Dinner preparation items
Satish G	Potato 1kg
Kota M Anvinash	Capsicum – 2 Kg,
Basavaraj S	Tomato 4 Kgs, Serving Spoon
Ramesh Raithatha	Beans 1 ½ kgs
Arjun Muddaiah	Sugar 2 Kg
Ashwin V	04 persons Tent
Chandrakala BV	Tea Filter (New cloth or filter) & Knife 1
Sandeep Gowda	Cashew 500 gms, Almond 100gms, Dry Grapes 200gms
Naveen Gowda	Salt 500Gms & Crystal salt 500Gms
HEMANTH K	Big Serving spoon
Priyank Goel	Good Life Milk 4 Ltrs.
Pragati Agrawal	Cucumber 4nos.
Sowmya s n	Coriander leaves, Curry leaves each 1 bunch, Green Chili 400 Gms., Lemon 12 Nos, Ginger 300 gms
Anvesh Reddy	Tea Powder 500gms., Coffee Powder 100 Gms
Rekha G	Potato Chips 1 Kg & Khara Bhundi 500 Gms ( MTR or Mayas)
Girish NL	Mung Dal 1 Kg
Prabhakar Gowda	Onion 5 Kg, Carrot – 4 Kg,
Rathna V	Green Peas 01 Kg
Skanda	Sun flower Oil 1 Ltrs
Sunil Kumar OG	04 persons Tent
Suresh	Bread, Jam/ Tomato sauce

I called Suresh to get confirmation about the trek. Reached the pickup point Shanthala Silk well before the time. After some time one by one joined us. The mini bus was ready to take us, team size was 26 members. Left Majestic around 11 pm. There were many known trek friends and few were new, the journey was smooth.

27.06.2015

When I opened my eyes we were already in Kodagu district. The hills were decorated by clouds, everywhere water was overwhelming all the way, and entire atmosphere was filled with peak monsoon. We reached the base point of Nalakhand palace around 7.30 am. I have to appreciate Suresh’s organizing skills, he booked a small home at starting point of trek. He called Thammayya to arrange a Jeep to carry our grocery items. You may imagine the volume of the items considering a big team of 26 members.

Soon we finished our morning itinerary near the stream. Few of us headed by walking towards Thammayya’s house which is around 4 km away from the place. The tar road will run you through the beautiful valley with many coffee estates. On the way we came across many small falls which were on their glory. We reached the base camp home by around 9 am. The small old house of Thammayya is a very peaceful place. This is the last home on the way to Tadiandamol. This is a best place if anyone is planning a day-out with family & kids. This is the first trek where I did not take even Biscuits with me. I was hungry and wanted to have something, friends shared light snacks so I was able to manage till the breakfast.

The cooking team was excellent. The team is headed by great guys Vivek Bhat and Prabhakar, who supported the entire team. The supporting team members were Sunilkumar, Anvesh, Madan, Pragathi, Rekha, Naveen, Chandrakala, Ashwin and the entire team. They are professionals and planned the entire menu. Filled our stomach with spontaneous Awalakki and coffee.

Everyone was now ready to venture the Tadiandamol, the highest peak around Kodagu. We took the group pic and headed towards the summit.

The climate was perfect and rain was pouring with intervals. Initial trail was through the normal ascend with view of beautiful valley. Crossing small waterfalls we reached the grass land.

We found a big rock where we have to keep towards right. The mist was high, so could not see anything beyond 10 meters. The summit becomes more and more ascend from this point. We took multiple breaks for photographs. After a steep ascend we entered into dense jungle. The leaches were on their job, many of us had sweet bite of them. Reached the Tadiandamol peak around 12.30 Noon. Because of the huge mist, we missed to witness the beauty of the valley. We enjoyed the moments of the rain, mist and wind. Spent couple of minutes on the peak. Now was the time to move back.

The descending part was not much difficult, taking multiple breaks reached the big rock. Photography took more time with each one of the group. Adieu to the Tadiandamol valley. We then headed towards Thammayya home for night camp. Reached home by 3 pm, where we had enough time. The hot water was ready for bath. We all took bath and got refreshed. Soon the great team served hot tea and coffee followed by Sandwich. Few of us engaged with playing cards, few chitchat with their experiences, few were indulged in preparation of dinner. The entire atmosphere was looking like a wedding ceremony. Each one of us were enjoying the moment.

I and Shanthi Prasad had a small walk around the valley. We met one more team who were trekking with different trail. Heard their adventurous encounters with unlimited leach bites. The Thammayya home is well structured to enjoy the valley with family. We decided to re-visit this place with beloved ones (family).

The dinner was ready with payasam. Salute the effort and interest of the core cooking team in serving all of us spontaneous food. We had to adjust a bit due to place constraint. The team was not in mood to spend any more time for any cultural activity. The rain was pouring heavily; so we missed the fire camp.

28.06.2015

The morning was always early for me in any trek; got up at 4.30am and finished morning itinerary. One by one everyone got ready. Morning again tea-coffee with biscuits and bread. Soon the team prepared Uppittu & Kesari Bath. Finished our breakfast and had a photography session around the home. The home is situated in a beautiful place. It was then time to head towards the palace where our vehicle was waiting.

Enjoying the valley soon we all reached to Nalakhand palace. The caretaker of palace briefed about the place and its history. Very soon finished the palace visit and proceeded towards the next destination which was Cheluvara Falls. The Cheluvara falls is around 15km away from this place. You have to take deviation near Cheyyandane village. I am well versed with this place, last year I had been this place with family. The Cheluvara falls on it peak flow, could not venture inside the water. Spent couple of minutes watching the glorious falls.

The time was passing very fast,

our initial plan was to visit Cheluvara Falls and Mandalapatti. Due to time constrain, we decided to skip Mandalpatti. The time was 12 Noon and no one was interested to visit any other place. Finished our lunch near Virajpete at a dhaba.

The return journey was busy with everyone watching movies. Soon we hit the Mysuru city, as usual the Mysuru – Bengaluru worst traffic. We had no option to tolerate the journey, reached Bengaluru majestic by 9.45 pm. One by one we all bid adieu. Over all it was a wonderful wedding ceremony / NCC Camp for me. I was missing my DSLR on this trek.

Thanks to:

Entire team who was very co-operative and enjoyed each moment.

The cooking team who were excellent and served delicious food through out the trek

Suresh & Shanthi for making me join this trek

Bangalore Ascenders for organizing a wonderful Monsoon Trek

Join Bangalore ASCENDers @ CLICK HERE

Written by: Vidya Sagar

Composed by: Ramakrishna Nagaraja

Date: 27 & 28th June 2015

Event Organized by: Suresh Babu

Image gallery: Sunil, Hemanth Kumar & Sowmya

Motor bike trip to Ganalu Falls and Shivanasamudra – 7th June, 2015

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 09 Nov 2015 14:46:00 +0000

It had been quite a while since I went on a road trip on my bike, hence when I saw mail from BASC with the title, I immediately felt the need to register for the trip. To make things better, I noticed that the organizer was Patrick Samuel, with whom I had been on a New Year day bike ride to Kanva reservoir. So immediately registered for the event and received the confirmation as well.

On Sunday, 7^th June, 2015 we all decided to meet at Jayadeva Flyover at 6.15 AM. Everyone were on time and we left Jayadeva by 6.30 AM as per schedule. We headed towards Kanakapura road and couple of folks joined us near Banashankari. Once we crossed the NICE road – Kanakapura road junction, we parked the vehicles on the side of a road and had the customary introduction.

Post the introductions we headed towards our first destination – Ganalu Falls. It was around 7.30 AM as we entered Kanakapura. We decided to have our breakfast at Vasu Hotel. However, since it being a Sunday, the place was extremely crowded. Hence we decided to visit another hotel for our breakfast. Hot idli-vada with spicy sambhar and some hot tea, all of us were set to resume our journey. Soon we were zooming past the pristine Kanakapura Road (NH – 209). We all decided that our next stop would be Sathanur. The road was in great condition most of the times, with some stretches being recently re-laid. This way, we could maintain good speeds and were as per our schedule. We all regrouped at Sathanur and then decided our next stop would be Halaguru, where we were supposed to take a turn from the NH. As per our plan, we reached Halaguru at around 9 AM. We then took the village road towards Ganalu. We did lose some time as we were stuck behind a tractor for a considerable amount of time in a narrow road. The sight of Yamaha Fazer, Bullet, R15 and Karizma ZMR dragged some eyeballs from the curious looking villagers.

At one junction we took the help of the villagers, as we were not very sure regarding the route that GPS and Google Maps were showing us. However the ever helpful villagers made sure that we were always on the right path. Few stretches of the village roads were also in great condition. However, post some distance, we had to take a muddy path to reach the waterfalls. This road was completely filled with gravel and gave us a good chance to test our bikes off-roading capabilities. Somehow we were able to reach the waterfalls by following the sound of water. We parked our bikes and headed down the trail to the water falls. It was a small path to the falls and we reached quite quickly. Though the water in the falls was not at high levels, it was good enough, considering it was summer. We had a quick photo session and drank some cool fresh water directly from the streams. We decided to head back and climbed our way up the rocks. The uphill climb was a bit taxing as by then it was around 11 AM and the sun had reached its maximum power.

We started our bikes and headed back. We had crossed a stream on our way in. We decided that a dip in the canal was a must and all of us stopped our bikes and headed for the water. It was a great feeling to get inside the water.

Post the swimming session and few more pics on our bikes with the background as the canal, we headed back to NH 209 to continue our journey towards Shivanasamudra. We decided to have our lunch at Malavalli. Post the filling lunch we headed towards Gaganachukki view point and reached by 2PM. We also had plans to visit Bharachukki, however with the bridge being closed we decided against it. The view of Gaganachukki was simply breathtaking. The water levels were considerably high. We decided to head back to Bengaluru and had some refreshments at Gaganachukki view point.

Post that we hit NH 209 and were riding back towards Bengaluru at decent speeds. We had decided to meet at all important junctions to make sure that we don’t miss anyone. During one of our stops at Halaguru, we learnt that one of the bikes had a punctured rear tyre. So we waited for it to be repaired and headed back to Bengaluru. We were back at the NICE road junction by 5PM and bid our final goodbyes to each other.

Participants: Patrick (Karizma ZMR), Bhupati (Pulsar), Ramkumar and Dinesh (R15), Manoj (Bullet 500),Pravin and Avinash (Impulse), Pramod and Gan (Fazer)

Total Distance covered: RT Nagar to RT Nagar – 330 KM

Route: Bengaluru – Kanakapura – Sathanur – Halaguru – Ganalu – Halaguru – Malavalli – Gaganachukki – Malavalli – Sathanur – Kanakapura – Bengaluru.

Road Conditions: Good most of the times. (Single lane NH 209 and village roads)

Ride level: Easy-Moderate

Best time to visit Ganalu: Post monsoons, since the approach roads can get very tricky to drive during monsoon, and during summer the water levels can be very low.

Best time to visit Gaganachukki: June – January.

Written by:

Event Organised by: Patrick Samuel

Date: 7th June 2015

Composed by: Ramakrishna Nagaraja

Image Gallery: Manoj

Trek to Narayanagiri

noreply@blogger.com (Shruthi) — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 03:32:00 +0000

Our trek to Narayanagiri, Jalamangala near Ramanagaram, the town made famous by the Bollywood movie ‘Sholay’ was quite exciting not just because of the nostalgia associated with the place but for the place itself. We boarded the train to Ramanagara from Bangalore railway station at around 8 15 a.m and as always the train came quite late. It was almost packed but most of us managed to find a seat. After an hour or so we alighted at the Ramanagar station and headed out for breakfast at a nearby Adiga and took parcel for the lunch. From there we boarded the bus to Jalamangala, our trekking destination for the day.

After around 15 to 20 minutes in the bus we walked for another 400 metres to the base of the hill. We snapped a few pictures and started climbing at around 11: 10 am it was a moderately difficult trek.

It is definitely one of the most mesmerizing amazing climbs one can take and the view is just breathtaking and will present you with a whole new perspective. The hill itself is quite beautiful with many crevasses narrow pathways. The hill doesn't have any traditional steps or railings so we had to climb it the old fashioned way, which made it all the more exciting and fun.

On our way we were accompanied by a family who shared our enthusiasm for trekking. We later found that our interest aligned not just for trekking but also books and literature.

Exploring the hill and the crevasses we reached the top At around 1 p.m. We were still spellbound by the beauty and the scenery at the peak. It overlooked the entire town and was a sight to behold. After sometime we sat down for lunch, sharing stories of the town and the nearby locations.

We started the descend at around 2 p.m, and after a few hours we took the bus to Ramanagaram railway station and reached Bangalore at around 6 p.m. It was definitely a trek to remember.

Join Bangalore ASCENDers @ CLICK HERE

Written by: Saleem

Date: 18th Jan 2015

Composed by: Shruthi Venugopal

Event organized by: Shamanth P

Image Gallery: Nikhil, Kishore

Crew : Ranjith Damodaran, Kishore, Jyothi, Manideep, Sharat Honnatti, Aparna S Honnatti, Shamanth, Sagar Mehta, Shailesh Sohani, Nikhil, M A Arun, Saleem U, Vikram Thakur, pragati agrawal, Kumar, Medha

Bicycle ride to Devarayanadurga

noreply@blogger.com (Swetha Padakandla) — Sat, 30 Aug 2014 13:27:00 +0000

Cycle is a funny machine,
the driver is it’s engine!

Life is like a 10 gear cycle,

Most of us have gears we never use!!

Yet another journey with BASC, yet another journey with Patrick, yet another milestone achieved!
This seems to have become a habit now!
It was during the Ganesh festival weekend that Patrick organized a seemingly incredible 160+ km Cycle ride to Devarayanadurga. I was like, why not, after all I always complain about not getting enough company to accompany me on my occasional weekend cycle rides in and around Bangalore!

Here goes the description of our Odyssey –
A group of 6 experienced and highly seasoned cyclists assembled near our agreed meeting point, Vivanta by Taj in Yeshwantpur at around 5 in the morning. I started from my home and hurrying through signal-less roads and empty flyovers in Outer Ring road reached the place, a good 10 km away. All had already assembled beforehand there! Hearing the instructions about which directions to be taken(It was basically a straight road along the Tumkur road on NH4 highway and then a small right at Dobbaspete beneath the highway), we started along the Tumkur road in pitch morning darkness, those who had tail and front lights were lucky as they could drive without any worries of occasional potholes near Yeshwantpur.
The cold morning air along with almost zero traffic is a heady feeling and we all whizzed past along the highway. With sign board proclaiming proudly, PUNE- 840km Tumkur 75 km etc, the decreasing kilometers of our destination actually added to our happiness. After riding for around 15 km along flyovers and roads, we reached a toll gate. The journey was pretty uneventful as we all rode at a steady pace - that was when I got a sprain in left leg - yikes!! Good that others waited for me after 5 km near the road as I lagged quite behind. Those 2 minutes or so of rest I had there was like God sent! Recovered enough to continue the journey again. Then as we moved along, the slick city landscape gradually changed to rustic one with lush greenery along both sides of NH-4 combined with typical now-oh-so-familiar Karnataka’s beautiful rocky, boulderish landscape. There was quite a bit of steepness in the roads as we cycled along but the road quality was as clean as a whistle absolutely flat. It was amusing, watching school going kids in autos waving at you. You feel obligated to wave at them back! Old people, curious people used to ask me ’ellinda guru?’ (From where dude?) At they stood like statues when I replied them ’Bangalore’! probably thinking that I have gone insane!
After another 1 and half hour, we reached Dobbaspete, where we pounced upon the delicious Pulav, idlis, vade and chai. Here, we took a right to reach Devarayana Durga which was still 22 km away from that point.
The Dobbaspete landscape was even more rustic, with roads getting slightly worse at this point and beginning of hairpin bends.
Quite a number of people travelled by bikes, scooters and cars on that day. Many KSRTC busses also plied on this route.
We reached base of the hill after crossing Uggere village at around 10 : 45 am. Here we had a mini photo session to my joy, as I was just waiting to whisk out my camera and start shooting and of course munching on some snacks!
Then began the arduous task of negotiating hairpin bends for 5km! After a few breaks along the way we finally reached Devarayanadurga temple at the base then later at the top.
Weather Gods were very kind to us as there was not much sun nor rain until then. Rather, cloudy weather was the order of the day. After exploring the hill side a bit; myself, Patrick, and Surya settled to have bhel. The monkeys there were so polite here!
They literally tap your shoulder, make that innocent face and outstretch their right hands. After munching on some, I happily emptied the entire packet in front of them, much to that little kiddo’s delight! Well that’s a reward for politeness I guess :D
Again, some photo-session later, we started our journey to Bangalore. Was such a joy going downhill. It started raining then, a pleasant light rain to revitalize you. We then decided to meet at Dobbaspete flyover at around 2:45 in the afternoon for quick snacks as energy would be required till the next stop i.e. the Dhabha! We left at 3:10 and reached dhabha at 3:50 in afternoon, here all of us had sumptuous meal of fried rice, chicken kabab, phulka and what not and started at 4:30. From there Bangalore was around 38km. The same journey seemed a big different and easier then, with the evening light playing tricks on you and traffic adding to a sense of hustle-bustle. After steady cycling for 2 and half hours and crossing 3 tolls, we finally reached Jalahalli. Because of the heavy traffic at evening time we finally reached Bangalore at 7! Patrick had to cycle additional kms to reach K.R Puram, so a total of 170km in a day - phew! This taught all of us that, distance, time and muscles don’t matter during such journeys - will power does!
There, that was the end. These mere words won’t alone describe the joy and sense of accomplishment we all achieved when we reached back Bangalore without any hiccups not to say we slept like babies that night, and some of us (like me) turned into Robots the next day! Such rides give you overnight six packs, calves and quad muscles burn fat not fuel ;) Salute to those muscles that were destroyed and new ones discovered in the process!
Written by: Saurabh

Post – 2

A Bicycle ride to remember:
Devarayanadurga is always the favorite trekking destination for adventure lovers but my good friend and one of the BASC organizer Patrick Sam had something special in mind. I never thought event like Bicycle ride to Devarayanadurga will be held because it is far from Bangalore with more than 150 kms of pedaling. As soon as I saw the event page, I was in dilemma due to the distance need to be covered in one day and is it possible for me to sustain stamina to ride cycle continuously for 15 hrs. Finally, I decided to join the endurance ride to Devarayanadurga.
My Experience:
It was an endurance ride and one day event, so not much of backpacking is required. Prepared small backpack with Electrodes, Glucose, Bananas and Chocolates along with the cycling repair kits.
Woke up at 2:30 AM and started cycling from my home at around 3:15 AM. Patrick decided to start the ride from Yeshwanthpur around 5:00 AM since lot of distance need to be covered in one day and we can return back to Bangalore by night. I started around 3:15 AM from home and thought will reach Yeshwanth pur around 4:30 AM. I reached around 4:20 AM and Patrick joined me in 15 mins. Surya, Prithayan, Mallick and Saurab joined us little later. There were 2 last minute dropouts from the shortlisted people and hence, 6 of us started cycling from Yeshwanthpur.
Assembling Point: Gurgunte Palya Signal (VIVANTA Taj Hotel, YeshwanthPur).
Our plan was to reach Nelamangala first then Dabaspet and have breakfast at Dabaspet. It was an awesome experience for me while pedaling on Bangalore- Pune National Highway (Tumkur Road, NH-4) due to the wonderful road conditions and weather. Finally, we reached Dabaspet around 7:45 – 8:00 AM. Had breakfast and took half an hour break. Started pedaling again to our destination Devarayanadurga and reached base of Devarayanadurga around 9:45 AM.
Took much need break of 15 mins, had snacks and started pedaling to Devarayanadurga top at 10:00 AM.
It was 5 km ride of uphill and hair pin bends so Patrick thought one and half hrs of time is required to reach top. All of us reached base of temple around 11:30 AM and parked our cycles.
Stared trek to the Yoga Laxmi Narasimha Temple which was at the top of the hill rock and relaxed here for 2 hrs. My bike computer showed me the count that I had done around 80 Kms of pedaling for the day till afternoon. I really enjoyed the terrain and weather was another plus point for us so far.
After relaxing, all of us started cycling back to Bangalore at around 1:30 PM. Decided to have lunch at Dabaspet. It was cloudy and drizzling from afternoon. Weather was pleasant and we enjoyed the ride to the fullest on the beautiful monsoon climate.
At 2:30 – 2:45 PM, we reached Dabaspet. All of us were hungry, filled our stomach at small bakery with junk foods and decided to have lunch on the way at dhaba on NH-4. Since most of us were hungry, we had lunch at dhaba and started at 4:00 PM. Our mission was to reach Yeshwanthpur around 6:30 PM. We could see heavy traffic on NH-4. We pedaled to our best, my bike computer showing speed of around 40-45 km/hr, Since there was a huge traffic jam at Peenya, we all reached Yeshwanthpur at 7:00 PM.
Departed to our places and reached home at 8:30 PM after battling Saturday evening traffic :P

Cycling distance: Around 158 kms. (To & fro- Devararyanadurga and Indiranagar).
Cycling route: Yeshwanth Pur –> Nelamangala –> Dabaspet –> Devarayanadurga.
Terrain: Difficult (Day long pedaling with a lot of distance coverage, Hairpin bends and uphill at Devarayanadurga, little off road cycling).
Finally, Super cycling Saturday for me. Started at 3:15 AM in the morning, back at 8:30 PM. Non stop cycling throughout the day and covered nearly 158 Kms. of cycling. My personal best on single day was 120 Kms. (Last year Nandi Hills bicycle ride).
Thanks to Patrick Sam and Bangalore ASCENDers for organizing this endurance ride to Devarayanadurga.
Written by: Gautham Baliga
Join Bangalore ASCENDers @ CLICK HERE
Date: 29th, August, 2014
Composed by: Swetha Padakandla
Event organized by: Patrick Samuel
Expenses per head: 0 Expense (Food expense was at own cost)
Image Gallery: Saurabh Rao
The team : Patrick Sam, Saurab Rao, Surya Vanamali, Rakesh Mallick, Prithayan Barua, Gautham Baliga

Night Trek to Kaurav Kunda

noreply@blogger.com (Swetha Padakandla) — Mon, 11 Aug 2014 10:15:00 +0000

I am Vinayak Surve, a Veterinarian from Mumbai. My childhood and teenage life is spent in Sahyadri, Konkan region, Ratnagiri District of Maharashtra. Naturally, I have some experience of crossing hills, rivers, forest and different challenging trails.

Preparations:

Thought about going to Kaurava Kunda trek was exciting to me because it was my first trek with experienced trekking group where I was supposed to meet new friends with great interest in trekking. I received an email from Patrick (organizer) and rushed to buy trekking tools and gears like wind jacket, sleeping bag, torch, snacks, etc. Sharing this pre-trekking excitement was great fun with friends, family, colleagues and everyone whom I met during that week.

Saturday, 09.08.2014

8.28 pm
Reached the meeting point. Started early from Electronic city to reach Majestic before time and have dinner near assembly point. Suman and Niloy joined me within 2 minutes as I reached at assembly point. We identified each other as "Bangalore Ascenders" by looking at attire and bags. All were full on trekking mood. Total 15 members joined by 8.45 pm. Introductions and handshakes happened as members arrived one by one. It was a good number of trekkers to have fun trails at Kaurava Kunda.

9.30 pm
All members boarded in a bus to Chikkaballapur. 2 more members joined us in bus. All cheered for them as they boarded in. Bus started at 9.30 pm sharp. I had good chat with Arvind while traveling towards our destination.

11.00 pm
The bus dropped us at Chikkaballapur. Patrick appointed a sweeper. It was new word for me in the trekking scenario. Sweeper is an appointed member who will always stay behind and ensure no one slips behind from the group and motivates the lagging members to walk fast, cover up and stay with the group. We started walking towards the Kaurava Kunda hill. It was bright night of "Rakhi Pournima" with full moon. We walked approx. 5 km to touch the base of hill. We had formal introduction meet at the bus stop near base village.

3 biscuit loving dogs joined us as we started climbing the hill. Dogs detected the Karachi biscuits kept in the bag of one of the member. The Karachi biscuits were saved for eating at camp by handing over to other members.

Sunday, 10-08-2014

1.40 am
Group reached the Kaurava Kunda peak. Patrick advised us to camp at the windy plateau near the peaks. We enjoyed the treat of hard saved Karachi biscuits at camping area. It was a chilling windy night. We decided to collect dry wood to create fire and have chat around it. I spotted a green snake while collecting wood and alerted other members to be careful while searching the wood. The fire was impossible because of crazy winds and wet woods. We dropped that idea after several attempts to light the fire.

2.30 am
We assembled for group photographs and had fun in mid night while taking photographs. All were tired after the 90 minutes of travel by bus, 5 kms of walk and 90 minutes of climbing hill. We decided to sleep. We scattered on plateau to find less windy & flat places to sleep.

5.40 am
When I woke up, I saw half of the group climbing towards the peak. I packed my sleeping bag, got ready for climbing and started towards the highest point. We reached the peak within 15-20 minutes. Winds and clouds were rushing with speed on the peak. It was awesome feeling. With those speedy winds and fast moving clouds, I felt like I was flying in the open aircraft. We took many photographs with different poses, time and places. We couldn't see the sunrise because of the clouds. We complained about this to Patrick that he didn't mark CC of his email to Sun :) who was unaware of our arrival.

We had some cakes for breakfast at camping area and started descending through a different route. After tiny treat of cakes, we assembled for group photograph at camping area. Jinu managed for all members snap by setting timer in his camera. It was fixed with bags and stones to capture all the members in a single frame. We headed towards Shiva temple at the base then towards Chikkaballapur. We had fun and some more clicks at the water pond while walking towards temple.

9.00 am
We reached Chikkaballapur and had breakfast again voraciously at nearby hotel. We got the bus to Majestic and slept in the bus like 'Kumbhakarna'. Time was 11.30 am when Arvind woke me up at Majestic. We had parting meet where Patrick told all to share the photographs and experiences about trek by email. I boarded in a bus to Electronic city along with Niloy. Yes, we learnt while trekking that we both are from Electronic city :) That’s the beauty of trek, you get some more friends while doing your dearest activity.

Thanks to Bangalore Ascenders and Patrick for organizing such a wonderful trek. I will be looking for such fun in future with Bangalore Ascenders.

Written by: Vinayak Surve

Join Bangalore ASCENDers @ CLICK HERE
Date: 9th & 10th August, 2014
Composed by: Swetha Padakandla
Event organized by: Patrick Samuel
Expenses per head: Rs. 120
Image Gallery: Suman, Niloy, Rashmi, Shreeharsha Aithal
The team : Deepa, Sathya baarathi, Pragati, Shamanth, Sreeharsha Aithal M, John, Surya Vanamali, Akshar Kowlani, Anvesh reddy, Rashmi, Arvind, Suman, Vinayak Surve, Niloy Das, Sandeep, Vidya, Patrick Samuel

Monsoon Trek to Nishani Motte/ Betta

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 06:57:00 +0000

Not sure how many leeches have bitten me and not sure where and all it attacked. Certainly it was one of my most difficult monsoon treks as of now. The rain, wind, steep ascend and the leeches made it tough, for all my buddies. Did many treks earlier in monsoon, however this was the one where I got leech bites all over my body. You might be thinking introduction itself is started from leeches! Of course during the course of the two days, everyone was more concerned about the leeches.

Nishani Motte / Betta is relatively unknown peak in the range of Bhagamandala (Talacauvery) range, Coorg. The trek distance from the base point Talacauvery is around 14 to 15 kilometers. We can enjoy the 360 degree panorama view, which is wonderful and most beautiful. Layers of the hills covered with clouds and mist is awesome. We can spot the villages, across the Kerala border, if the view is clear.

Our planned trek route was:

1^st Day: Talacauvery to Nishani Motte (Betta) – Night Camp at APC

2^nd Day: APC – Kurudi – Bhagamandala

27.06.2014

We started our journey with 21trek friends, at 10.45pm from Shanthala Silks, in a mini bus. Many known faces and few were new. This was my first trek with Vinay who organized this event. The journey was pleasant and reached the Bhagamandala around 6 am.

28.06.2014

Before this, I had been at Bhagamandala, thrice. Each time the weather was pleasant, greenery everywhere and had seen the entire range flooded with small falls. The Triveni Sangama was in full flow each time. Unfortunately, this time I was disappointed; understood from a local that, since a week, there was no rain in this range.

After getting freshened up in the morning, took Sri Bhagandeshwara Swamy darshanam and headed to have breakfast at a nearby hotel. Packed pulav for lunch and had idly-vada for breakfast. Meantime Vinay purchased the grocery items, for the preparation of the day’s dinner and the next day’s breakfast. Our guide Jayaprakash & his colleague (another forest official) joined us and we finished the necessary formalities for the trek, at the Bhagamandala Forest Office.

The trek starts at Talacauvery, which is 7 km away from Bhagamandala. Talacauvery is the origin place of holy river Cauvery. Decided to take the darshanam and then start the trek. The place was calm with no crowd.

After the darshanam everyone got prepared to fight the leeches. Read in many blogs and knew the volume of leeches in this region. Wore anti-leech socks which I borrowed from Shanthi Prasad (a trek friend of mine). Journey started around 11 am.

Pace was little fast, found a green snake on the way. The weather slowly turned into misty and pleasant. Hearing the whispering of birds and winds the entire team headed towards Nishani Betta. Due to some difficulties one of the fellow trekker could not to move forward, sent him back to Bhagamandala with one of the guide. I think it was good decision else it was not so easy task to finish this difficult trek.

The forest path becomes more thick with countless leeches. We started to move fast. There was no option unless you run or move fast. Nobody tried to take off the leeches from their body. As soon as you stop and try to take out one leech, there are 10 numbers again attacking you. Rain started to shower on us and we felt the journey became more difficult.

The time was around 2pm when we decided to have lunch. Believe me! We were not able to take lunch properly because of the leeches. Jayaprakash took us near a small stream and had standing lunch. Hardly we spent 20 minutes and again started further journey. The atmosphere became so dark at 3pm. Clouds started to pour merciless on us, more and more. Our backpacks became additional 5 kg heavier, as it got completely wet in the rain. Shoes were filled with water and became heavy. The final stretch of the Nishani Betta was more difficult, which was of around one km. The ascend latitude is almost a 60 degree. It tested our strength and was more challenging. Reached the peak around 5 pm and the view was so beautiful.

We can view 360 degree of the peak. Few things we can’t express in words. The joy to reaching the peak is one. The clouds were passing through us; each minute of the weather was varying. Took many group photographs and enjoyed the valley. The mountains were playing hide and seek in the clouds. Every one completely forgot the pain of the leech bite.

Guide advised to move fast and reach to night camp at Nishani Forest APC (Anti-Poaching Centre). Darkness was slowly covering the entire hill and our target was another 3 to 4 kilometers, in order to reach the camp. Descending path was a more difficult one, one side a deep ridge and we have to be very cautious at every step. Slowly crossed the ridge region and started descending very fast. Each one of us were literally damn tired and waiting to see the glimpse of the camp site.

Reached the APC quarters around 7 pm which had a big room, a small kitchen and bathroom separately. Solar system power was installed and it was comfortable for a night’s halt. A big thanks to forest guards, who kept hot water ready and fire to remove the leeches from our body. It was very sad; however there was no other option, but to put into fire, all the leeches which were scrolling on our body. You can say it as a mass cremation of leeches. Thanks to Vinay & Suresh and team members, who got engaged in the preparation of dinner. Rest one by one took hot water bath. After bath, the feeling was good and it was more relaxing to the body and mind. Delicious Pongal was ready and it filled our tummy. Since the team size was 20 and not enough space was available to accommodate everyone in the room. Thanks to the Forest personnel who accommodated six of us in a home which was very close to APC. Night was chilled and more and more leeches were in our dreams.

29.06.2014

Initial plan was to trek Kurudi (Kerala part) which was around 22km away from APC. No-one was in favor of trek and the path was not so easy. As per guide, it was more infested by leeches compared to the Nishani region and needed to cross two streams. Considering everyone’s opinion, dropped the plan and decided to head towards Bangalore.

We finished our breakfast with snacks which was carried during the trek. Again each one of us prepared to fight with leeches. Understood, need to trek around 5kms on jeep track in which 2km is leech territory. Luckily no one got leech bite this time around!

Vinay had already called the vehicle to the nearest point. We all boarded it and said good bye to Nishani Betta and headed to Bangalore. Reached Bangalore around 10pm and adieu to each one of our friends, to meet in next trek.

Thanks to BASC [Bangalore Ascenders] and Vinay for giving me an opportunity to be part of this wonderful trek. The team members were so friendly and co-operative. The entire journey was full of joy. Thanks to each one of the friends.

Written by – Vidya Sagar

Post 2

It had been couple of months since I had been to any trekking events, thanks to my recent job change, I was looking for a good opportunity to get out and be adventurous again. BASC is always my priority choice whenever I want to trek, and very soon I got to know about Nishani Betta/Motte trek organized by Vinay. Hoping to get shortlisted, we (CK & I) immediately registered. After the weekend, we were informed that we were shortlisted and we started our packing right away.

On Friday (27th Jun), 21 of us met at the usual pickup point (Shantala Silks, Majestic) and managed to get some good seats in the bus. Though the initial plan was to start at 10, we started a bit late as Roopashri arrived late. In the course of 2 days, Vinay informed that we should be trekking both Nishani motte & Kurudi. As both are quite hectic, he took our vote into consideration, for the second day trekking. Needless to say, we all wanted to trek to Kurudi.

By 6 in the morning we reached Bhagamandala, a small village in Coorg, which welcomed us with a misty cool climate. After taking permission from Sri Bhagandeshwara Swamy & the forest officer, we visited Tala kaveri and drank the energetic kaveri water. Even though it was not a part of the plan, we climbed the Brahmagiri hill in Talakaveri, as a warm-up for our day long trek.

Monsoon trek, which gives the joy of pleasant weather, trek while raining, lush greenery, also presents us with the leeches. These tiny little creatures who hang on the edges of leaves, waiting for its’ prey, literally suck our blood. Before entering the small gate near the parking lot in Talakaveri (starting point to Nishani Motte), we all resorted to all sorts of anti-leech agents like anti-leech socks, snuff powder, lemon and my secret home-made anti-leech agent.

We received a warm welcome from the sun, and very soon spotted a green snake and lots and lots of hungry leeches. I could see leeches looking out for me everywhere, so I was very careful about each and every step I took forward. Just after 4kms of trek, we all started feeling the heat of those monsters. The heat had made us feel hungry and we started bugging for a lunch break just before 1pm. But still we had to stick to the plan, so it was around 2:30 by the time we stopped for lunch. Soon after that, it’s started to rain (Downpour actually) and we felt the real monsoon trek. The path got trickier from there, and I must say, we wouldn’t have reached the place without our forest guide. Nishane betta is not a destination for lone trekkers. We crossed numerous hills, always (desperately) hoping the next one would be the final one.

Foggy weather welcomed us at Nishani and we were unable to see anyone who is 10 feet away from us. Ecstatic we were, that we made it to the peak, we woke up the silent honeybees and in a hurry (also with the fear of bee-stings) we managed to click some group snaps. Nishani motte/betta peak is actually a very small place. We all had just enough space to dump our luggage in some corner and pose for the snaps. But the view from the peak was breath-taking. We decided not to stay any longer there, as we had to reach the base camp before sunset.

When the guide told us to descend, from the narrower side of the hill, we were both excited and tensed if we would ever make it. Our strength was our guide who told us he treks to the place on an average of twice a week (OMG!!!).

Though descending the hill, is more tiresome than the ascend (many of my learning from the trek), hoping that the guide doesn’t ask us to trek another hill, we followed him, for what felt like ages. When we heard a dog barking ahead, without our realization, we doubled up our pace.

The forest base camp, was cozy little guest house, and they were informed about arrival. Bless them, they had the hot water ready for us. It was our turn to teach some lesson to leeches the moment we reached there. So we started killing them before we entered the living room (It was also a must, as we looked forward for good sleep, without any more of leech-bites)

Our next big question was about the day 2 and it was time to decide whether to fight tomorrow's battle or turn towards pavilion. Thank god many of them wanted to go back like me. With a hope to see Kurudi next time, we had delicious pongal prepared by our great chef Vinay (with few assistants). Even i contributed in pongal preparation (by adding more turmeric powder as per Suresh's suggestion). After a happy meal, it was time to sleep. Few of the leeches who had managed to sneak inside the house, woke up Roopa, Mamatha & Pushpa by midnight.

Sunday started and so was our packing. And we all bought honey from the near by house (where few of the trekkers had slept the previous night, as the base camp was too small for 20 members). To reduce the luggage and also to save effort from cooking again, we ate the remaining chapattis, ready to eat packed food. We started our return journey of 5 kilometers, trek to the point where our bus would pick us (needless to mention about anti-leech agents). The return journey was less tiring, and we passed through a village, which was a welcome change after a day in forest. By noon, we reached the point where bus was waiting for us, and we started our journey back to Bangalore.

Special thanks to our organizer, Vinay and co-organizer Suresh. Heartfelt thanks to our guide Jayaprakash, he didn't just guide us but also helped us in all aspects.

Written by – Ashwin Venkatesh & Chandrakala Venkatesh

Post 3

It was the month of June and my college was closed for vacations. A whole month had passed by and all I had done was watch episodes of Doctor Who and go out birding now and then. So when this trek was announced I jumped into action. I had never been on a monsoon trek before and my patience was wearing me thin as I was put on waiting list. Soon there was a dropout and I was in!

On 27th of June I made my way to the starting point in the Majestic. Vidyasagar was already there and all the others started to fill in one by one. We introduced ourselves and not surprisingly I was the youngest member. By 10:30 PM the group of 21 was complete, we hopped on to the minibus and off we went to the land of Kodavas.

The morning of 28th saw us reach the serene land of Bhagamandala. It would be 9 AM until we got the permission from the Forest officials. We washed up. Shrinidhi Sir and yours truly bathed in the chilling and pure waters of the Triveni Sangama. Soon we made our way to Sri Bhagandeshwara Temple which was built in the Karavali Style. After the darshan we answered the call of our stomachs at a nearby hotel and also packed our lunch for the noon.

We were drawn to the sacred Talakaveri, the source of river Kaveri. Drinking the pure and holy water we made our way up the Brahmagiri Hill and had our first photo session. After our descent we prepared ourselves mentally. The trek was a moderate one involving 16-18 kilometers of trekking. We packed our bags and readied ourselves for the trek. This included smearing our legs with anti-leeching agents like snuff. We would soon find out that leeches were not perturbed one bit by all the precautions we were taking as they drank our blood away to glory.

The trail started off pretty straight and soon it was twisting and turning into the woods. We were accompanied by two forest guards. While Vinay Sir was leading the party, Suresh Sir was sweeping. The path was laden with elephant dung and the guard remarked that it was just a day old. The forest was dense and I had the feeling of being in the cradle of nature. Beautiful cold streams of water running through the trails, refreshing us every now and then and so we moved on. This was my singular most experience with the leeches and the path was laden with tons of them. Soon we found them sticking to our shoes and some already busy feasting on our blood. Those wearing anti-leech socks were more fortunate!

After hours of trekking our stomachs were craving for food. The guide made a detour and took us near a fresh stream of water. We were soon gobbling up our packed lunch, pulav and all the other snacks. Filling our bottles with the fresh mountain water, we got back on our journey. The trek was labeled as “Monsoon Trek” and rightly so it started raining. Initially the rain was a delight but when it started pouring, our shoes, clothes got heavy and the ascent became more challenging. The rain was to me the least of worries.

I was more worried about the leeches which seemed to have increased after the rains and were sucking blood like crazy but we were too distracted by the climb to notice them. Anyway the path tested our grit and determination. The way up was not easy but we were tougher. Enjoying the forest produce (Guavas) on the way we kept climbing.

The climb became very steep for a few hundred meters and I had the feeling that this would be the stepping stone to the Himalayan Trek we all dream of. Ashok was a real motivation to many who were at the back. The view up top was mesmerizing. We were surrounded by hills covered in dense forest through which streams of fresh water ran like the arteries.

The peak itself was a small area where we could stand comfortably. There was a pile of stones flying a flag marking the summit. We had a group photo session and all that was left was to make our way to the base camp. The light was fading and the sun would soon set heralding the night. So we made our descent taking in the view, savoring each moment of the trek.

By 7 in the evening we arrived at the base camp only to be greeted by ferocious barking of the dogs. We changed, bathed in hot water (that was a great relief),and checked our equipment for leeches. Soon our hosts got a fire going and we warmed ourselves. Vinay and Suresh prepared ‘Pongal’ for dinner and everyone had a nice meal. While most of the group retired for the night at the base camp, six of us retired to bed at the house of a farmer nearby. We slept like stones. The sleep rejuvenated us but many were still tired from the previous day’s arduous events. I was more tired of the bloodthirsty leeches than the trek itself.

The second day was supposed to be a visit to Kurudi waterfalls. Soon the general opinion emerged and it was decided that we would make our way down and start back for Bangalore. The way down was pretty easy and quick. The path was slippery but nothing more. Once down I was already starting to miss the place. Our ride arrived and we got into the bus. Peering through my window I realized how different this place was and yet very similar.

The ride back was memorable. We had an ‘intro’ session in the bus and got to know each other really well. The time just flew on. We had our lunch in Kushalnagar. After that we enjoyed a matinee show of ‘Ugram’ in the bus. Taking one last break in the evening we were back in Bangalore. One by one we departed, bidding farewell to everyone.

Personally I enjoyed the trek to the last and many thanks to every member of the group , for without you the trek would have been meaningless and not as fun as it was. I only wish and hope that we meet on more treks like this and share many great moments like this in the near future. Many thanks to our organizer Vinay KGS for a wonderful trekking experience. Looking forward to meeting you again.

Written by - Sameer Desai.

Post 4

Well, what a place, what a trek, what turn of events, what fun, what rain, what fog, what leeches, above all what company. Nothing short of pure fun, pure joy and second to none!

the thrill of reaching the peak,

the agony of donating blood to the leeches,

the sad feeling of not encountering any wild tuskers/ wild animals, (or can I call ourselves plain lucky?),

the experience of getting drenched in heavy rain, yet continuing the trek with no place to take cover,

the awesome aroma of the rain soaked landscape

the joyous treat of watching the hide and seek game played between the mountains and the fog.

the shivery experience on facing winds after getting soaked in the rain.

the idea of rejuvenating ourselves by being amidst unmanned lush greenery.

All of the above came as a part of this 2 day event.

Loads of thanks to all the awesome people, who took part in this event, organized/cooked/carried utensils/vegetables/acted as sweepers, helped each others and worked as a team to get stuffs done. It was a journey & an experience to remember, cherish and speak for many more years to come.

It all started with me, opting to register for the 27 June BASC monsoon trek to Nishani Motte. Vinay had opened up the registrations late in the evening at around 8:30pm I guess and I only noticed it, the next day at around 10 30am. I thought I had lost precious time in registering and kept my fingers crossed on whether, I would get shortlisted. But eventually with the team size increased to 21, I found a place, which sounded rather sweet!

Once the list was announced noticed a few familiar faces. Harsha, Suresh, Ashutosh, Ashish, Rakesh and Vinay, I had met them atleast once, during earlier events. Pickup was as usual at 10 30pm at Shantala silks, near Kempegowda Bus Station. Met the rest of the folks over here. Started out a bit late at around 11 : 10 pm.

All the members began interacting with each other, though the introduction happened late into the second day, we felt the need for introduction came only as formality!. There was slight drizzle along Mysore Road as few of them slept, few of them continued with their talk, few of them listened to music on their cell phones. I remember Rakesh occupied the seat next to the driver. That was no seat actually, but a soft cushion which was put on the floor. I guess he did not sleep much during the night's drive and gave good company to the driver. I hope it did not add to any additional fatigue during the next day's trek!.

We reached Bhagamandala around 6 am in the morning. I had a pretty decent sleep. Vinay who sat next to me in the first seat, slept well too. I am guessing most people did. We stopped opposite to the Sri Bhagandeshwara Temple, where we freshened up. Spent some time over there chatting with each other, organizing our bags. Srinidhi and Sameer went ahead and had a dip at the Sangama.

We then decided to visit Sri Bhagandeshwara temple, after which Aashish suggested a hotel near to the temple, where we completed our morning breakfast. Idli's, Palav, Dosa was available.

Next, it was time to buy some veggies for evening dinner and meeting the forest officer for permission. So started with vegetables. The shop was closed and we had to wait for couple of minutes till the owner came. Onions costed Rs 35 per kilo and tomato costed Rs 30. Meanwhile Suresh had collected 15 packets of pulav from the hotel, these would come in handy as the afternoon lunch. Also Srinidhi and one more person went in search of curry leaves. They could locate the curry tree in a house, adjacent to the temple. So they fetched quite a sum of curry leaves.

Vinay, Rajesh and myself headed to the forest office. The Range Forest Officer Mr Uthappa, was on medical leave, instead we had to meet, Mr Manjunath in order to get required permissions, to trek in the forest. Over here we met our guide for the day Jayprakash. Meanwhile Vinay asked Suresh to come to the forest office premises In few minutes time, we were ready to go.

The trek starts from Talacauvery. So we decided to make a move, not before buying some snuff powder and coconut oil in a local store over there!

At Talacauvery we took sometime to visit the temple dedicated to Goddess Sri Kaveriamma. Luckily over here, I got to fill up couple of my water bottles. Next to the temple was a tank containing stored holy water. Vinay was curious to climb the stairs leading to Brahmagiri. So he along with others hurried climbing the steps. I too followed.

Once back from the temple, we decided to start our trek. So all the bags came out of the van and distribution of the logistics began. Vinay's backpack was very heavy, so was Suresh's courtesy some of the stuffs related to cooking. We had three additional bags, one containing vegetables, next being cooking utensils and one more being the packed lunch to be shared amongst the group.

The 15 packets of food was split into 10 and 5, 10 going into the cooking vessel (contained in the bag) and 5 going in my backpack. I decided to carry the vegetables during the start of the trek. Not sure who carried the bag containing 10 packets of packed lunch + cooking utensils. It sure was very heavy. I only realized midway in the trek, when me and Harsha carried this bag alternatively. I guess it was shared somewhere between, Vinay, Sameer, Ashutosh, Ashish and few others. While the vegetables bag was shared between Srinidhi, Rajesh, Rakesh, Bharat and myself. There was also a tarpaul which was shared between Aashish and Vidya Sagar I guess.

Initial trek of 2-3 kilometers was on a jeep track. Leeches greeted us with a warm welcome, by climbing onto each one of us. There were so many of them, that it was tough to ignore them. Every now and then somebody or the other stopped to pluck those fellows who had climbed on to us.

Leech bites were happening too but there were few lucky one's who had escaped them, courtesy leech socks, snuff powder & oil or dettol or by luck or by God's grace. I was not so lucky, I got leech bite multiple times, since I had not taken any precaution and ventured into their territory just like that, fully unprepared. I guess even Harsha, was unequipped with anti leech stuffs so he too fell prey quickly. I did not see, what precaution Vinay had taken, but he was not stopping for removing the leeches from the shoes nor complaining. Not sure what he was doing so differently! Suresh and Vidya Sagar had taken tough precaution against leeches, but ended up getting bitten on the upper half of their bodies! Suresh on the neck and Vidya sagar just below the neckline.

We had covered some distance when there was slight drizzle, which continued for sometime. The green landscape was just fantastic companion throughout the day's trek. We passed through many such trails which offered us great views of the neighboring hills. We stopped at couple of places when the rain subsided to take pictures, but soon it started to rain again, leaving us with no option but to walk. We had encountered elephant dung, some of them fresh and some of them not so recent. So there was traces of wildlife on the trail after all!. Meanwhile the vegetable bag and the utensils bag had started to switch hands with each one contributing by carrying it for sometime.

Sometime after 1 30PM we decided to break for lunch, guide showed us a water source so we had lunch close by to that. Luckily there were not much leeches in that area. Refilled our bottles and headed out after 20-25 minutes of break. Meanwhile, Vinay got the news that there was heavy rainfall in Bagamandala. So there was a chance for more rainfall over here too. We asked our guide Jayprakash, about the trail to the peak and what time we could make it to the peak. Jayprakash, told there were couple of ascents to be completed before we could reach the peak. And the forest camp was at a bit more distance from the peak. I was wondering, what would happen if we faced rainfall during this ascent. And believe me it happened. Initially when we started after lunch, it started to rain a little, but soon the rainfall increased. But it was fun. With shoes filled with water, we were finding it difficult to walk at a brisk pace. Soon we were up against an uphill. After lunch, I had the cooking utensils bag with me, and after sometime, climbing up, I found it difficult to carry the bag, so I handed it to Sameer who was right behind me, after few minutes our guide voluntarily asked to let him carry the cooking utensils bag. There was one more smaller peak to climb, before we could reach Nishani peak.

The rain had subsided by then, and I was able to take some pictures over here. Meanwhile, our guide went back downwards to get some more luggage from our fellow team members, while I stayed over there. Soon all of us started climbing the second peak and finally we could see Nishani peak.

At the peak we could see a bunch of stones neatly laid out in a way, capable of acting as a platform for hoisting a flag. We had a group picture over there. Meanwhile our guide showed us which way would lead us to Kurudi as well, as which was Kakabe & Tadiyandamol. There was a bunch of bees which were ready to erupt (at least that's what we thought) which made us to start the descend rather pretty quickly.

It was bit difficult for sometime, where the path was slippery. But eventually we made it down Nishani peak and now there was some more stretch to walk before we could actually reach the forest camp. We were at the base camp at about 7pm. Soon it turned dark, luckily, the forest camp was a solar powered one. It worked out well. We quickly pulled out the leeches which had either crawled on to us or our baggage. Meanwhile few guys queued to have bath, so that they could get ready for cooking the dinner. Rest all were warming up in front of a small fire in front of the forest camp.

Vinay and Suresh took lead in preparing Pongal, while couple of others helped them by chopping necessary vegetables. Few of the people sat inside the living room, chatting while few others sat in the dark, next to the forest camp, where there was a sit-out. In less than an hour's time dinner was ready. The cooking team had prepared pongal for dinner. It was tasty and satisfying too. Ate till stomach was full.

It was then time to sleep. The forest camp shelter could not accommodate all of the 21 people (plus forest guards). Instead 6 of us slept in the verandah (or living room not sure what it was) of a home, located at a certain distance from the forest camp. It was home to a family who owned couple of acres of estate over there. There was no door and it was accessible to anyone. Vidya Sagar was the first person and I turned out to be the second. There was a small dog which slept along side Vidya Sagar's legs and I am guessing it also acted as the night guard!

Had a pretty nice sleep. Did not wake up till 5 30 AM in the morning, when me and Vidya Sagar came back to the forest camp to freshen up. Soon rest of the guys also got ready. Vinay and Suresh had decided to cook breakfast and chose Poha. I was of the opinion to eat yesterday's pongal which was left over, in quite a good quantity. Finally decision was made to eat the Pongal along with ready to eat stuffs which each one carried. So we can say we saved sometime avoiding to cook and clean the utensils. Meanwhile Vinay had prepared Tea quickly.

So we started to get back to Bhagamandala via the jeep track available. Time was around 10 20 AM. We thanked the guards and watchers at the forest camp and bid goodbye to our first day guide Mr Jayaprakash who stayed back at the camp. This time we were accompanied by Mr Ganapathy. Incidentally while conversing with Mr Ganapathy, we came to know that, he had completed 30 years as a Forest Guard. Loads of respect; we thought! Getting down from the jeep track was pretty straight forward. Slight slippery stretches here and there and few leeches and that's it, we were back to civilization.

Our van made it to the main road in few minutes time. To our surprise there was no place to reverse the vehicle. We had to guide the vehicle almost 3/4 kilometer in reverse. We managed it and then reached Bhagamandala and dropped off our guide and started our return journey to Bangalore.

In the meantime, the introduction session had started. I guess each people knew each other pretty well by now after so much of interaction and team work. One thing I would like to tell about all BASC events. In all the 6-7 events I have participated, I have had the privilege to be part of brilliant team work, ethics, discipline, motivation and so much more.

We crossed Marcera and then moved to Kushalnagara. At Kushalnagar we stopped at a restaurant for lunch. After lunch few of us ventured out into the town. Harsha and Lavanya brought some chocolates. Rajesh went in search for eucalyptus powder, we found one store selling the same. Over there me and Vinay purchased some dates too. Being the season of Ramzan, we could find multiple varieties of dates spread across different price range! Few of the folks had ordered fruit juice and were at the hotel. Soon we started towards Bangalore.

On public demand, the Kannada movie Ugram was being played. Many of them watched the movie while few slept, while I took up the seat next to the driver. After couple of hours, we reached Mysore Ring road, where Srinidhi got down as he was travelling to Mysore.

We encountered some drizzle after Mysore towards Srirangapattana, but it too subsided quickly. We reached Maddur where we stopped for evening tea at Maddur Tiffany's next to the petrol bunk. Then it was non stop drive to Bangalore. I got down at Kengeri and bid goodbye to all the members.

With the two days being spent in an awesome way amidst nature with tremendous people, I was all geared up for next days work. I couldn't have asked for more.

Thanks to Vinay for organizing and shortlisting me, Suresh for sweeping and to both of you and others for cooking the evening dinner and tea on the second day. And big round of thanks to rest of all you folks, you guys provided a great company.

Written by - Sandeep Kulkarni

Join Bangalore ASCENDers @ CLICK HERE

Date: 28 & 29 June 2014

Expenses per head: Rs 1105/-, includes costs for hired vehicle, trekking fee, guide tips, groceries, miscellaneous, breakfast and packed lunch

Composed by: Sandeep Kulkarni

Event organized by: Vinay KGS

Image Gallery:

Sameer Desai, Roopashri, Rajesh Raju, Sandeep Kulkarni, Vinay KGS, Ashutosh Patel, Lavanya, Rakesh Puttaswamy

The team: Aashish Urs, Rakesh Gowda, Bhavin Thummar, Harsha, Rohith D, Lavanya, Chandrakala, Ashwin, Ashutosh Patel, R Mamatha, Suresh Babu B R, Bharath BS, Sandeep Srinivas Kulkarni, Vidya Sagar, Rajesh K, Ashok G, Roopashri, Vinay, Sameer Desai, Srinidhi, Pushpalatha

Night trek to Kabbal Durga

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 25 May 2014 12:34:00 +0000

It was my first trek with Bangalore ASCENDers (BASC), I was so excited about the event and I called Vinay many times to know the details about the trek. Common meeting point was at Jayanagar 4th block near Jain Temple, we gathered at 7.30 PM but started journey by 8.30 PM.

Since we all were hungry we decided to have food on the way, so we went to Kamath hotel and finished food and started journey by 10.30 PM.
There were 3 cars, I was in Promod’s car, Kunal and Sathish were accompanying along with me and we started our journey towards Kabbal-durga. It was a great journey, in-between Pramod was cracking nice jokes.

Finally we reached Kabbal-durga by 12 AM and started the trekking. There were no clear trails in the beginning of the trek but we found the trails after trekking 250 meters, everybody was in full josh, finally we reached the peak by 3 AM in the morning.

Then started the formal introduction about the group members, in between other member's were pulling the legs of others and making full fun. Later it was time to sleep but in between the sleep it started raining, For our luck there was small temple to take shelter, so some members went for sleep and me and some other members went for exploring the nature.

Early morning around 6.30 we had nice photo session and then finally started climbing down. Then, we travelled back to Bangalore. On the way at Kanakapura we had our breakfast and some guys started buying vegetables for family, since all vegetables were fresh.

After breakfast again started our journey towards bangalore, on the way I had nice chit chat with Nandini, Rajesh, Sathish and pramod. Finally around 12.30 PM I reached Banashankari, told Bye Bye to everybody, me and Sathish got down in Banashankari and started our bus journey to home. It was a great journey, I enjoyed a lot. I would like to specially thank Vinay for organizing such a wonderful event.

Join Bangalore ASCENDers @ CLICK HERE

Written by: Uday Naidu

Image Gallery: Uday Naidu, Vinay

Composed by: Jithendra B N

Event organized by: Vinay

Event Date: 24th May 2014

The Crew: Nandhini, Harsha, Aashish, Ashok Achar, Pramod, Laxmi, Surabhi, Rajesh, Uday Naidu, Satish, Kunal Roy, Navya, Vinay, Sharada

Kumaraparvata Clean-up & Awareness drive in April 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 21 Apr 2014 10:43:00 +0000

BASC completed its first cleanup drive in Kumaraparvatha (KP) on the occasion of its 5th B'Day. A big THANKS to all the participants (Satya, Sandeep, Anitha, Vinuthna, Ramkumar, Govind, Ram roop, Sreedhar, Srikanth, Kamal & Skanda) for the hard work done in collecting garbage and taking it back to Kukke. Team work made BASC's first clean-up drive a successful event. Also thanks to driver, Chetan & his friend Lokesh for joining us in cleanup drive. We collected 22 bags of garbage!!! And same we took back to Bangalore and dumped in plastic recycle plant near Nayandahalli. Thanks to plant owner Selva who waited for us till 11:15PM.

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Write-up from Sandeep Kulkarni:

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Let me breakdown my post event write up into two parts.

1. One about the cleanup drive and creating awareness

2. General Event write up.

1. Cleanup drive and creating awareness.

I never imagined a cleanup drive would be so much fun. As a team we got to undo at least some of the mess, which some people had left behind. We could not completely wipe out the man made hazardous materials, but it was a great attempt though.

If more and more individuals come together and work together we not only can make Kumaraparvata litter free but also create a basic awareness amongst all those nature lovers who come to Kumaraparvata, to be more responsible. (Applies to other places too). A big round of thanks to the entire team who stood united during the whole event. Also a special thanks to our driver Chetan and spotter Lokesh, who voluntarily participated in the cleanup event and also helped us to bring back the wastage to Bangalore.

Thanks to Ambareesh Karanth for short listing me for this event.

2. General Event write up

No sooner I saw the registrations open for BASC Kumaraparvata clean up drive, event. I registered. I was looking forward for the clean up activity but prior to the trek my main motivation was to reach the peak. (Nothing to hide though). We did not reach the peak, but in the end and I came out as a proud and happy man after making some contribution during this event.

It all started on a Friday late evening 18th April at 10PM where we assembled for our pickup. Amongst the whole team, I only knew Ram Roop as I had met him during the Hampi photography event. Around 10:20PM odd, our vehicle arrived. Surprisingly we could see a driver and along side him was another person, you can call him navigator/spotter/cleaner. Let me tell you these two people not only accompanied us to Kukke but also till Bhattara Mane, involving in the cleanup activity all the way. It was like having two extra pair of hands and indeed a pleasant surprise. Believe me it helped a lot too!

Others in the group comprised of Ram Kumar, Govind, Ambareesh, Satya, Skanda, Kamal, Dr Srikant, Sridhar, Anita and Vinutna. Chetan was the driver and Lokesh was his friend accompanying him. It was a regular drive on Mangalore highway where heavy rains greeted us after Kunigal. For few minutes it was rain, rain and more rain. Eventually, after around 25-30 minutes of time, it stopped to rain. We had couple of breaks during the journey, one initially, just after the 60 kilometer toll road ends and the other one somewhere near Sakaleshpura. We made it to Kukke around 4 20 AM. The van was parked next to the Kumaradhara river. We got freshened up in a while and around 6 10 AM we started towards Kukke. We had breakfast at the hotel opposite to Neo Mysore Cafe. We filled our water bottles were about to start for the trek.

There was a change in plan. Initially we thought, all would go to the peak and camp. But since it was raining in Kukke since 4 days, we thought of reaching the peak and coming back to Bhattaramane. Chetan and Lokesh told, they would accompany us along the trek. Ambareesh split the entire team of 12 + 2 into two.

First Team which would trek fast and reach the peak and start cleaning from the Kumaraparvata peak.

Second Team which would start cleanup activity right from ground zero, I mean from the (main road) entrance till Bhattaramane.

It was 7 AM i think when we started. Being part of the first team, I felt good, I thought I could trek fast and cover good distance and start cleanup at the peak. The team comprised of Govind, Ram Kumar, Ram Roop, Satya, Skanda, myself and Sridhar. We stayed together at a good speed till Bheemana Bande after which Sridhar and myself were behind by 5 minutes than the rest of the team. We did not do any cleanup on the way and our only intention was to reach Bhattaramane quick. Then dump extra luggage and start cleaning from over there. The first team (except me and Sridhar) reached Bhattaramane around 8 40AM. I was behind by 10-12 minutes owing to my cramps and Sridhar was behind me by 3 minutes or so. But the good thing was I walked alone. So much serenity, so much silence, nature at its best, cannot ask for more. The humidity was there, but that was sidelined. When I reached Bhattaramane, Ram and others were ready to make a move. I too immediately reduced my baggage weight by unloading some of the stuffs at Bhattaramane. Meanwhile Sridhar too came. All of us then made a move towards the forest check post, and Sridhar caught up with us over there. This was the first time, I was making a move from Bhattaramane this early and that too without lunch. For a minute I was wondering whether, not having food would make a difference. But it did not. It indeed was a time saver. We reached the first view point and started picking litter over there. Then towards second view point and slowly we gathered litter all along the way till Kallu Mantap water source. It was 11 45 AM I guess. We had covered whole lot of ground and also reached Mantap pretty quick. Ram and Govind decided we would finish snacks/food and then start once again with the cleanup. So we took a break near the Kallu mantap water source and after 20 minutes we were back again. Dividing ourselves into different teams, we scouted the area around the water source for 1.5 hours more. We ended up with 4 full bags of waste. Govind's bag was a huge one more than 7 kilos. While me and Sridhar took a break near the water source, Ram, Govind and others made a move to the Kallu mantap, to put up banners asking nature lovers to keep KP clean.

At 1 40PM, we took a call, not to move towards the peak, due to many reasons. One being time constraint. It would be difficult to reach peak, do a cleanup and then bring back waste, before it turns dark. And we did not have torches too.

Second being chances of rain. If it rains, its really difficult to manage, since few of us were carrying lot of luggage. So we headed right back to Bhattaramane. Initially I was disappointed that, I could not reach the peak. But, yeah, reaching peak was never the event's priority. It was cleanup. Getting down was a bit tough, the way was packed with stones. Ram, Govind, Satya, Sridhar each carried one fully loaded bag containing plastic waste. Me and Skanda initially managed to share the load by carrying the bag using a stick, with each one holding one end. But it was difficult and needed synchronization. The moment Skanda took the bag by himself, he rocketed. Meanwhile Ram and Govind too were ahead of us. So it was 4 of us behind, Ram, Satya, Sridhar and me. After certain distance, Ram took up Satya’s bag and me took Sridhar's bag. We finally made it to forest check post at around 4 50 PM or something.

Ambareesh and others were about to enter the forest, looking out for us, if we needed any help to get the waste bags back. Now the whole team came back to Bhattaramane. We freshened up and it was a pleasant surprise to see, lunch was still available. Food felt really good after this cleanup exercise. Ate till my stomach was full and took couple of minutes to rest. Ram Roop went towards view point 1 to take some pictures and rest of the crew headed to a nearby view point. Evening dinner was served at 8PM. Then it was sleep time. We woke up early. Everyone was now focused on how to get the bags down and also collect the waste bags which had been gathered by Team 2 along the way. Yes Team 2 had worked pretty hard to gather stuffs along the way to Bhattaramane. In the process they had accumulated the litter at certain points, which needed to be picked up along the way down.

Started early, Satya, took one waste gunny bag and headed first then, Ram Kumar and Ram Roop headed with their gunny bags too followed by Govind and Ambareesh. Skanda managed to take Govind's backpack along with his and Kamal took Ram Kumar's and one more backpack with him . Vinuthna took Satya's backpack along with hers, I had my backpack and one gunny bag with me. Anita, Vinuthna , Dr Srikant, Sridhar, Chetan and Lokesh were the one's who were looking out for waste and litter along the way. Rest of them, had loaded and sealed bags, hence proceeded right with the descent.

As usual, I was the slowest during the descent, but right after Bhattaramane, where we encounter a major dustbin, Govind, Ambareesh, Anita, Sridhar, Dr Srikant, stayed back segregating the waste from the dustbin and picking plastic ones. Now I got a chance to move ahead. Meanwhile Skanda too started looking out for litter along the way. On the way, I then caught up with Ram Kumar and Kamal who were taking a breather. Then I caught up with Vinuthna, Lokesh and Chetan. Their tally of bags had almost doubled. Together between them they now had 6 plastic bags hanging by a big wooden stick plus their backpacks. Later I took a break when some of the guys moved ahead. Meanwhile, Ram Roop and Satya had made it to the main road ,and Satya was back again, to take few more bags. Eventually the whole team was back to the entrance by 10 15 AM.

Ram Kumar, Chetan and Lokesh went ahead to bring the vehicle near the entrance so that we could load the bags right up over here. A family who noticed and appreciated what we were doing, agreed to drop Ram Kumar, Chetan and Lokesh to the place where our TT was parked. Indeed thanks to them. One more team from Mangalore comprising of 4-5 guys lent us their entire nylon thread which we used to tie up few bags. Thanks to you too guys. But we could only load few of the bags since there was a electric wire, which would come in contact with the bags. So with few bags loaded we headed towards Kumaradhara river where we found shelter under a tree and loads of time to tie up the bags on top of the van. All the huge bags were now bundled into medium size gunny bags and the total tally went up to 22 bags. Chetan and Govind did a tremendous job in loading the bags on the van and later all of us made it to the Kumaradhara river to take a dip. The water was warm and it felt good. The cleanup activity was a success. We felt refreshed and then we moved to the same hotel where we had our breakfast.

Completed our lunch and were off by 3 30 PM. With couple of breaks in between we made it to Nelamangala by 9 30 PM. We could make it to Nayandahalli by 11 PM after dropping few of them at Shantala Silks. I got down at Nayandahalli, where the van proceeded to a recycler.

So two days of sheer fun & hard work came to a close.

Things to take away.

> Loads of time spent amidst nature.

> Tremendous team work.

> Doing our bit, in keeping KP clean.

> Meeting interesting & like-minded people.

> Dip in Kumaradhara

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Write-up from Ram Roop

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On the weekend before Earth Day ( 22nd April ) 12 enthusiastic members from BASC embarked on an ambitious and noble cause of removing the non bio-degradable waste ( plastics bottles , covers etc ) from the beautiful Kumara Parvatha .

We arrived at Kukke at 4:30 AM on Saturday 19/April/2014 and after having a heavy breakfast we split-up into two teams comprising of 7 members. I was part of the team comprising of Ramkumar , Govind , Skanda , Satya, Srikanth and Sandeep and our task was to clean up the region starting from Bhattru Mane to the peak.

We started our trek at 7:00AM and our staggering pace ensured that we reached Bhattru Mane at 8:40 AM . From Bhattru Mane we went to the office of the forest guard. The officer there was pleased to hear about the brilliant initiative by Bangalore Ascenders and even offered to help us by requesting his sub-ordinate to assist us with disposing the garbage.

As we trekked towards the Kallu Mantapa it was clear that we will have an extremely difficult task of clearing the massive garbage left behind. After filling multiple bags of garbage it was clear that it would not be feasible to trek beyond Kallu Mantapa and go towards the peak owing to time constraints.

After collecting all the garbage around Kallu Mantapa we headed back to Bhatru Mane . A few of us felt adventurous and slept at the breathtaking view point - “Raja Seat” . Even though most of us had sleeping bags we were forced to use a tarpaulin sheet as a bed sheet owing to the intermittent rain fall.

The next day ( Sunday 20/April/2014 ) we left Bhattru Mane at 8:10Am as we knew that our descend will be extremely slow as each of us had to carry a garbage bag in addition to our trekking bag. After reaching the base of the mountain we tied the garbage bags to the top of our Tempo Traveller and cooled ourselves in a nearby lake. Next we ate a sumptuous lunch and headed back to Bangalore.

Wanna know about the trash we found at KP? … keep reading ( order - most expected to the least expected )

· Cigarette packets

· Potato chips packets / Chocolate wrappers

· Water bottles

· Alcohol bottles

· Shoes

· A dominos pizza box + the seasoning, etc.

Each of us had a great experience at KP and we are happy that we removed as much garbage as possible from the beautiful peak .

The task of having a clean and green Kumara Parvatha will be tough and each of us realize that this initiative should be repeated multiple times to achieve that goal , but “ A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step “ , and I am glad that Bangalore Ascenders ( special thanks to Ambareesh for organizing the event ) have taken the initiative to kick start “project KP” ( taking the liberty to give the initiative a name ).

I would like to thank Ambareesh Karanth for giving me the opportunity to be part of such a great initiative and I would also like to thank all the participants for having made this a memorable experience.Until next time , Happy trekking

Join Bangalore ASCENDers @ CLICK HERE

Date: 19 & 20 April 2014

Composed by: Sandeep Kulkarni

Event organized by: Ambareesh Karanth

Image Gallery:

Dr Srikanth, Sandeep Kulkarni, Ram Roop

The team : Ambareesh Karanth, Govind Gorur, RamKumar UN, Satya Prakash Panigrahi, Ram Roop, Skanda S, Anitha MS, Vinuthna, Dr Srikanth K, Sridhar Thyagarajan, Sandeep Srinivas Kulkarni, Chetan, Lokesh

Aandi Gundi Night trek - BASC Birthday Celebration Trek

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 20 Apr 2014 05:39:00 +0000

All right! Here goes my first write-up for Bangalore Ascenders. It had been a while since I did a night trek, so even a short one of a couple of hours held the excitement in me. Darkness has it’s own light: something which many people forget! But the more important excuse was it was the birthday of BASC.

So the evening of 19th April found a group of “not-complete-strangers” and “we-all-love-BASC” standing outside the KSRTC Mysore Satellite Bus Stand. Once we all had gathered, we started out for the trek without much ado. Midway, we decided to grab a bite and we stopped at the way-side restaurant. After much discussion over the dinner (read: I was discussing with my tummy whether a south meal or a north meal would be right), I chose the wrong one: the north meal, and realized this, the moment the south meals were served. Well no harm done. They say hunger is the best sauce, and it always is true.

Once the dinner was done, and I had tucked away my usual “Orbit – Lime flavored” strip in my arm pouch we were raring to go. In our car (piloted by Ravindra), we had a good time, discussing wildlife, cycling and Bangalore roads! And soon we had reached the village from where our trek was supposed to start.

After a couple and a bit more kilometers in the dark, a few wrong turns, and spotting black scorpions (the poisonous kind) we were on the right trail. For both me and Ravindra, the steep initial climb meant that we had to put our cameras back in our back packs. Then once the initial trail was covered, me and Akshatha fell behind, to stay a bit farther away from the torch lights. I tell you, darkness has its own light. The hills and the valleys in between looked so beautifully still in the light of the night. The sky was cloudy, hence all the stars were hidden above their generous cover. Slowly we climbed the trail, me making sure that I sweep the group (it was then that I realized that I take lead only when it is a completely unknown trail, the joy of finding untouched and un-trodden paths are a sheer joy).
Collecting some twigs for the fire, we started climbing up slowly. By the time we reached to the top, the folks had already settled down and were getting ready for the camp fire! And it was the sight at the top that always takes your breath away. On one side, were the city lights, and on the other, was the mask of perpetual darkness. Far on the eastern side, we could see small lights on the hills: signs of civilization. And on the west was the shades of dark. And amongst us were friends who shared the
same love: Nature and BASC.
After taking a couple of pictures of the city lights, we settled down around the fire for the round of introductions. And my-oh-my! Weren’t that colorful! What a mixed group of people we were! One who was an author of wildlife books, one a cyclist, one who had travelled Europe after “crowd sourcing” the money, most who had done Himalayan treks and more importantly: a hirer and a firer (the most important people of the group? Maybe)!
Once the introductions were done, the party had started. Oh WAIT! No party. We shared the cake, I got my favorite piece, and smeared a bit on Vinay’s face. It was such a joy to know that, what started of as a slight effort 5 years back has grown through leaps and bounds and has a turnover now of quite a few crores!

Then we took more than a while to get wrong and slightly mistimed high exposure shots of the group with the city lights as the back drop. While at that time it was a pain to hold still for 25 seconds (we were on high adrenaline) the pictures later were worth it! And soon we had tucked in our sleeping bags.
The morning found us watching a sullen sunrise and soon were on our way down the plains. On the way down, some of us stopped to “grab” some mangoes from low-hanging trees, hug a goat, cuddle a puppy, before we were on our way to our breakfast place. And the breakfast was so worth it! Yum! Even thinking of the delectable khichdi, upma, idli and akki roti makes my mouth water even now. And then it was time to part ways. Only hoping to meet soon again!
Written by – Atreya

Post 2

This was a part of BASC birthday celebration trek and was organized by Vinay. I registered as soon as the event opened and made it to 20 shortlisted members. 20 enthusiastic trekkers assembled on Saturday evening at Mysore road satellite bus stand. Sky was overcast and it seemed like it might rain.

I parked my bike at the parking bay, near the bus stand. Most of the people in the group were new to me, except 3 or 4. Four cars were pooled in with five people each. We started from there around 7.30 pm. Next break was at Kengeri satellite bus stand where we had our dinner. Slowly we were getting to know each other.

For Aandi gundi, we have to take a deviation towards left, around 5 to 6 Kms before Ramnagara. We have to cross the railway track and go around 1 km on village road. We parked the cars near a temple and started walking towards the base of the hill. We had to cross through a village, where we were greeted by the incessant barking of the dogs.
After some searching for the path to the base of hill, we finally found the trail. From the base, it looked like a small hillock, but actually the main peak was not visible from base. On the way to the peak, everyone carried some firewood. We took few breaks in between to enjoy the sight of the city lights below and train passing through the tracks near the Mysore road highway.

Finally we reached the peak after about 1.5 hours of trekking. Top of the hill has a flat area where we all camped and had camp fire. Everyone assembled around the fire and we had an interesting round of introduction. It was nice to see so many talented people from different fields. That was followed by cake cutting (BASC birthday) and some photo sessions. It was already 1.30 AM by then. After that everyone retired for sleep.
Next morning I woke up around 6 AM and could get some beautiful view around the hill. The sunrise from the hills were very refreshing. After spending some time there and clicking photos, we all started to climb down. Climbing down was easier and we were at the base in about half and hour. Next stop was Kamat hotel around 7 to 8 Kms from there. We had a nice breakfast buffet there. After that we started our journey back to Bangalore. All assembled back at the Mysore road bus stand and departed in different directions after saying goodbye. This trek was a nice refreshing break from the hectic life of Bangalore. Thanks to Vinay for organizing it so well.
Written by – Ashutosh Patel
Join Bangalore ASCENDers @ CLICK HERE
Date: 19 April 2014
Expenses per head: Rs 300/- includes shared fuel expense of cars, breakfast on 20 April 2014. (Royal buffet breakfast @ Kamath Lokaruchi).
Composed by: Sandeep Kulkarni
Event organized by: Vinay KGS
The team: Abhishek, Pramod Rao, Atreya RC, Ashutosh Patel, Harsha, Abdul Wahid, Ashu, Mahesh Shetty, Priyanka, Vishwanath Joshi, Shanti Prasad, Ravindra Joisa, Varun, Tejaswi, Madhu Bagur, Akshatha, Azmi, Roopashri, Rashmi, Mamatha, Bharath, Vinay, Girish NL, Lavanya.
Image Gallery: Abdul, Ashutosh Patel, Girish NL, Ravindra Joisa, Varun, Lavanya
Video Gallery: Ravindra Joisa

Bangalore ASCENDers (BASC) completed FIVE years

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 17 Apr 2014 16:05:00 +0000

Bangalore ASCENDers (BASC) completed 5th year on 17th April 2014. We like to thank all 30+ Organisers and 4850+ members for their support in BASC success.

In 5th year BASC completed 103 (⇧10%) events organised by 26 (⇧18%) Organisers taking 1478 (⇧7%) members. Also 1264 (⇓6%) members joined last year. And you guys won’t believe, total expenditure from all 103 events is Rs.21,98,283! yes 22 lakh rupees!!!

BASC Events list (APR to MAR):

Top Organisers based on number of events:

We spent Rs.39925 in total with 7 social events:

BASC Member count milestones:

More about BASC @

http://www.bangaloreascenders.org/

http://www.bangaloreascenders.org/2002/01/about-us.html

http://www.bangaloreascenders.org/search/label/social%20event

http://www.bangaloreascenders.org/search/label/Conservation

http://www.bangaloreascenders.org/search/label/Blood%20Donation

http://www.bangaloreascenders.org/search/label/cycling

Keep exploring places, Happy Trekking :)

Join Bangalore ASCENDers @ CLICK HERE

Composed by: Ambareesh Karanth

Trek in Western Ghats (Gundya-OG-EB-Shishila)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 01 Apr 2014 04:43:00 +0000

This was my 7th Bangalore ASCENDers (BASC) trek and I have met Patrick in 4 out of those 7 treks. This was my first difficult trek but being with Patrick I was chilled out about it.

For me the trek really started when I was woken out of my sleep at 5AM in KSRTC bus. Within few minutes we were off the bus and marching in dark terrain guided by Patrick's GPS and our torch lights. It seemed as if a bison or elephant might be lurking at any corner to pounce upon us. That set the theme for rest of the trek.

I had been on this terrain few weeks back, but soon after khakhra breakfast we were into different terrain. This involved countless stream crossings and bush whacking to reach to a grassland. From here we got our first grand view of ranges nearby. Some more steep climbing brought us face to face with our target with a sheer 500mt drop separating us. We topped out well before sunset.

It was a full circle for me to be able to spot and identify SG ("some gudda") that I had reached in a previous trek with Pratap. Since we had network few folks uploaded customary fb pics. Next morning we were treated to a view of a majestic herd of about 20 animals on a far off ridge. After some debate, it took a zoom camera to identify them as bisons!!! After jam roti breakfast, we headed off for ethina bhuja. On the way we saw malabar squirrel, colourful birds and poops of countless creatures. We also came across a herb picker who offered us few figs. During all this we were running short of water. After some foraging around for a stream, we reached a reservoir. We engineered a water drainage to get enough fresh water out of it. Sunil had to take off due to severe back pain.. Having filled our stomach (and emptied in few cases) we headed back on our pursuit to ethina bhuja. This took us through some exploratory routes. well before sunset we topped out to be treated with a panoramic feast of a view. The night was spent listening to a bat flapping around and wild dog's howl. To add into fun, it drizzled for a while and we had to sleep under tarpaulin to keep ourselves dry.

Last morning of the trek we took a downhill route that took us 270° around the ethina bhuja into deep forest. We kept a steady pace to reach a river in 2 hours. We came across a desolate temple and river bank.

Some folks got themselves fish pedicure while others took a dip and had lunch.

After a long walk on paved road, we reached civilisation. I personally gulped down 4 fish fries at Rs.10 each! Since we had some time for our bus we went back to start point of trek and spent some chill time in a rubber plantation and later by the stream. We saw 4-5 species of water birds.

Finally our trek route was a U-turn starting from Gundya check-post to Shisila via OG peak, a unknown peak in between and EB peak.

Join Bangalore ASCENDers @ CLICK HERE

Written by: Subodh Prabhu

Image Gallery: Jithendra B N

Composed by: Partrick Samuel & Jithendra B N

Event organized by: Partrick Samuel

Event Date: 29th to 31st March 2014

The Crew: Partrick Samuel, Sunil Kumar S, Jithendra B N, Subodh Prabhu

Trek to Koosali Falls

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 17 Mar 2014 13:54:00 +0000

Confusion, commotion, sense of urgency filled the air at Bangalore railway station.. It was 9.00PM. All excited I was rushing towards platform no 9, under bridge, to meet fellow BASC members to embark on our two day trek to Koosali Falls.

A few familiar faces & lot many faces yet to be familiarized, it was to be a really exciting trek. As the Customary “HI, hello, what’s your name “were exchanged we waited for the train to arrive .We had a loooonnnngggg train journey to make (11 hr’s)!!!

Somehow the 11 hrs.’ journey didn’t seem as bad as it sounded the previous night, all thanks to the BASC community, it’s never a dull moment in this high-spirited group :)

It was 11 AM the next day and the train came to halt at Mookambika station, the place where we were supposed to get off the train. This was the time when we actually got to see the entire group.

Whilst Mudassar made arrangements for us to get to the start point of the trek, rest of us were busy going click click on our cams. After much prodding we got into our cabs, and started our journey towards the start point of the trek, Mr. James Joseph’s house.

After a 30 min bumpy, dusty ride, on muddy roads we were at our start point. Now there were two ways to reach our destination ‘First – The easy path through the forest, Second - a slightly difficult one i.e. along the river bed: we took the second one since it was to be more interesting and a more “trekking trekking” sort of path: D’

First Group Picture

With customary group pics clicked, formal introductions done and vessels borrowed from Mr. Joseph (for the dinner and the breakfast plan) it was time to start the trek. As we trekked along the scorching heat of the sun, and the size of the rock’s, steadily increased.

2.5 hr’s into the trek, we all had small rats or in some cases bigger ones running around in our stomachs!! It was clearly time for lunch. All of us settled at a nice shady place to feast on our packed lunch. This shady respite of ours had a soothing effect on us, so much so that I was in no mood to go on with the trek!! But then, I did not really have a choice there: D

As we inched closer to our destination, the terrain got tougher. Morning’s breakfast was having its effects on me by now. Scorching heat of the sun, a nagging headache and strong nauseous feeling made the not so trying trek seem difficult.

Finally!!! We saw it, we were at Koosali falls.

Level 2 view of the falls

By the time we reached the falls , the faster paced people had already made their way to right under the falls. Without wasting much time all of us started enjoying the natural Spa (standing below the waterfall), which was truly natural amidst the western Ghats, with the company of birds and a few leeches!!

All the pain and the fatigue of the trek vanished within seconds of getting into the water. It was getting dark and time to get down to business that is cooking our dinner.

It was amazing to see how the whole group worked as a team, to churn out luscious dinner for 30 hungry adults. “Special thanks to Srikanth sir, for making plans to cook and carrying most of the necessary stuff”. Delicious two course dinner was coming together slowly. The whole experience of dining in the wild under the star studded sky, on a full moon day was just amazing, and was a perfect end to a tiring day.

It was an early morning next day, most of us were up and ready by 6.30 AM, and decided to trek to the next level of the four leveled waterfall. I must say the effort was totally worth it.

At this level the waterfall was a far cry from what we had seen the previous evening. Water cascaded from a greater height, and created a beautiful pool of water.

Level 3 view of the fall

It was around 7.00 AM and time to start off with the preparations for breakfast. A simple breakfast turned out to be a lavish breakfast buffet with soup, Upma, Delicious Peda’s and Maggie. Thirty satisfied souls started down climb towards our base point. This time we decided to take the easier route through the jungles to reach Mr. James Joseph house.

After an hour into the descent we reached the base point, and vehicles were ready to ferry us to our next destination Someshwara beach.

Enjoying at the beach

It was around 12 in the noon, sun right over the head and we were at the beach!!!! Before we realized all of us were experiencing the waves of joy, but there was one annoying factor the crab which constantly crawled below my legs giving me a creepy feeling :/

Our train back to Bangalore from Mookambika station was at 4.50 PM, the clock said 3.30 and so it was time we headed back to the station. En-route we stopped at the bus stand for a quick sumptuous lunch and hurried towards the railway station.

Train was on time and all of hopped into our designated coaches.

Thanks to Mafia !!(the game) time flew, we didn’t realize when evening turned to night, and it was dinner time.

At half past 11 all of us finally decided to hit the bed after a few rounds of dumb charades and some chitchatting.

8.30 AM on Day 3 we were back at the same place where we started off the trek. We were back at Bangalore railway station, and the end of our two day trek. Exchanging the final goodbye’s and the keep in touch, we all parted ways to get back into our routine mundane lives.

Special credits to the following people:-

Mudassar- for organizing yet another wonderful trek Srikanth sir- for coming up with idea of cooking; Cooking team (Sukumar aka gotaisoru, Daud aka benki hakoru, Prakash aka the soupy boy, Sowmya , Anusha and self the chopping team ) Everyone else for making it a memorable trek.

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Written by: Jyothsna CG

Date: 15 &16 March 2014

Event organized by: Mudassar Khan

Image Gallery: Shivakumar, Sukumar, Ranganath, Ashutosh

The Team- Srikanth, Ashutosh, Shivakumar, Ranganath, Suodh, Prakash, Satya, Arvind, Ravi, Sukumar, Arun, prabhakar, Jawahar, Abhishek, Souwmya, Anusha, Jyothsna, Arun, Daud,Sandeep,

Treknic & White Water Rafting at Dandeli

noreply@blogger.com (Swetha Padakandla) — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 14:01:00 +0000

River Rafting in Dandeli was always in my TODO list after doing Rafting in Bheemeshwari. At last got a chance to try out river Rafting in Dandeli with BASC team. I really thank Raveendra for organizing this event and giving a chance to all of us to participate .There are so many memories in detailing. Its a good test to my memory and writing skills.I hope to keep it crisp and still penning everything down.

We were all supposed to muster around 9.00PM in cantonment railway station. Woefully, we all reached on time and left Bangalore around 9.15 PM and got down in Alnavar junction around 7.15 am and from there we were all supposed to travel around 40 KMS to reach Dandeli. Before that we had a small introduction about the group members and started off the journey to Dandeli. All looked so excited and they were looking forward for the event to start and had brief introduction about rafting. After the intro we strapped the life jacket and wore the helmet. Took some pictures and handed over my camera to uncle( :) actually i forgot the uncle's name who was very happy taking photos in Suresh DSLR camera than mine). After basic lesson of rafting and emergency procedures we set off on the white water rafting. The kali river has 9 rapids on a 9 kilometer stretch where they have different names for rapids which were addressed by the rafter. Wish i would recollect it. Once we started off - after few minutes rafter asked all of us to jump into the water I happily jumped as we had life jackets so trusted our lives on it:) and floated along the raft downstream. We enjoyed and did swimming and got back into the raft. The water was very soft and clean. Wanted to stay there for a long time. We cheerfully enjoyed those moments. The first two Rapids were very high and all posed for the photo. The Photographer was waiting to take our snaps. Everyone posed for the photo and were also active listening to rafter instruction. We spotted some birds like Horn bill, Robin and cormorant while doing rafting. We finished the 9Kms stretch then got into the jeeps waiting for us to take back to Base camp i.e Kulgi Nature camp. Reached base camp around 3.00 Pm. we all got one hour time for relaxing and to get ready since we were supposed to move to sunset point.

Little far from our base camp we all went to watch the sunset, unfortunately we were not able to see since tress were covered completely. In mean time some started clicking photos and Suresh gave idea to Devendra to stand like a Krishna and all the girls to pose like Radha very funny it was:). After that we all wanted to capture photos jumping in the air and asked Suresh and Devendra to capture our photos. But suresh had some other plan running in his mind to make us fools by asking us to do one two exercise where the photos will come awesome all got fooled completely except Ashwini but even she was fooled for the first time by doing one two. This numbers created guffaws and chuckles to whole team busted out laughs till the next day. After some time we all spent some time sharing our funny experiences. Listening to each one's experiences we all busted out laughing and had nice dinner. During dinner Raveendra wanted to have some cucumber unfortunately he did not get since Deepa had all the remaining cucumber.

Next day we all got up around 4.00 AM as per Organizer instruction and all were ready by 5.00 AM in the morning for Wild safari. It was extremely beautiful walking early in the morning with the torches in the wild environment where you have chances of animal attack. I really enjoyed that part and got a jeep after some time where he dropped us to safari main point. Morning 6.00 AM started our safari It was still dark we had to use our torches to spot animals. In ten minutes we were able to spot one group of Deer and few Birds no one seemed happy about the safari part. After that we all reached back to our base camp had our breakfast poori palya and chatni. It was getting finished as soon it was served. Packed all our luggage's and started off our journey to Syntheri Rocks. I can say Syntheri really rocks, with its 300-ft tall monolith granite on the banks of Kaneri river (a tributary of Kali river). A gushing waterfall adds to the fierce beauty of this place. It’s too dangerous to venture into the water. So far, it’s claimed 12 lives; so says a board nearby. Next our plan was to explore the Ulavi caves in Dandeli Trek up a thousand steps through dense virgin evergreen forests to reach the caves. Said to be inhabited by humans since prehistoric times. You need to crawl to enter into the caves Anshul, saswata, Naveen and Suresh explored the caves completely. And briefed all of us that they all saw a small room with idol and there was water inside the caves where the water level was till the knee from there they had two path to explore from there one path will lead to the back side view of the cave. We all had to stop for some time since guys who had entered into the caves wanted to take bath, All were so hungry since it was already 3.00PM in the afternoon and everyone wanted to have lunch. Stopped for lunch and then started our journey towards backwaters and spent some time there and moved to Dandeli. Reached railway station around 7.30 PM and Raveendra took all our feedback at the railway station. We started our journey back to home sweet home and reached namma Bengaluru by around 7.00 AM.

Memories of our trek members.

1) Saswata Goswami - Bit silent but was completely active.

2) Tontri das - Cute and Very active.

3) Rajdeep mondal - Umbrella Man.

4) Naveenkumaar SM - Snail Father

5) krutika - Photograpghy.

6) Suresh - Ek doo Ek.

7) Lakshmi - Mooshaleee.

8) Devendra Reddy - Got different names like Devanand, Reddy garu, Devegowda.

9) Vandana G - Active Participation.

10) Ashwini S - Whatever it is i wont do 1 and 2 .

11) Deepa - Three things about Deepa firstly her dialogue (Papa kane bare 1 2 madonna he is asking us to do from so long, Next she is afraid of injection Thirdly CD (Cucumber Deepaaaaaaaaaaaaa).

12) Anshul Chaurasia - Got fever on first day and wherever he gets a chance he was trying to sleep.

13) Raveendra GN - Organizer, OMG his jokes and MTR dialogue to Naveen (u don't know MTR what kind of trekker you are:)).

Thank to each and every person for making this Treknic so memorable.

Written by: Yashaswini

Post 2

Though the initial reason was to go for an outing with my friends (Deepa, Vandy & Yashu) and to have a good time with them, it turned out to be a fantastic experience. It all started with our very own Yashu suggesting that we must go for this trek and all of us immediately agreed and registered ourselves a month before the treknic was scheduled. With all the apprehension, I was eagerly waiting for 21^st Feb and the day had finally arrived. We were to meet at the Bangalore Railway station at 9:00 pm and move towards our train which was scheduled to leave at 9:15 pm. I reached station by 8:45 and meanwhile all my friends had reached and collected the train details, seat numbers and so we were seated inside waiting for the train to depart. Till then I had not met the organizer or the others with whom I was going to be with for the next two days. We four were totally busy with ourselves chatting and having fun and Yashu now and then hopping out and inside the train to check on others. Finally we got to meet Raveendra, the organizer of the trek and Lakshmi a veteran of BASC and we left to Dandeli.

We reached Alvanar on the 22^nd Feb, 7:15 am and had a quick introduction with the other folks. That is when I actually met all of them and this treknic was turning out to be an interesting experience. We had breakfast and left for Dandeli - White water rafting. The team got split into two and we got into our respective boats and were ready to go and first thing after instructions the instructor asked us to jump in to the river and I was shocked for a moment but yet confident I won’t drown with our life jacket on. So all of us just jumped! We started getting comfortable in water that is when we were literally pulled back to the boat and we started the rafting and there comes our first and most amazing and memorable rapid woooowwwww that was one hell of an experience which make you feel want more such rapids. It was absolute fun. People who are scared of water must definitely try once.

Our next destination was this amazing place where we had our lunch, it was this typical North Karnataka style food which I relished completely and then headed to Kulgi Nature camp and from there we went to the Karnataka Power Corporation LTD. It was a visual treat to have seen that also, could feel the strong wind blowing against your face and you cannot miss to hear the sound of the river flowing through the channels which is that powerful. We weren’t allowed to stay there until the sunset so we were on our way back to the Camp. Later, we had a great evening which included a round of photo session followed by chat session where all of us laughed our hearts out at some of the funny experience shared which continued throughout our dinner.

On 23^rd Feb, we started off quite early at 4:45 am as we had to go the Dandeli Safari, it was little disappointing as we could not find anything exciting but managed to find Deer, and some wild animals foot prints. After safari we were back to base camp packed our bags left for Syntheri Rocks. On our way to Syntheri rocks we had nice Jamming session inside vehicle which was quite memorable and most of us enjoyed. After that we went to Ulavi caves. I had almost lost count of the steps we had to take to reach there and at a point when we had to get down I thought was definitely going to trip n fall and but managed to land safely thanks to the Raveendra. The journey back to the vehicle was another tough task we tried walking Criss Cross on steps so that it would be little easier to climb which actually worked at least I believed so. We tried walking backwards as suggested by Suresh and somehow managed to reach our vehicle and we headed towards Supa Dam back waters after having lunch. Though we had very little time to spend, it was really peaceful after which we headed towards railway station to head back to Bangalore. All in all it was a fantastic experience and it was even more memorable because of each and every one who was a part of this trek.

My Most fond memories:

Deepa being really scared initially while rafting but end of it she totally enjoyed it.

Suresh’s “the fall” from the boat when the other boat hit ours from behind, we had to lift him literally we had laughs of our life time.

Suresh’s unsuccessful attempt in making us look as fools.

All the funny stories we shared at the camp.

Naveen’s “feeling fatherly” comment on snail he had.

Looking forward for some more Trek and Trecknics..

Written by: Ashwini

Post 3

It was really an awesome experience we had in Dandeli. This was the first trek I had been and enjoyed to the extend which cannot be explained in words.

Team was really very good and our Organizer RAVEENDRA guided us very well.

As soon as we reached Alnavar junction, we went to Dandeli with short introduction of the Team of 14. After reaching, we had breakfast and left to river rafting. River rafting was wonderful experience and I wish all get to experience once atleast. Those who know swimming will enjoy more since they allow you to jump into river for some time. This was most memorable event in this trek.

Then we had Rotti for lunch and took rest for some time and left to Sunset point but badluck we couldn’t see the sunset. By late evening we were back to our Dormitory. Chatting, jokes Raveendra's jokes, had good time altogether.

2nd Day early morning by 5am we all went for a walk in search of wildlife. Unfortunately we didn't see any wild life even after safari except deer & peacock. But early morning walk was very refreshing, we liked it. After breakfast we left to Synthery Rocks, Ulavi caves and Haralayana chilume. Ulavi caves was kind of trekking and it was my first trekking.

Our last destination was Supa dam back waters which was a good place for relax. People who trek often are really great.

Finally we were at the end of the day of our treknic, we were back to our places with lot of beautiful memories.

THANK YOU ALL FOR SUCH AN AMAZING TREKNIC!!!!

Written by: Vandana

Post 4

It was really a fun trip to the beautiful Dandeli forests. Thanks to Raveendra, for all the arrangements and planning.

The trip started with river rafting. The rafting experience in the Kali river was indeed great- getting into the cool river waters, surrounded by the forests and chirping of Horn-bills to encountering the rapids along with the group members made it a fun and thrilling experience.

We stayed at the Kulgi Nature Camp. The place is in a great location - just by the edge of the forest - and is an ideal location for spotting birds and enjoying nature. Towards the end of the day, we visited the Reservoir view-point. This place provides a beautiful view of the river snaking through the Dandeli forest range and would be a great location to enjoy the sunset. Even at this time of the year, the surrounding forest were green, so it would definitely be quite a sight during monsoons.

The following day started with a walk through the jungle at 5 in the morning, in absolute darkness to reach the safari start point. This was an exciting experience, especially because the camp guards already warned us against taking that walk in the dark due to animal movements. We were in constant anticipation of spotting something in our torch beams till we reached the forest gates. We entered the jungle for safari as soon as the gates opened. Although the forests looked great as the sun was slowly coming up, we were not very lucky with animal sightings except for a few deer and birds.

After breakfast we started for the Syntheri Rocks. After spending sometime here, viewing the rock formations, we headed to the caves near Ulavi. You reach the caves after a downhill trek and a short climb to reach the cave entrance. A few of us made it into the caves, crawling through 'not-so-clean' waters.

Post lunch, we headed to the Supa Dam backwaters. Even in the small area that we were in, one could get an idea about the expanse of the backwaters. The location was just perfect for relaxing at the end of the day and although we would have liked to spend more time there, we had to head back to catch out return train from Alnavar.

I would say it was a great trip and would like to thank all the members for making this trip a fun and a memorable one. I hope to meet you all in some other trek/trip in the future!

Written by: Saswata

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Image Gallery: Yashwaswini, Suresh Sunder, Naveen

Composed by: Swetha Padakandla

Event organized by: Raveendra G N

Event Date: 22nd and 23rd February 2014

The Crew: Saswata Goswami, Tontri das, Rajdeep Mondal, Naveenkumaar SM, krutika, Suresh, Lakshmi, Devendra Reddy, Vandana G, Ashwini S, Deepa, Anshul Chaurasia, Yeshaswini, Raveendra GN

Photography Trip To the "Lost City" of the Vijayanagara Samrajya - HAMPI

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 27 Jan 2014 11:42:00 +0000

Day 0 (24 Jan 2014) - 9 50 pm to 7 AM

Having registered for the event, pretty early, I eagerly waited for the day to come. 24 January 2014 was the day, and I was rearing to go. This was a photography event, but photography was second on my mind, I was more interested travelling out of town, visiting a new place, adding some more memorable moments. And indeed it turned out better than what I anticipated. Apart from the quality time, which I spent, whole event turned out with lots of surprises, which in the end left me with only one option, to write a bigger blog post.

I came to Shantala silks at around 9 50 pm, and was waiting for the vehicle to arrive. Once the cab arrived people started boarding the cab and I went back to put the luggage inside the boot which was big, (enough to hold 15+ full size backpacks). When I boarded the cab I occupied the last seat, where I met Jawahar. I spoke to him for a while and soon (even before Jalahalli cross) he was off to sleep. I was joined by Pramod at Jalahalli cross. I spoke to him about our usual IT stuffs and soon spoke with Vasanth too, who was sitting in the last but one seat, to my front.

I too was dozed off to sleep only to be woken up by some pot holes along the NH 13. We were not being tossed up in the last seat, but it was not so comfortable either. Luckily I managed to catch some sleep and wake up only after reaching Hospet, where we were kind of doing circles, trying to find the shortest route to Kamalapura. In Hospet, one thing I noticed was the sizable number of people who were engaged in morning walks. That came as a surprise to me, (and I guess even to Dr Harish too who told me, about it later), who was expecting a sleepy town.

Day 1 (25 Jan 2014) - 7:20 AM to 9 30 AM

We reached Kamalapura around 7:20 am, and we made our way to the Mayura KSTDC guest house. The accommodation had quite a huge campus. It was at a distance from the main road, hence, ensuring lots of parking space, lots of space to roam around, and very less noise. It also guaranteed a nice place for camp fire. Did we carry any wood for camp fire? More about it shortly. There were two dormitories which were made available for us, and soon people starting getting freshened up. Till I got a turn to get freshened up, Vinay, Dr Harish, Harsha and me, went out to Kamalapura, to get some much needed stuffs.

At around 9 30 am odd, once everyone was ready, we started from the KSTDC guest house towards the LOST CITY of Hampi. It felt good, really good, to be back after so many years. We had to have our breakfast, before that, Vinay, Dr Harish and Ram or Sumant (not sure who) got down and paid a visit to the Information Officer at Kamalapura, to fix our Itinerary so that we could make most out of the two days. Finally around 15 minutes later all of them were back. We were also in luck as the Information Officer also got us hooked up our guide for the next two days, Satish, who would be waiting for us at the Virupaksha temple.

Then we headed out to a nearby hotel which seemed to be nice as told by the Officer earlier. It was good, but it turned out to be too slow and we lost some time and it impacted us and we ended up not making it to the Sunset point on Mathunga Hill on Day 1. More on that later. Also in the KSTDC accommodation we had lots of other people, infact a whole group of architecture students from Delhi. ( Got this info from the Officer, who told he himself would have accompanied us, in case he was not occupied with this group). But none the less, our guide packed an equal punch. (who also belted out some emotional, appreciative lines towards end of day 2, while we were about to depart to Bangalore).

Day 1 (25 Jan 2014) - 10 45 AM to 2 PM

We met our guide Satish and proceeded towards Virupaksha temple. Virupaksha temple is the oldest and the principal temple in Hampi. Virupaksha is a form of Shiva. On the way we could see a huge shuttered structure, most likely the chariot, we could see the Hampi market. As we enter we can find a 3 headed Basavanna to our left. Also very close to the entrance we could see an inscription of Varaha. Our guide Satish told us that, this has been inscribed so that, enemies / invaders would retreat on the sight of this. We saw such an inscription on couple of other temples too. We entered into the temple, and completed the Darshan. The guide showed us few paintings which were present on the ceiling and he also explained to us the significance of few of them. There are also shrines of Goddess Pampa and Bhuvaneshwari. We went there too. Also there were couple of places within the temple premises very close to the shrines where our guide could show us the natural camera. The inverted shadow of the temple Gopura is very very clearly visible in natural light through a small opening in the wall.

We then made our way out of the Virupaksha temple via the North exit, and proceeded towards the banks of Tungabhadra river. We could see Coracles transporting people from one side of the river to another. Our guide told us, there were few cafes on the other side of the river which catered to foreign tourists (probably with their style of food). We did not venture out into the other side instead we came back and proceeded towards our next site of visit. We (or rather Satish) chose, Hemakuta Hills, the entrance to which starts with a right turn the moment we come out of Virupaksha temple. (Left while we enter the temple). Hemakuta Hill also has another entrance via Sasivekalu Ganesha temple. We started with this route and exited via Sasivekalu Ganesha temple. Hemakuta hill provided a great view of the Virupaksha temple.

Satish also showed us Anjandri Hill from the Hemakuta slope. Anjandri hill is the birth place of Lord Hanuman. A number of temples on the Hemakuta hill are dedicated to Lord Shiva. We could see the Moola Virupaksha temple atop the Hemakuta hill. Hemakuta hill provided us with ample opportunity for photography, also a chance to explore some of the temples around. Due to the architectural style the temples on Hemakuta hill are referred to as Jain Temples. Our guide too told us this place was indeed called Jain Basadi. In one of the neatly maintained temple in the campus I could see a carving of Lord Hanuman and there was a temple dedicated to Lord Rama and Sita too.

We then made our way to the Sasive kaalu Ganesha temple, which was on the way, when we descended from the Hemakuta hill. After coming out of temple campus, we made our way to Sri Balakrishna temple.

We could see lot of carvings in the temple premises. Also Satish showed us a fish which was inscribed with its head pointing in the outwards direction. He told that this was infact a indication of where there was a water source. The water source pointed to the Krishna Bazaar. The sacred tank (Pushkarini) of the temple is located right next to the Krishna Bazaar. After spending 20+ minutes of time we then proceeded towards the Lakshmi Narasimha temple. It is also called Ugra Narasimha temple, based on the terrifying facial expression and protruding eyes. We then made our way to BadavaLinga temple, which is located next to the Ugra Narasimha temple. The place where Shiva Linga is installed is always filled with water. In the picture below, you can notice the temple priest who was down in water offering flowers to the Shiva Linga. After visiting Badava Linga temple we then decided to take a break for lunch.

Day 1 (25 Jan 2014) - 2 PM to 3 25 PM
Vinay had chosen Mango Tree restaurant for lunch. He chose this restaurant based on the feedback received from the BASC team, who had been there previously. We once again made our way to the Virupaksha temple, instead of entering the temple, we took a right turn before the entrance which led us to the hotel. Its over here, one gentleman recognized Pramod and as a result, our itinerary for Day 2 just got better. He was Mr Pampaiah Swamy. He is a conservationist and also a photographer and acts as a field guide at Daroji Bear Sanctuary. Pramod turned out not only an avid bird watcher but also an author. He has written a book and he and Mr Pampaiah Swamy had worked together. And very soon I realized I was in ELITE company, what more to say !

About the hotel, well, it was crowded, with lots of foreign tourists. We had done an advance booking, but there was a delay in getting in. We waited patiently for 15 minutes, when the first batch of 11 guys went inside. Meanwhile Sumanth brought a Papaya from a shop in the same street and even found a knife to peel it and started eating as well. Next it was turn for 6 more guys to get in the hotel. Finally the remaining guys also entered. The hotel had an arrangement to sit on the floor (on a soft cushion), with small tables provided for placing the plates. So the whole team of 19 chose to sit on the floor. It felt good, the food too was good. All in all a good experience minus the delay. So there was a delay of 40 minutes in the morning and now another 40 minutes. But the whole bunch of guys were so enthusiastic, this delay was automatically sidelined.
Day 1 (25 Jan 2014) - 3 25 PM to 6 00 PM
After lunch we proceeded towards Kadalekaalu Ganesha temple. This idol of Ganesha resembles a Bengal gram. Later we moved on to Kodandarama temple. We were supposed to come to this place later, but I guess, it did not happen. We could not see the Lord Rama, Sita and Lakshmana statues in the temple.

Opposite to the temple we could see people taking a plunge in the river. We then proceeded towards Sugreeva's cave. Sugreeva's cave had foot impressions of Lord Rama and Sita. About the history of this place, I have a conflicting thought based on what is available in the website and what our guide told us, hence not writing about it. Later we moved on to see Chakrathirtha. This is considered to the holiest bathing place in the Tungabhadra river. Few bunch of people moved closer to the water to get pictures, I stayed back and took shelter under the shade.

Next place to visit was Vijaya Vittala temple which was few minutes walk from the Chakrathirtha. Our guide Satish was in a hurry to get everyone going, since we had to watch sunset at Mathunga hill the same day. It did not happen there were couple of reasons to it, will tell about it shortly. Vijaya Vittala temple is one of the main attractions in Hampi, the Stone chariot is all about legendary stuff. Two elephants can be seen to the front of the chariot, it feels they are pulling the chariot. Satish told originally there were horses pulling the chariot, and have been replaced by elephants. He also told the back wheel on the left could be spun indicating the chariot movement, since its difficult to move around the entire stone chariot, this option was incorporated. Opposite to the stone chariot we can see the Vittala temple. The musical pillars can be found in the main hall. This place was closely guarded with no entry to any visitors, to avoid further damage to it. Hence we could not see much of the pillars in close up. All in all a nice place to spend your evening time, though the crowd was a bit more. We engaged in a few group photos, especially in front of the Stone chariot, which made our Hampi trip a little more memorable. It was time to head to Mathunga hill for the sunset, since no vehicles are allowed at a close proximity of the Vijaya Vittala temple, we had to chose an electric vehicle which would drop us a good 3/4th kilometer away from Vijaya Vittala temple, where our van was supposed to arrive. It was close to 6 PM and we were about to start to Mathunga hill. But when we took a headcount, we were running short of two people. I once observed Pramod was missing in the group picture which we took at VijayaVittala temple, and asked someone about it. He told me he is in the temple premises only. Pramod and who else, we were quite curious to know. When we tried to call him, we could not reach him since there was no network coverage in the area. That is the reason they too have not been able to call us. Our guide Satish told us, that he would go back to Vijaya Vittala temple to pick them up.

While our guide Satish was mid way, Vinay was able to communicate with Pramod to realize they were not in the Vijaya Vittala temple, but infact they had not followed us since Chakrathirtha. Vasant was along with Pramod, so he was the second missing person. They decided against coming to VijayaVittala temple instead they headed back to Kamalapura KSTDC accommodation, and told us to come there directly. Hence we recalled Satish and headed back to Kamalapura. It was almost sunset time, Satish told, we will not be able to make it to Mathunga hill for sunset since it needed bit of climbing, as a result, we too went back to Kamalapura. On the way we said goodbye to Satish, he asked us what time we would be starting tomorrow. We fixed up a common time for tomorrow.

Day 1 (25 Jan 2014) - 7 PM to 10 45 PM
We were back at the KSTDC guest house, Pramod and Vasant were back too. Pramod told the auto rickshaw guys were overcharging, to drop them to Vijaya Vittala temple hence they landed directly at Kamalapura. We freshened up. Needed wood for camp fire. So Vinay along with few others went in the van to fetch wood and drinking water, while Dr Harish and me explored the restaurant. Dr Harish had tea and I had strong coffee. It felt good, we sat there for sometime watching the television. Hindi version of Singham movie was shown on Star plus, so we spent some time watching the movie.

Pretty soon, Vinay came back with the wood and we were off with the campfire. Introduction session started and some interesting conversations happened. Around 9 15 pm odd, most guys left for having dinner. I guess most people tried the buffet version, but Dr Harish and me, wanted to place order and get some food, Dr Harish was looking for some egg dishes hence that chalked out few extra time. Finished dinner and came back to room around 10 45 PM. Infact Mr Pampaiah Swamy had come to the guest house and was showing some of his photography works, so I missed out on that.

Instead of sleeping in the room Dr Harish and I decided to sleep in the corridor, laying the mattresses on the floor. Outside it was much cooler, so we decided to go for it. While most of the guys were off to sleep, we decided to have one small walk before getting to bed and headed to the main entrance of our block (where our dormitories were located). Sat there for 15 - 20 minutes applied Odomos (Mosquito repellant) and we were off to bed.

Day 2 (26 Jan 2014) - 4 30 AM to 8 30 AM

I had a neat sleep, I was awaken at around 4 30 AM, by Afzal who was ready and all geared up to leave the guest house to watch the morning sunrise. Pretty enthusiastic I must say. Along with him Pritayan and Satish too were heading out. All three of them got ready and made their way out. Me, sensing a chance to freshen up, got my things sorted out and headed out for a bath. Once I completed Vasanth too had woken up and I guess he too took bath. With nothing much to do that early, I went to bed once again and got up around 6 45 AM.

I quickly moved the mattresses to their original location, and started packing. Yes we were vacating the dormitories. By 8 30 AM everyone had packed their luggage and was ready, but Prithayan, Afzal and Satish had not yet arrived. Vinay could reach out to them and told them to arrive at a hotel in Kamalapura. We packed their luggage too and started in the van. It was guess 9 AM by then. Our guide was waiting for us at the hotel.

Day 2 (26 Jan 2014) - 9 45 AM to 1 40 PM.

We quickly completed breakfast and headed out to Malyavanta Raghunatha swamy (hill) temple. We could see priests doing Bhajan over there, Satish told us the Bhajans are going non stop for the last 4 years all through the day as well as the night. Two priests would take turns each comprising of 2 hours. The temple was locked initially, but Satish brought the priest who opened it up for us. Inside the temple we could see statues of Lord Rama, Sita and Lakshmana. There is also a place right within the temple premises where we can do Pradakshina around the temple. Rock has been carved out to make way for devotees who wish to do Pradakshina. Infact the temple is carved out of a single rock. (Correct me if I am wrong).

There is an opening at back which leads us to a cliff. On the way to the cliff we can see a large number of Shiva Linga and Nandi carvings on the rock. Satish told us Lord Rama had done pooja over here. Once reaching the cliff we were treated to a nice view of Hampi. All the main entrance doors to Hampi can be seen from this cliff. After coming out of the temple we proceeded left, where few stairs lead us to other temples. These were destroyed. We took few pictures, and while coming down, to the left, I noticed a temple with a huge huge carving of Lord Hanuman. It was very pleasant and intact infact.

We then headed to Queen's bath. Satish told it was meant for queen for water games. There is a pond in the middle and there are structures projecting into the pond. Couple of the balconies were destroyed. Rest were intact and it was a nice place for some more pictures. At a small distance from Queen's bath was the royal enclosure. At the entrance we could see the doors made out of stone. These were infact the main doors. Satish told us they were broken and discarded while invasion only to be found while excavation. They were huge in size.

We first made our way to Mahanavami Dibba. This is the tallest structure in the royal enclosure and there are two stairs using which we could reach the top. We again took some pictures, while Satish showed us, the different structures present in the royal enclosure. (King's Audience Hall and The Stepped tank, also the underground judgement decision chamber.)

We then headed to the Stepped tank. Satish told us this was rather a recent excavation based on the elevated (stone) water passage which was pointing downwards. It infact signified that, it was a water source. There were carvings on the stepped tank. We were not allowed to venture into it. We then made our way to the secret decision making chamber. Satish told us it was used for consultation purposes while making decisions since it would maintain privacy. Satish then showed us the Kings Audience hall. Currently it was single floored, but he showed us huge pillars to the side and told it used to be a 2 storey structure and showed the staircases which would lead us to level 2.

At a distance from the King's audience hall was a structure made out of a single stone slab. Satish told us, it was supposed to hold water to feed horses. The horses were infact brought by the kingsmen who used to come to the hall, to meet the king or to make judgements. He also showed us the place (two pillars) where the guilty person would be tied up till the judgement was made. After the royal enclosure, we moved to the HazaraRama temple which is at a very small distance from the enclosure. On the walls of the temple are some of the inscriptions, which indicated events of Ramayana. When Lord Hanuman visited Lanka, in front of Ravana, he used his tail to elevate himself, this can be found. Also Lord Hanuman set Lanka on fire, Satish showed us this too. When Rama and Lakshmana were in pursuit of the golden deer, the deer changed its form to half man / half deer, which has also been carved out here. And Rama taking aim at the golden deer is also present on the walls. Inside a different stone has been used, which is relatively cool.

After visiting the temple, we sat down at the temple entrance for some time, and Kiran sang some Kannada songs. Everyone were quite impressed with his singing skills, later Vinay and Rajani chipped in too. It was a welcome change. We then proceed to the Zenana Enclosure which was at a small distance from the Hazara Rama temple. It houses a museum, the Lotus Mahal and the elephant stable. We first headed to the Lotus Mahal. Then to the elephant stable. It was a nice architectural piece. The stable had a big lawn in front and many guys took time to slowly capture this beauty. The stable could hold 11 elephants and the dome for each stable differed from other.

Infact I could see 2 each of the same type. We then moved to the museum, which housed some artifacts obtained during excavation, some pottery and old pictures of Hampi prior to restoration and after restoration.
Meanwhile Vinay was trying to get everyone to move quickly as lunch was waiting for us. Yes, Pampaiah Swamy had made arrangements for our lunch on day 2. It was indeed very kind gesture of him and equal thanks to Pramod for accompanying us during this trip. Not everyone is this lucky.
Day 2 (26 Jan 2014) - 2 35 PM to 3 40 PM.
Pampaiah swamy's residence was at Kamalapura, we freshened up over there and headed out to a nearby location for lunch. Food was Jolada Rotti, Khadak Rotti, Sajji rotti, Badanekaayi palya, kaalu palya, Shenga chutney pudi, Gurol pudi, Holge (obattu), butter milk, curd, rice and rasam + banana. what more to ask for. VIP lunch out of nowhere. Had nice food, thoroughly enjoyed it. We said good bye to Pampaiah swamy and headed out back to Hampi.
Day 2 (26 Jan 2014) - 4 PM to 7 45 PM.
Now we had only the sunshine at Mathunga hill planned. But on the way we visited the Monolithic Bull. It faces the Shiva's shrine ie Virupaksha temple. Few steps to climb up and then down, we were at the Achyutaraya temple. The temple is dedicated to Lord Vishnu and is a huge one.

Took few minutes time to take some pictures. Just now I read this temple could be reached from the Kodandarama temple. (which we missed out that day). Ahh..so we could have come through that way yesterday. Meanwhile, I could see many people from our group heading up the Mathunga hill. I too started quickly hoping to catch a glimpse of the sunset. We were there in time for sunset. Infact there was plenty of time to spare before the sunset. We engaged in few conversations. We could see few other tourists too coming up in order to catch the sunset. Finally the sun began to fade and quickly we realized we could not get the perfect sunset as we anticipated as there were plenty of clouds which were blocking, causing the sun, not to be visible. It was tough luck, but I enjoyed the climb, enjoyed the view, enjoyed the company. What more to ask.

Now it was time to descend. Dr Harish and me were last to descend. Meanwhile, Vinay after calling out for us multiple times, made his way through the same way as we came up. Satish and other group of 13 people got down via a different route and after few minutes Dr Harish and me followed in the route shown by Satish. Descend was simple we regrouped at the monolithic bull. We decided to call Pampaiah Swamy and ask him if we could use his residence to freshen up. We got the nod and we headed out to Kamalapura one last time. Spent some nice time, freshened up and at around 7 45 PM we decided to say good bye to Kamalapura. We planned to stop for dinner at Hospet.

Day 2 (26 Jan 2014) - 7 45 PM to 9 40 PM.

We stopped at Hospet for Day 2 dinner. Everyone had an option to choose what to eat. I remember Harsha and Lavanya going for a Hyderabadi Biryani restaurant nearby. Dr Harish, Vasant and me headed out to Hotel Shanbhag . Meanwhile, Afzal and Pritayan managed to have watermelon for dinner. While we finished lunch and were heading out, Vinay came to the hotel too. After few minutes we regrouped and started our journey back to Bangalore. Reached Bangalore around 6+ AM. And this brought to an end of one more awesome outing with BASC.

Thanks to everyone for their tremendous company. Special thanks to Vinay for organizing, especially for the carefully crafted dates, since it was not too hot/humid. There was cool breeze flow at most places. Thanks to Pramod and Pampaiah Swamy who added nice twist to our itinerary. Special thanks going out to our guide Satish, who while leaving Hampi told us that, he was feeling sad that we were leaving. He also told he enjoyed our company and told us to come once more.

Written by: Sandeep Kulkarni

Post 2

We started our journey from Shantala Silks, near Majestic at 10:40 pm on Friday night and headed towards Hospet taluk of Bellary district. In the morning we reached Kamlapur and got two decent dormitories in a KSTDC hotel – Mayura. We had breakfast in Kamlapur and then started for Hampi.

Day 1:
Hampi – our photography trek starts at grand Virupaksha Temple – a grand tall structure 165 ft high, has 10 floors, couldn’t find who built it. It is named after lord Virupaksh (or Pampapati). From here onwards guide Satish was with us. Inside this temple, there are two towers - Raya tower on the left and Kalyan Mantapa on the right. We were told that lathe machines were employed to cut some pillars. One can find deities and dancers cast in clutter-free sculptures everywhere. Saw royal emblems Suraj, Chand, Khadag and Varah. The ceiling of Raya tower is full of paintings depicting gods and deities. We saw Big Goparam where a pinhole camera type setup allows us to see inverted image of Virupaksh temple. Water stream visible outside is part of Tungabhadra river.
We moved to Hemakut temples. We visited Sasivekalu Ganesh. It is believed that a mustard merchant built this, it has Ganesh sitting in the lap of mother Parvati.

Next stop was Krishna Temple in front of Krishna bazar and Pushkarni. Here onwards we see most of the temples have ground floor mostly intact (made of solid large stones) but upper part of the temples (made of bricks and may be gypsum) are largely broken or destroyed.

We saw Narsimha temple (large idol of Narsimha with serpent hood), Badavilinga temple (monolithic shiv linga in huge stone) and Prasanna Anjany temple (Lord Hanuman).
By now we were very hungry and we went to Mango Tree restaurant. I felt food was ok but a bit expensive due to tourists; it was full of tourists literally and had sitting arrangement as well.

We moved to right (facing Virupaksh temple). We saw Achyutaraya temple, Varah temple, Sugreev guha, Purandar mantapa and King’s balance. It is believed that King’s balance was used to weigh kings in Diamonds and distribute to the poor.

Next we moved to Vijaya Vittala temple which also has world famous Stone Chariot. What a grand view of Stone chariot with sun rays coming on it! Chariot and some colorful paintings! We took many photographs there! Next to Stone Chariot are two temples – Vijaya Vittala temple – whose major pillars had smaller pillars in it, a very different shape! And second temple right in front of Chariot under maintenance. We spotted some parrots and gave them some attention.

Outside Vijay Vittala temple, there are some eco-friendly rides available to take you 1 km ahead towards Kamlapur. It was late to see sunset, we abandoned the idea, started towards KSTDC hotel. We reached hotel, had camp-fire, some nice introductions and finally food in Hotel canteen. To me, here food was filling and tasted good. That’s it for the day.

Day 2:

We started our day 2 of journey with a visit to Raghunath temple where bhajans/mantras are on for four years continuously. It is believed that Ram-Lakshman stayed here. We spent some time (in fact a lot of time) on the back side of this temple for sight-seeing and took many pictures.

We spotted a row of Shiv-lings inscribed in stone rock. Outside this temple we went up for top view of the temple and surroundings and again spent a lot of time there. Next we visited Queen’s bath. It was planned and secured with wide square-canal at periphery. Good sculptures on the ceiling and there are 4 proper exits to recycle water. We moved to nearby Mahanavami Dibba from where we saw some ruins of bath house, stages for dance and announcement, water canal built using large stones, pool, etc. There is one secret chamber, believed to be used by Kings for consultation for important matters.

Next we saw Hazararam temple. In front of this temple there is tall pillar also visible from Mahanavami Dibba. Outside walls of this temple are beautifully carved with elephants, horses, soldiers, dancers, etc. Inside, on right side there is a small temple having Ramayan stories written everywhere. Main Hazararam temple has a lot carved sculptures from Ramayan and Hindu gods. We find here: Ram-Sita-Lakshman, Hanuman, bangle shaped work on stone, lady dancing on snake, a deity with many hands, arrow fights carved in stone, etc.

Now we move towards Lotus Temple, nicely built! Nearby this there is museum and a Janana (for Ladies) enclosure. Lotus temple here is very different from other temples which have carved pillars. Lotus temple has simple pillars and curved/arched entrance – typically seen in northern part of India. No deities or object sculpted on the outside of the temple.

Near Lotus temple we saw Hathi Shala (Elephants’ Stable) - a domed and arched structure. There are 6 doms atop and 11 arched entrances to the stable. It was used for state elephants.
We were hungry by now for sure. One of the friends in the group had arranged for a friend’s place to get fresh and then lunch in Kamlapur and yes food was awesome, especially brinjal and sweet chapathi with gud – like puranpoli. Thank you Mr Pampaiya Swami for the stay and food. We had enough rest at that house and saw some great pictures!

Back to trek: we saw a large monolithic statue of Nandi in front of stage seen from Virupaksh temple. We were heading towards Vittala temple and to climb for sun set. I was amazed to see this place! What a place this would have been in its prime days of glory. There is market and an assembly point in front of Vittala temple. Here are two structures in front of each other. While climbing for sun set point we took many pictures of this place and surroundings. From top of sun set point we also saw Virupaksh temple, Kalyan Mantapa, Tungabhadra river stream, Krishna market, etc. It was cloudy at horizon so we had little chance of a great sun set. Anyway we got sliced sun or say one by two sun :) and then orange cherry! We headed back towards our bus. We bid adieu to guide Satish and came back to friend’s friend’s place. We had a break full of songs. We started back for Bangalore, had dinner on the way in Hospet. Arabic grapes juice was awesome there! We reached back to Bangalore on Monday early morning with good memories and new friends.

Thank you Satish for showing majestic Hampi in few hours and to Vinay our trip organizer and others to make this trip a memorable one. I wish to see you folks again in some other trip.

Quick Guide: Hampi is about 12 kms from Hospet taluk of Bellary district in Karnataka and Kamlapur is the nearest landmark near Hampi. You can rent a dormitory of 10 beds on per day basis in KSTDC hotel – Mayura and should checkout before 10:00 am. You can find other places to stay in Kamlapur and Hampi as well. Before heading to Hampi, read a little about Vijayanagara Empire, Sangama dynasty, Saluva dynasty, Tuluva dynasty, king Harihar, Bukka, Narsimharay, Krishnadevaray, Achutaray etc.

Written by: Rajendra

Join Bangalore ASCENDers @ CLICK HERE

Date: 25 & 26 January 2014.

Expenses per head: 1296/- includes cost for hired vehicle, accomdation at Mayura KSTDC (Kamalapura), guide fees, miscellaneous(wood for campfire, drinking water), 2 breakfast, 1 lunch, 1 dinner.

Composed by: Sandeep Kulkarni

Event organized by: Vinay KGS

Image Gallery: Prithayan Barua, Rajani, Sumant, Dr.Harish Babu, Harsha (Album1, Album2, Album3), Nandhini, Ram Roop, Jawahar, Roopashri, Rajendra, Vasanth Kumar, Kiran, Vinay, Sandeep Kulkarni

The team: Satish Anand, Sandeep Kulkarni, Prithayan Barua, Afzal, Rajani, Sumant, Dr.Harish Babu, Harsha, Nandhini, Ram Roop, Jawahar, Roopashri, Rajendra, Kaushik C, Pramod Subbarao, Vasanth Kumar, Kiran, Vinay

Exploratory Trek to lesser known waterfalls of Western Ghats!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 27 Jan 2014 07:36:00 +0000

It was another exciting Friday evening and I was all set for an exploratory trek with BASC. With the overwhelming sense of exploration spinning inside my head, I started my experiment to try some new route, right after I left home for our first meeting point Shantala Silk, Majestic. I chose a wrong route and then I was very sure of being the last one to reach the assembly point :D. Felt great to meet some known trekking mates and some new faces with lots of cheers and energy. Few more pickups on the way and we started heading towards the 'mystic’ exploratory trek to lesser known waterfalls of Western Ghats!Ravi, our captain, pulled the trigger for introduction round, which I feel is always one of the funniest moments of any trek. Slowly we all started getting into the comfort zone, with many experiences shared by fellow trekkers and adventurers. Those heavy duty laughter and ragging was ruling the atmosphere gradually and conditioning our minds for more and more fun ahead for two days in the wild!

DAY 1: 25^th Jan

We reached a village called Kattina karu in the morning to catch up with our guide who took care of all permissions required for trekking inside a reserve forest in Sharavati Valley, which is constantly under surveillance by the forest rangers. Packing our bags and leaving extra luggage's in the vehicle, we were good to go! Our guide, who spearheaded the trek, was like an ‘alive GPS’ in pursuit to win some kind of Jungle marathon! We could not afford to lose him by slowing down our pace as we had to follow him all the way into the forest. Perhaps ‘Be quick or be dead’ was his mantra that day! We came across a beautiful field and that was an absolutely refreshing take-off spot for the day! Our first halt was a small halli mane on the way. We took rest, refilled water bottles and had little chat with the family about the place and some disciplines of camping in the forest. It was time to get back on trail. The scorching sun started adding bit more fun to the trek ;) and amidst, we sighted some beautiful landscapes which prompted us to have couple of clicks to remember.

We slowly disappeared into the wild and entered the forest to reach Basavana baayi, our first destination of the day. Basavana baayi temple and waterfall. We reached Basavana baayi temple after trekking few miles from the halli mane. There was a statue of Nandi with water coming out from its mouth (Basavana baayi). With few clicks, we left for Basavana baayi waterfall which was very near to the temple. It was a small waterfall, good enough for rejuvenating ourselves and have some fun! After spending some time there, we started our trek to Meghane peak which was the final destination for the day.

The Lunch Point We followed the jeep track and halted at a village. It was time to fill ourselves with delicious idli, sambhar and cold masala buttermilk (best I ever had!). Other packets of chapathis and chatneypudi was opened up and in a moment we had plenty of options to hog on. With little rest, we packed our backpacks and started marching for the base of the hill.

Meghane Hill Base The sun was scorching right above our heads which was very tiresome. But for the guide, it was like a pre-marathon warm up session. It was actually a challenge to follow him. Dattatreya could keep up his pace and was leading us. Later the guide realized his alien speed and slowed down a little bit to allow us to catch up with him. The heavy lunch and trekking right after that, was a wrong move! It was a very hot and humid day, which made the trek little tough. Well, that's what made this trek difficult and I had no regrets! Abhilash started feeling sick while climbing up, but after couple of shots of Electrolyte, he was up on his feet again! Finally we made it to a tribal settlement at the Meghane peak by 5.00pm. The place was breathtaking with beetle nut cultivations and lush green fields all around us. Soon we came to know that the sunset point was still way ahead of us and we had not much time. We unloaded our backpacks and carried water bottles few eatables.

The Sunset point I was skeptical about our timing to reach the sunset point. We started trekking (almost running!) towards the peak. 2 kids from the settlement guided us to the peak and we finally reached well within time, with all juices squeezed out. But finally, that pain was worth the reward! An awesome panoramic view and a very little glance of Arabian sea, made our day . Enjoyed the view for quite some time. Clicking silhouettes has always been my favorite at such locations and we got couple of good shots at the peak. Sun was hiding below the horizon, leaving the sky with colorful hues all around it. The view brought a feeling of contentment in all of us. Perhaps, just to get in this state of mind, we all trekking freaks drag our bums out in the mountains in the weekends and scale it despite all odds! We relaxed for some more time contemplating in the twilight, and headed back towards the camping site.

The camping site After reaching there, we started unpacking bhelpuri packets and Rekha ji prepared that really well. What a great start to the eve! We all freshened up and started getting ready for the campfire gathering and dinner. Few rounds of dumb charades made the atmosphere alive again. Our head cooks of every trek, Vidyasagar ji and Sudhakar ji, prepared delicious Puliyogare and we filled our tummies more than we could ever do ;). And there was an opportunity I wanted to seize to do stargazing. Away from ever growing city pollution and haze that makes it very difficult to enjoy those stars, the sky here was spray painted with beautiful dim and bright stars and numerous constellations. I was submerged in that feeling and just couldn’t keep my eyes off the sky! Sachin, a very talented all rounder (living up to his name ;)), took out his camera and we did some experiments with star trail photography. Couldn’t get our images perfect, so took Google's help to depict the sky as close as possible, at least to complete the story here ;)

DAY 2: 26^th Jan Next day started by breaking the ritual of early morning coffee/ tea. It was the smoking hot soup this time! A different and yummy way to kick-start the day. We finished our breakfast with bread-jam-cheese and packed our backpacks to start descending towards our next pickup point. The destination was Gudhana Gundi waterfalls. That was a little trek in the dense Jungle with fear of getting lost if one could not stick to the guide’s trail. We crossed small streams on the way and finally reached one of the lesser known waterfalls of Western ghats!

Gudhana Gundi waterfalls Entry point was a huge beautiful gorge and on our right side was the waterfall. With few clicks near the gorge, I was dying to jump into the waterfall. This was the moment. Few more group snaps and it was time to have some fun in the pool! Ravi gave us enough time to have fun and after finishing our lunch, we headed back towards exit. Few were casually going ahead faster than the guide while being inside the Jungle, and lost their way! It took a while to gather everyone again. The guide was really furious this time :P. Our trek was reaching its end and the feeling of missing the wilderness till the next trek, was creeping in. So, we started the last leg of the event by playing Antakshari in the TT to live every single moment of the day we were left with. Sachin mesmerized everyone of us with his Carnatic music skills and amazing voice. Ashok and Praveen were well versed with Kannada songs. Everyone was singing aloud in unison. This made two strong teams, with Vidyasagar ji and Sudhakar ji having command over Hindi and Kannada both (with complete lyrics). Commendable! On the way to Bangalore, we halted for a break at around 7.00pm and Madhu suggested a Dosa point around. It was a really delicious Masala Dosa with coconut chutney! Now it was time for Ravi’s feedback session. Everyone shared their views and suggestions to the organizer with more hidden stories about their previous trekking experiences, struggles and tricks to come to this trek. It was a great fun to have this in the end!

This trek, with like minded and easy going souls, was truly fun filled. It was one of the most comfortable and jovial groups I have ever trekked with! As this trek happened to be on 26^th Jan, so I would love to call it the ‘Republic Day Exploratory Trek 2014’. Thank you Ravi for organizing this event and thank you everyone for making this an amazing trek to remember for life. Hope to see you in the future events! Stay safe and Keep trekking.

Join Bangalore ASCENDers @ CLICK HERE Written by: Abhishek Guptha Date: 25th & 26th Jan-2014
Composed by: Sana Mysore Event organized by: Raveendra GN

Image Gallery: Datha, Vidya sagar, Sachin Sogal, Abhilash VK, Abhishek Guptha

The Crew: Sudhakar, Abhishek Gupta, madhu KB, Praveen, Abhilash, Vidyasager, Ashok G, Rekha G, Dathatreya S, Sachin Sogal, Karthik K Rao, Raveendra GN.

Night Trek to Makalidurga

noreply@blogger.com (Swetha Padakandla) — Mon, 20 Jan 2014 03:57:00 +0000

Get Set Trek!

So, finally I got to meet Bangalore Ascenders! It was so exciting to see my name get shortlisted. Thanks a lot to Rajesh for expanding the team size and accommodating all of us :) I started rehearsing for the trek as the day drew closer, thinking about the things to carry, people I'm going to meet, how to introduce myself and how to get over the initial nervous feeling and start socializing!

The day of Saturday, 18th Jan 2014, we were off for a night trek to Makalidurga hilltop Shiva temple, lead by Major Rajesh :) The schedule was to assemble in Majestic railway station at 5.30 pm and take the Hindupur bound train at 6.00. I had planned to start from home in Bommanahalli at 3.30 but as usual, got delayed and started at 4.15. I had considering to take my bike but was not sure of the overnight parking facility in Majestic railway station and how safe it was. So decided on taking a bus. But I hadn't anticipated the route the bus would took - via Shanthi nagar and Double road, looked like a round about way and with inching traffic on a Saturday evening in Bangalore, I barely managed to reach Platform no.8 (Thanks to the SMS from Rajesh) at 5.55 after one hour-and-a-half long journey counting every minute :|

There was a twist in the tale as we were greeted by DK (Ravi Kiran), upcoming Rock star, since Rajesh was going to join us shortly later.

So, after scaling platform No. 8, I joined the team and relaxed a bit. I got to meet other team members Rohit, Anil, Shamanth, Shalini, Chandru and felt myself relaxing, despite my earlier nervousness. Thanks to the warm welcome from BASC friends :)

We were around 18 people, since a few other friends had missed the train, credit to Bangalore traffic that they had to join us later by taking a bus. As the train started from Majestic, we started interacting and found a Visual Design engineer among us, Anil Reddy, with an Oscar for Life of Pi and a passion towards Photography. And the Famous five Bengali friends working in Wipro. No sooner that the train crossed Malleswaram station, Shalini did a roll call and brought out snacks from the back-packs, and soon DK initiated dumb-charades the ever-green ice-breaker idea, and the fun started.. With Hindi and English and you-know-what all movie names from Shalini, we had loads of fun and had to be reminded by Rajesh that we have reached the destination!

We reached Maakalidurga station at 8.00, walked out of the station and found the dhaba where we decided to have dinner. We were joined by four other ascenders, who had taken the bus route. Food was delicious, and now we were a team of 25. We had the introduction session, with many first-time-trekkers on the call! With a good mix of members with no-treks to 25+ treks, we started ascending with the full moon accompanying us. I got to befriend Dhamodar, an avid trekker and an Art-of-living enthusiast. Also had a good time with Bhaskar, who just got into his first job at HP and long weekends which came along! We trekked for around one and half hours and reached the plain. We continued chatting, joking and daring the chilling winds. Also, We started collecting fire wood for the camp fire.

We resumed trekking and reached the destination, passing the ruined fort entrance and the small Shiva temple and settled on the tarpaulin sheet brought in by our leader.

We again went on a prowl to collect more fire wood. We had to look out for dry sticks and carry it back to our destination. Camp fire was set alight at 2.00 AM, effort lead by DK, experienced camp firer :) The wind was blowing and the camp fire kept us warm but the smoke kept us busy rubbing our eyes and adjusting ourselves. Channa came up with his packed pulav and offered a bite to all (must have taken all his will power to do this brave act considering the no. of people around :D) The pulav tasted delicious and we had to fight our basic instincts to grab and gorge.

It was 3 AM and the blowing wind got the better of me and I found shelter inside the temple, where few others were already in, Found it amazingly calm and serene, almost heaven like when compared to outside. Many other brave hearts fought the weather and stayed outside; This includes some of the girls too!

Soon came the wake up call from leader, asking us to packup and get going. Though we pretended not to hear, we had no other option but to wake up. We started our descent by 5.30 AM. It was still dark and no signs of the early morning sun. We got a silhouette of the lake view and the hill ranges ahead of us. I'd have loved to stay back and enjoy the sights. We came across another team climbing up, all set to reach the peak and watch the sunrise.

We reached downhill and walked along the railway tracks with the sun rising on one side and moon setting on the other side at the same time :) Back in station by 7.15, we had a group photo session, with DK climbing on to top of the station board. We had some snacks and fresh vegetables, thanks to Chandru and other team mates. It was settlement time and the trip expense was announced as Rs.35 per head, breaking the previous record of Rs. 40. Kudos to the spirit of BASC!

We boarded the train at 8.00 AM and after some leg pulling of cool headed Shalini by Shamanth, Sharan, DK, et al, we reached Bangalore Central at 9.35 AM and it was good-bye until next time. Overall a fantastic experience guys :) More than the trek, the fun part was the team!

Few tips:

1. Be better prepared for the cold weather: Carry warm woolen sweaters/jackers with hood, socks, gloves, shoes, etc.
- During the climb, I felt I was over prepared since I started sweating and had to remove all the extra covers and carry it. But, believe me, the same proved insufficient to keep away the blowing wind and chill in the open areas on hilltop :|

2. Be better prepared to sleep in any condition - Sleeping bags/ rubber mats/ bedsheets will be of great of use.
- It is worth the extra weight to carry uphill if you would expect to get atleast a few hours of sleep.

3. Be better prepared to restore energy: Carry extra water, food / biscuit packs / potatoes (serves veg & Non veg alike :) for barbeque / maggie packs with a vessel, etc
- This is one easy way to win hearts :)

Join Bangalore ASCENDers @ CLICK HERE
Written by: Alagappan Thiagarajan
Date: January 18th
Composed by: Swetha Padakandla
Event organized by: Rajesh

Total Cost Incurred {per head}: Rs. 35 (To and Fro) + Rs. 50 (Approx cost of dinner at the dhaba)

Image Gallery: Alagappan, Ravikiran, Sunayana Hazarika, Pradeep

The Crew: Prabhakar G, Damodaran, Manjunath, Ayan Majumder, Shalini Batra, Shamanth Kumar, sagnik Khan, Rama Mendigeri, Abhirup Ghosh, Souveek Roy, Gourab Mitra, Sharana Basavaraj M, Rohit Vardhan, Ashok G, Ravikiran ( DK ), Channappa Sajjanar, Anil Reddy CH, Pradeep R, Alagappan, Chandru, Prakash M, Sunayana H, Twinkle Hazarika, Rajesh, Bhavana

Moonlight Trek to Bramhagiri

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 19 Jan 2014 08:36:00 +0000

Well I am not much of a writer but just I have shared the thoughts and the journey from my end so that we can look at it after days and remember the time we spent together.

Night trek to Bramhagiri was conducted by Bangalore ASCENDers (BASC) on 18th January 2014. The moment we all met up in Platform-9 it was one heck of a journey. To start of with, we were in wrong platform with no idea of which train to climb into until BKS called up asked. That’s when we realized we are in wrong platform & ran to platform 8 and got into train. Subratho was supposed to enter in a DDLJ style but could not make it, probably he was not as fast of Kajol, but jokes apart, sorry that he missed it.

We took out attendance and some informal introductions in the train. The moment we started with dumb charades is when it lit up more. We were so involved that we would have missed the Nandi stop if it was not for Mudassar (of-course he was the organizer). Got down and went on with formal undertaking and introduction while Mudassar was negotiating with Auto. After a long 4 kms auto (since I was in back seat & Jyothsna was continuously saying she was hungry) we finally got down at our trek's starting point. Packed food at nearest cafe and told the owner to be ready with next day's breakfast. By almost 9 we started ascending just when the moon started giving us its light to carry further.

We trekked for almost an hour and half and came to dinner point where we had some nice view of the city and airport. We took photos, had moon light dinner and some more photos before we continue our trek. With my obsession of being in front of the group, I carried on with Mudassar and Preetham. We took wrong right turns searching for the temple; after 5 wrong turns we reached the temple by around 11PM. We explored the surroundings and gathered wood for campfire. After cutting birthday cake we started with individual trek stories, BASC blood camp initiatives and others. After all the fun we tried sleeping for few hours by around 2.30AM. When I opened my eyes at 4.15AM all I can see is a human standing next to door seeing out, got scared. It was Mr. George who apparently could not sleep. Eventually everyone got up and it was cold!! We went for fire and thankfully it was still burning. We spent the next one hours constantly struggling to burn the damp wood and finding that warm air from the fire.

By almost 5.30am we took the stairs for peak and found that it’s even more cold and windy. We all snuggled up behind a rock to avoid the wind where I listened to iPod. It was one of the most amazing moments of this trek. We took group photos and fooled around a bit till 6.30am but sun was still not up. Also thanks to Surabhi's impeccable mobile network service that we confirmed that there are no train back on Sunday. Then we decided it’s time for us to head back, started descending half way through we saw the sun rise, started picking up whatever trash we can find (thanks Preetham for this), lost our way badly and lost track of other half team. Finally everyone grouped up reached the cafe and probably did more business to that cafe owner than any single day of his life. We took the bus back to Bangalore and this is where I had the best one hour sleep of my life.

Now thinking back thanks to Mudassar for arranging it so nicely without any hiccups and all of you who made it as one of the most memorable trek for me.

Written by: Akash

Post- 2

Here comes the first trek of the year. From the very start the plan was a roller coaster ride. I persuaded my friends (Tiwari and Piyush) to come for a BASC trek and I ended up not making to the list. Later the wait list got cleared and we went for the trek.

As opposed to previous experiences, this time I went from train. We all assembled at platform 9 at around 5:30 PM and suddenly got the news that this is the wrong platform. We rushed to platform 8 and boarded the train. We had great rounds of dumb charades on way to base camp. After reaching a small village we reached the base camp from an Auto (two fully packed autos). Our stomach already started asking for food. We packed some food from hotel and had tea & nariyal-pani. We started climbing at around 9PM.

As we were there for a more special purpose celebration of Tiwari's Birthday, I was hoping that we should reach top before 12AM. Apart from frequent chocolate/biscuit breaks we killed our most of the time in getting ourselves by anyone having the camera. Some people got new names on the trek (for instance - Majnu). In between we had a break where we enjoyed fried rice and tomato rice. Surbhi enjoyed it more than anyone else as she liked the curry a little more than others.

We reached the night camping site just in time (@ 11:55PM). Piyush and I quickly started assembling the cake we bought with us. We celebrated the birthday there. It was a very unique experience to me at-least, I hope Tiwari also felt the same. Fortunately, the cake came out well and everyone enjoyed, we also had the camp fire going on. Mudassar and Shrinivas exchanged some BASC programs and Trek stories, which were very interesting. At about 2AM the fire started dying and temperature started dropping. I didn't wanted to sleep as I wanted to make sure that I am up at sunrise. Still we had a small nap in freezing cold.

When I woke I saw George's silhouette at the door right in front of me. We were very happy to see that fire hadn’t died completely so we enjoyed it for some more time. Around 6AM we reached the peak where it was freeze cold. We had to hide behind a rock to avoid the chilly winds. After sometime we had some clicks and then we started descending. While on our way back, we lost track of the correct path which delayed the plan a bit. But overall it was a nice experience.

Written by: Vivek V V

Post - 3

It was a wonderful trek with BASC. Trekking in moonlight has always enthralled me. In short, it's a beautiful memory of playing dumb charades in train with loads of fun, a moonlight dinner over bed of rocks, trekking in the moon-lit trail to the temple, cold windy night, incinerating the remnants of doors and windows from the temple (that we eventually rejoiced as 'Camp fire'), birthday celebration of Ravindra, inspiring/scaring experiences of Mudassar's OG ventures, exploring the camping place with less than 100m visibility etc...

Our struggle to find the way back to the village in the morning mist engulfed us all around, truly added some fun and we ended up doing little exploration in a small over-night trek! It was an icing on the cake.

Thank you guys for making this trek delightful. This will always make me feel exuberant whenever I take a look at that full moon and contemplate about my next moonlight trek to relive every moment! Happy trekking!

Join Bangalore ASCENDers @ CLICK HERE

Written by: Abhishek

Image Gallery: Akash, Vivek V V, Abhishek

Composed by: Jithendra B N

Event organized by: Mudassar

Event Date: 18th January 2014

The Crew: Srikanth BK, Preetham G Raj, Devchand, Nishit Desai, Srujan, Shailesh Thakur, Deepika Muthusamy, Abhishek Gupta, Guru Prakash, Akshar Kowlani, Prawin, Surabhi, Sanjay Kumar, Badrinath Padhy, Ravindra Tiwari, Piyush Jain,Vivek V Velankar, Jyothsna, George, Mudassar.

Clicks of 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Swetha Padakandla) — Wed, 01 Jan 2014 11:33:00 +0000

The final 12 out of around 25+ entries from different participants which they took during different events organized by Bangalore Ascenders.
The complete set has been published in,
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.656640624375298.1073741844.118321651540534&type=1
Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bangaloreascenders/sets/72157639775852193/with/11952874504/
Included those in its order,
# 1: Patadakallu

Entry Id: clicks2013-23
Image By: Shivakumar S Gowda
Location: Patadakallu
Description about the Image: f/4, 1/1000 sec, ISO-100, Focal length-18mm
Event name in which image was took: Photography Trip to Badami, Aihole & Pattadakallu: BAP-1 on 6th & 7th Jul 2013

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bangaloreascenders/11952853134/in/set-72157639775852193
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=656640644375296&set=a.656640624375298.1073741844.118321651540534&type=3&theater

# 2: Narasimha parvatha, Agumbe

Entry Id: clicks2013-13
Image By: Nilanjan

Location: Narasimha parvatha western ghat , Agumbe.
Description about the Image: Love happens everywhere. when Mr. Right finds Miss Right we get an opportunity to capture amazing moments of serendipity.
Event name in which image was took: Narasimha Parvatha (NP), Agumbe.
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bangaloreascenders/11952874504/in/set-72157639775852193/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=656640651041962&set=a.656640624375298.1073741844.118321651540534&type=3&theater

# 3: Seashore, Holanagadde Beach to Sangam Beach, Karnataka

Entry Id: clicks2013-19
Image By: Ravindra Joisa
Location: Seashore, On the way from Holanagadde Beach to Sangam Beach, Karnataka, India
Description about the Image: Beautiful natural layer formation by sea waves and sand in the seashore on foreground. In the middle you will find some of our BASC friends walking and enjoying along the coastline. Backgound is the bright afternoon blue sky. Most beautiful, unspolied beach that I ever seen in India.
Event name in which image was took: Full Moon Beach Trek from Kumta to Gokarna:16th_17th_November2013
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bangaloreascenders/11952709013/in/set-72157639775852193/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=656640667708627&set=a.656640624375298.1073741844.118321651540534&type=3&theater

#4: Tunnel, Dudhsagar Falls

Entry Id: clicks2013-24
Image By: Sivaraj
Location: One of the tunnel near Dudh Sagar Waterfalls
Description about the Image: This silhouette depicts how dark the tunnels are and shows how we enjoyed crossing each tunnel.
Event name in which image was took: Dudhsagar Rail trek
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bangaloreascenders/11952411155/in/set-72157639775852193/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=656640707708623&set=a.656640624375298.1073741844.118321651540534&type=3&theater

# 5: Agonda Beach

Entry Id: clicks2013-16
Image By: Prithayan Barua
Location: Agonda Beach
Description about the Image: Chaos at the Beach, Taken during a beach trek in Soth Goa, from Agonda to Cola.
Sudheer and others had gone to the Town to buy groceries, we were playing around the beach while waiting for them. An isolated beach, calm sea shore, sun was hiding behind the clouds over the horizon. Amazing memories
Event name in which image was took: BASCO_DA_GAMA-Series 4 - Netorlim: 24th & 25th August 2013.
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bangaloreascenders/11952437725/in/set-72157639775852193/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=656640764375284&set=a.656640624375298.1073741844.118321651540534&type=3&theater

# 6: Dodballapur

Entry Id: clicks2013-2
Image By: Anil K Mohanty
Location: Dodballapur
Description abt image: Shot this during the countryside monsoon cycling trip to Chigategere. Nice to see life is moving back to country again. The new generation is loving these weekend escapes to nature's serenity.
Event name in which image was took: Monsoon Cycling in Countryside
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bangaloreascenders/11952408185/in/set-72157639775852193/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=656640744375286&set=a.656640624375298.1073741844.118321651540534&type=3&theater

# 7: Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary

Entry Id: clicks2013-1
Image By: Anand C
Location: Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary
Description about the Image: This probably was BASC’s first photography tour a national park. 12 enthusiastic photographers set out to capture some big cats but had to be content with capturing lots and lots of Spotted Deer, a herd of Elephants, Langurs and other wildlife.
However the second day turned out to be fruitful when we visited Ranganathittu bird sanctuary.
The bird in this image is Red Wattled Lapwing and is not so uncommon.
Event name in which image was took: Wildlife & Bird photography in Bandipur Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bangaloreascenders/11953262026/in/set-72157639775852193/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=656640781041949&set=a.656640624375298.1073741844.118321651540534&type=3&theater

# 8: Kudremukh

Entry Id: clicks2013-15
Image By: Premnath
Location: Kudremukh
Description about the Image: Picturesque grasslands of Kudremukh
Event name in which image was took: Kudremukh
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bangaloreascenders/11952431035/in/set-72157639775852193/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=656640817708612&set=a.656640624375298.1073741844.118321651540534&type=3&theater

# 9: Badami

Entry Id: clicks2013-12
Image By: Narasimha K S
Location: Badami
Description about the Image: A juvenile, energetic and a very notorious Langur of Badami!!
Event name in which image was took: Photography Trip to Badami, Aihole & Pattadakallu: BAP-1
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bangaloreascenders/11952720123/in/set-72157639775852193/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=656640857708608&set=a.656640624375298.1073741844.118321651540534&type=3&theater

# 10: Castle Rock, Goa

Entry Id: clicks2013-3
Image By: Aniruddha Gupte
Location: Sansaurwadi, Castle Rock, Goa.
Description about the Image: She refused to give me a good pose. First she played dead in thick twigs and then moved upwards into the foliage. This is the best I could manage.
It was possible for me to handle the snake and place her to get a better composition but I chose not to disturb her.
Event name in which image was taken: Basco-Da-Gama 3-Castle Rock
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bangaloreascenders/11953255246/in/set-72157639775852193/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=656640844375276&set=a.656640624375298.1073741844.118321651540534&type=3&theater

# 11: Demul Village, Himachal Pradesh

Entry Id: clicks2013-6
Image By: Gautham Baliga B
Location: Demul Village (Spiti valley), Lahaul & Spiti District, Himachal Pradesh, India.
Description about the Image: "Different Shades of Mountains" - A Breathtaking view of Spiti from Demul Village.
Demul village is a lively and alluring village, with a captivating vista at 14,300 feet (4,360 meters) about sea level. It's an excellent place to spend a day or two. It is one of high altitude village of Himalayas.
Event name in which image was took: Himalayan Trek Series : HTS/4_ Bhabha Pass_Trek _July06_to_July21_2013
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bangaloreascenders/11953253706/in/set-72157639775852193/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=656640871041940&set=a.656640624375298.1073741844.118321651540534&type=3&theater

# 12: Bandipur

Entry Id: clicks2013-17
Image By: Priya
Location: Bandipur
Description about the Image: Chased the Deers for more than an hour in the restricted area where there was danger of wild animals and finally they pitied me and gave me a nice pose
Event name in which image was took: Wild life and Bird photography at Bandipur
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bangaloreascenders/11953249066/in/set-72157639775852193/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=656640901041937&set=a.656640624375298.1073741844.118321651540534&type=3&theater
Here are images from 2012: Clicks of 2012

The Cycling Tour in Malnad

noreply@blogger.com (Swetha Padakandla) — Wed, 25 Dec 2013 14:50:00 +0000

We didn’t know how much more distance was left to reach Yellapur. It was getting dark and cold. The light just went out so quickly as we were in the forests and winter evening are always short. The roads were the most discouraging part, but we didn’t expect anything better. It would have been better if it wasn’t rolling terrain. It had already been 110kms for the day, first day after all, but my first day ever of riding self-supported with load. Was it a mistake skipping the Dandeli stay and trying to complete two days’ quota in one? As we were about to take one more break we saw the main road, and the sign board too. Yellapur – 4kms!

When I was ten years old, I took my first ever cycling trip. I remember struggling to finish a 25km ride, it took more close to 5 hours to complete. And here I was, a decade later, attempting a 1000+kms self-supported cycling tour across the Western Ghats of Karnataka. This was a dream for me from the time I started cycling. This was on my mind when I was doing the Manali – Leh ride itself. Finally, after pondering about the route for nearly 6 months, I finally decided the route. Dharwad to Madikeri it was, entirely through the ghats. Never did we plan to enter the plains.

The Start!

But that’s how I wanted it to be. And we had started pretty well too. Day one went very well. Just a brief bit of plains starting off from Dharwad and we were inside the dense forests of Dandeli very early, which prompted us to push towards Yellapur that day itself. Now that we had an extra day which we saved, we planned to head to Sathoddi falls, the prettiest waterfall I’ve ever seen. (Un)Luckily it was 25km downhill till the falls, though we enjoyed it, we were thinking about coming back up more often. Sleeping inside the cool, crystal clear water of the falls made me forget all the pain we had yesterday. The backwaters we see on the way to Sathodi must be one of the prettiest too. It was like a huge mirror lying on the ground!

Uttara Kannada is a less explored district in the Western Ghats of Karnataka. Though places are well known, it never gets too crowded. And there is plenty of opportunity to explore. There are innumerable waterfalls in this place! Wildlife too is so much more; we spotted many Langurs and Malabar Squirrels on the way! Though this was a pretty laid back ride, we had to keep going. Heard about couple of new waterfalls nearby but we had to stick to the plan. Magod falls was next on the list. The huge two tier waterfall didn’t disappoint us at all. Many locals told that there isn’t much water but it was more than enough to visit.

On the way to Magod, we stopped by a Govt School in a small village called Nandolli. We planned to visit schools to bring about awareness regarding the importance of cycling in the future, preserving the Ghats and its precious resources. I spoke to around 110 kids. All were very interested about my bike more than what I was speaking. But they were all responsive and looked like they understood what I told them about. The teachers were also very optimistic and told us that they will promote cycling too. 40 out of 110 kids ride a cycle to school, which is a big number! The kids’ reaction to the whole thing was very humbling. Our very small try to make the world a better place. All their smiles and goodbyes can never be forgotten! :)

Magod to Sirsi

Ride from Magod to Sirsi was beautiful. There was a 15km stretch inside thick forests where we didn’t see a single soul. That was pretty much the case in the entire district. Dense forests, small villages, very few people around, just the way we liked it to be! Our accommodation in Sirsi was arranged by my friend whose parents lived there. That is something which I can never forget. We were treated like heroes, fed plentiful delicious local food, given everything we required. We had just about done 350kms by then and had plenty more to go!

The rest of the ride to Shimoga was through the rolling terrain. It gets irritating to ride but not too taxing on the body. The forest eased and opens up to the country side and plantations. Stage one was over before we knew. We had cycled 450kms in a week and I was counting backwards already. Only 10 more days to go!

Shimoga to Dharmasthala!

Stage II from Shimoga to Dharmasthala was for me the best part of the ride. I had carefully chosen the route as to cover all my favourite places. I’d been dreaming on cycling the Shimoga to Thirthalli route ever since I passed through it last year. Riding next to the Gajnur Dam backwaters inside dense forest was as wonderful as I expected it to be. Thirthalli is a beautiful place. We were welcomed by a gorgeous sun set on the banks of Tunga! I was especially looking forward to spending the night in Mr.Sheshadri Dixit Sir’s house. If you don’t know about him yet, you have to read this. He cycled 50000 kms across many countries in the Sub Continent from 1968 to 1971. His story still inspires me in many ways! Even there, we were pampered so much with lots of delicious food and all the care we could get. They had prepared Jamoon for us! The legend himself took time of his busy schedule and spoke to us. I really enjoyed when he spoke about not many people understanding the hardships of touring on a cycle. I must say what we were doing was just a warm up ride compared to what he did! Next day morning was the best moment of the ride. It didn’t come when we saw the most beautiful place or completed a certain distance. It happened when Sheshadri Sir’s daughters gifted us a box of Cadbury Celebrations. It was such an awesome gesture! For me, this was the essence of touring. It is not just about the beautiful places we cover. It's the pampering from our hosts, the smiles we bring on those children and the village folk, the shout outs we get, the curious questions we are asked, the food, the people, the culture we see and the love we experience that make this journey special!

Through Agumbe!

That day supposed to be our first test of climbing on the tour. Kundadri climb was awaiting us enroute Agumbe. The climb was just 4kms but it was insanely steep. With all the luggage on the cycle, it was super hard. If I stopped, I couldn’t start again as my front wheel kept on lifting up due to the incline. The scorching afternoon heat didn’t help us either. Finally, after many many breaks, we reached the top. We could see the Savehaklu backwaters far away, Narasimha Parvatha too on the other side towards Agumbe where we were headed. We decided to stay on top till the evening and the chocolates ended up as our lunch :)

Agumbe side of Western Ghats must be the least explored part of western ghats in Karnataka. Due to Naxal problems, not many opportunities were there to trek around. I love the town, it has just one road. We were staying in Doddamane, the famous Malgudi Days house. We met a couple from Bangalore who offered to take us to Kundadri again for the sunrise in their car. Getting up at 5.30 after a long day was difficult. So Vishwa dropped out but I was very lucky to witness a superb rise. I always felt Sunrise is better than sunset in Agumbe. Last year too on Narasimha Parvatha we were lucky to get ‘sunrise above the clouds’! That day was supposed to be tough. We were climbing the big ‘Agumbe Ghat’ from the Coast side. We first went down the ghat, enjoyed the downhill like crazy because I knew coming back was going to be kicking ass. We were on our way to Koodlu Theertha falls. It is very secluded and has very bad roads but as usual, it was time for another bath after a long time! I absolutely loved it as we were the only ones around. Crossing the river too was a super experience. Climbing the big ghat was very hyped up. People told us it is very difficult. It is indeed full of hairpin bends but guess what, both of us did the entire climb without a break! May be because we were thinking it was way harder but people coming on vehicles were going crazy seeing us cycle on that route!!

Kudremukh!

The next day was also going to be long. But I was very excited as we were entering Kudremukh National Park. I love the place. The day was long and hard. We entered the park pretty late so we had to hurry up. It was very late in the night when we reached the Kudremukh trek start point. We were riding in pitch dark, creepy sounding forests with the help of a full moon which gave us insane silhouette effect of the mountains around. We reached K’mukh at 9 in the night. Our host was Jinendra, the guy who drives the jeep till the trekking point of the peak. After a tiring previous day we were feeling very lazy the next day, we had a buffer day but we wanted to go as far as possible. We decided to stop 20 kms before Kottigehara as we found a super place to camp for the night. There is a 2000 acre tea and coffee estate in Kelagur near Kalasa. They have a small tea point, just next to a stream so we found it to be perfect! We slept outside their small shelter, in freezing cold but a super experience. Many nearby villagers who work in the estate welcomed us to their homes saying it was too cold sleeping outside, great gestures again, but we were more than happy with the place. I had a -10 sleeping bag anyway! ;) But I must say that was the coldest night I’ve spent in Southern India.

Descending across Charmadi Ghat!

Next day we were going down all the way. After just 5kms of uphill, we started our descent to Dharmasthala, 50kms down the great Charmadi Ghat. The views were fabulous, the road was newly laid and we were going crazy. I hit 60kmph speed. We were ripping!

We were joined by Narsimha from Dharmasthala for the last leg till Madikeri. The ride to Subrahmanya was uneventful until the last few kilometres until we could see great views of my favourite mountain, Kumara Parvatha. We were essentially taking a big round of Pushpagiri Wildlife Sanctuary in stage III. Bisle Ghat was on my mind all through the ride. It was 50kms of uphill ride till Somwarpet. I was very particular about riding here in spite of very bad road conditions and height gain because this part is still not very popular. The road I must say was non-existent but the incline was very manageable for most part. There was a series of uphills as we finished Bisle and the landscape opened up. The road was absolutely deserted entire day and we simply loved it.

The mark of 1000 kms!

Next day we touched the 1000km mark on the way to Madikeri from Kundhalli, a small village where we stayed close to Malhalli falls. Vishwa was very satisfied about reaching this number. 1000 is not a small number and it did feel very satisfying about doing that distance self-supported. For me, I had already got everything and more of what I expected from this ride. Everything went as planned and we got to see so much more than what we had planned. We finished of the ride in the best possible fashion by going to Mandalpatti and enjoying its splendid views and returning to Madikeri. We finished with 1067kms. 17 unforgettable days through my beloved Malnad. I didn’t realize the magnitude of what we had done on the tour as I had already started thinking about my rock climbing trip to Badami the very next day. But after spending a month back here in Bangalore, I realise that we indeed cycled so much!

It might look too formal but it is my duty to name and thank everybody who helped me make this thing happen. Bangalore Ascenders first for giving me an opportunity to organise for them, Sachin from Pedals and Wheels for providing me Panniers and Rack for free, My friends Muggy and Aditya for helping with getting accommodation in their towns, Sheshadri Dixit sir for their help, Girish in MandalPatti and Bee Tee homestay near Kundhalli for charging us so much more lesser than their usual price and finally my riding partner Vishwa for all the help and support throughout the ride.
It was a great experience for me to plan and execute my dream ride. I have so much more respect now for all those people who tour on a cycle, especially all the Himalayan tourers who ride more distance than us in great altitudes. With this, I think you know my next plan. ;) Himalayan self-supported tour. Till then, Happy Cycling :)

Join Bangalore ASCENDers @ CLICK HERE
Written by: Sharath Vishnu
Date: December 7th to 24th, 2013
Composed by: Swetha Padakandla
Event organized by: Sharath Vishnu

Image Gallery

The Crew: Sharath Vishnu, Vishwa &, Narsimha

Trekking and Photography at Gingee Fort

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 23 Dec 2013 05:45:00 +0000

This was my second trek with BASC and my first attempt, in trying to write a post event write up. It had been almost 3 weeks, since I had last headed out of town. So when I found that registrations were open for this event, I registered without a second thought, and I got shortlisted too.

The van arrived at Banashankari around 10:30 PM. After a couple of stops near Marenahalli and BTM layout, we proceeded towards Hosur. In between we stopped a few kilometers after entering Hosur to pay the entry tax which costed us Rs 1250. There was loads of road work going on so many deviation boards along the way and yes finally we made it to Krishnagiri flyover, where we intended to take left turn in order to join the road which leads us to Thiruvanamalai aka the famous NH 66.

Last time I had driven on this road, I firstly had a flat, then seen foot deep potholes. But it was 1 year since that day, moreover I was not driving . The road was in a better condition, but still not the best. Road work was in progress with many such deviations and stretches where few hundreds of feet used to be gravel. After travelling for sometime, we encountered a manned level crossing. Unfortunately it was closed for sometime and there was traffic built up upto almost 1 kilometer. Strange it sounds, to come to a halt, in the middle of night, because of a level crossing. To my surprise, I can recollect 4 trains passing through, within a span of 15 minutes. Dr Harish, made his way to the level crossing and instructed the driver to come as close to the gate as possible. To our surprise, we could hear passers by telling us that the gate wont open till 6 am in the morning which was almost 3 hours away. While everyone waited patiently for the gates to open, Ashish was at his best, in a deep sleep and loudly snoring. (Again, no offence meant Ashish).

Luckily couple of gentlemen told us about an underpass where a TT could pass, we took an immediate detour and came out on the other side of the level crossing, not without spending almost an hour and half. Then for sometime, I remember having some interesting conversations with Dr Harish, who told me, he was planning to explore Gingee fort since 2 years but it never had happend, until this day.

After sometime, at almost 3 45 am, yours' truly slept and I then recollect only waking up in the town of Gingee. We had arrived safe and sound and on time too. Dr Ramesh, a friend of Dr Harish, who practices in Gingee, had arranged couple of rooms for us, so we freshened up and got ready to start the trek by 8 45 AM. Gingee town had this one good hotel where we ended up having food for the next two days. The entire team enjoyed the breakfast, and got ready for the ascent.

Gingee fort complex comprises of three hillocks, Krishnagiri, Rajagiri and Chandrayandurg. The fort was built during Chola dynasty and then passed on to the Marathas and then to the French and the British. We started with Rajagiri which comprises of stables, granaries and meeting halls. Sri Kamalkanni Amman temple is situated at the top of Rajagiri. More on Gingee fort can be found over the wiki.

Having Dr Harish for company is nothing less than "Icing on the cake". His tremendous insights into loads of topics (including history too ) kept everyone glued together, making each one wonder, how fortunate we are to be born as Indians. We entered the fort after paying an entry fee. There are lots of things to explore before even we start our ascent. Like the Kalyani, the Gymansium.

We spent minimal amount of time at the ground zero and immediately proceeded towards ascending the fort. The steps are a bit steep but they are not that difficult to climb, we can make it with couple of breaks in between. We encountered monkeys prying for food items. But we could ignore them and reach the fort at the top. The view on the way to the peak as well as the top was worth every drop of sweat we lost [ Strange comparison, but that is what came to my mind, since it was a relatively hot and humid day].

There was a temple, a big depot for storing grains at the top and also there was a watch tower. (There were couple of other structures too. ). The crowd was moderate, we took shelter under the shadow of a structure. Then began the introduction session, after which the group was engaged in a discussion on loads of topics. It was fun and believe me, I ended up losing whatever little (moderate) fatigue I had in this interesting conversation and rather gaining lots of insights. I guess everyone too felt the same, correct me if I am wrong.

We were in no mood to end our interesting conversation, but a monkey came towards us with no fear and tried to snatch one of the bags which Rajat was carrying, which left us with no choice but to abruptly end our conversation and start descending. We were engrossed in the discussion to such an extent that, Vinay's introduction could not happen at all. ( He introduced himself later in the day). In between Ashish tried to catch some sleep using my backpack as pillow but on both occasions he could not succeed courtesy the monkeys (which were circling around us all the time). Finally when we decided to move, we just realized there were monkeys to our left, right, one angry male facing us, and to my surprise even on top of the structure under whose shadow we were sitting. It felt as though they had grouped themselves, and were about to launch an attack !(Sounds crazy but thats what ran through my mind at that moment).

Quickly we started getting down and one by one we reached the ground zero, Vinay told everyone to get ready for a group photo. So we found a nice place to get ourselves snapped! Then it was time to leave Gingee fort and head back to town to the same hotel where we had breakfast earlier that day. We treated ourselves to some nice South Indian food and then started again towards Rani's fort aka RaniGiri.

RaniGiri took lesser time to ascend. We were up there pretty quickly. This left us with lots of time at the fort to have nap, talk, discuss, know each other better. The fort had a couple of temples which were plundered and were in ruins.

Finally at 4 pm we realized we had to descend since the fort entrance gate closes by 4 30 pm. I admit, I am pretty slow while descending and I told Vinay I shall be moving down slowly, thinking they would catch me pretty quickly. There were 4 more people left at the fort including Dr Harish and Vinay. I started getting down pretty slowly. After I almost got down 60%, I ended up facing up a barrage of monkeys. Believe me they were huge in number, and mostly mothers with their babies were sitting directly in my path or coming towards me. I was kinda confused whether to proceed or not at the same time scared too. I avoided eye contact with any of them and somehow managed to cross them with some distance. I had kept two plastic bottles one each in the side pouch of my backpack, and few monkeys (little ones though) started following me. There was a railing (almost my shoulder height) on to which they climbed on to and started running parallel to me. ( I guess to snatch the bottle). Somehow I managed to scare them off but it was kinda close, that was it, I came down. It was Dr Harish who saw the alpha male and the entire (bigger) group. After few minutes he came down too. Glad everything worked out !. When Dr Harish narrated what the monkeys were upto, it was pretty scary.

So an eventful day came to an end, and we returned to the rooms to relax a bit. Again we headed out hoping to catch an exhibition in Gingee, but due to the much crowd, decided against it. Later we proceeded to the same hotel, to complete our dinner and we were done for the day. It was still 8 15 pm and we had loads of time to catch up on another discussion, well yes, and prior to that Vinay finally got an opportunity to give his introduction, thanks to the timely reminder by yours' truly. Sometime, after that, we decided to call it a day and returned to our respective rooms.

The next day was more of a relaxed one. Visit to a near by temple, Sathanur Dam and crocodile park was planned. We got up pretty quickly and one after the other we packed our bags and were ready to leave for the temple. Sri Venkataramana Temple was half a kilometer from the Gingee fort. While we walked towards the temple, the driver made his way out to fix a flat tyre. The temple was really, really cool. So many huge pillars each one put into place perfectly. Sad that it also had been plundered. we sat in the temple for few minutes quitely observing what a master piece it would have been during the glory days.

After coming back we had our TT ready and headed one final time to the same hotel for breakfast. Time was 10 45 AM. Once we reached the hotel Vinay saw couple of dishes served for lunch were available. On enquiring we figured out lunch was ready!!.. I thought it couldn't be much cooler to wind up our Gingee town trip with yet another plaintain leaf meal, even though time was close to 11 AM. Not all of the folks had lunch, few did, including me, and I thoroughly enjoyed the mid day meal.

Before leaving, we met Dr Ramesh who had helped us with our accommodation (as well as itinerary). Dr Harish handed him a box of sweets and in turn Dr Ramesh gave us 2 pieces of memento. (I have one of them) We bid good bye to Gingee and headed towards NH 66 which would take us to Sathanur dam. We reached Sathanur dam site and first decided to visit the crocodile farm. Spent some time over there hoping to catch a glimpse of their movements. Few did move in and out of water but most were happily basking in the sun. After spending around 35+ minutes time we headed out to the dam.

We decided to move on towards Krishnagiri and around 6pm something, we made it to Hotel Arya Bhavan in Krishnagiri. After having some food we finally made it to the highway with Bangalore being around 89kms away. There was relatively less traffic on Sunday apart from a single toll booth which had a build up of vehicles. We made it to Bangalore by around 8 35 pm and bid good bye to our friends one by one. I got down at Banashankari bus stand and that brought to an end one more awesome outing with BASC.

Thanks to all who participated and thanks to Vinay & Dr Harish for organizing, a very special thanks to Dr Ramesh.

Written by – Sandeep Kulkarni

Post 2

This was our first trip with BASC. We started from Bangalore around 11 pm on Friday. We joined our fellow members at Silk Board. Feeling all cozy in our Tempo Traveller, we reached Gingee at 7:00 in the morning, slightly late than the scheduled time because of some traffic hassles on the way. We all freshened up a bit, had some nice coffee, all the while talking to our fellow enthusiasts and getting to know each other a bit. We were not the only ones who are the first timers here. We had breakfast at the local Vasanth Bhavan which served some nice idlis and vadas.

After that hearty breakfast, we reached the base of the first hill, where the main fort is, called Rajagiri. Since we were already a bit lagging behind the schedule, sun was up and all brightly shining. Originally it was known Kamalagiri / Anandagiri, this fort is known to be most impregnable. Within the citadel, we visited places like Kalyana Mahal, the royal stables, the gymnasium, the Anaikulam water tank and the granary.

Originally the site of a small fort built by the Chola dynasty during the 9th century AD, Gingee Fort was further strengthened during the Vijayanagar empire during the 13th century. The fort was built at a strategic place to fend off any invading armies. After the decline of the Vijayanagar empire, it was held by the Marathas until the Moghuls attacked it. The Moghuls could not capture the fort for seven years in spite of laying siege. After that it was successively held by the Moghuls, the French and the British. It took us about more than an hour to reach the top, all the while taking breaks and enjoying the views from the elevation. Once we reached the peak, we spent time relaxing and chatting. We introduced ourselves and in the process we got to know each other more. It was a lot of fun. Then we started our descent and reached the base soon. Then we headed to Vasant Bhavan again for lunch.

After lunch, we started the climb of the Krishnagiri Fort or the Rani Fort. Unlike Rajagiri, this had a relatively more of straight flight of steps. With breaks we did manage to reach the top battling monkeys who seemed to pop out of nowhere and very attracted to everyone’s back pack. Once we reached the top, we rested there on the cool stone slabs for a while. The descent, as usual, took less time and we were back to place where we had put up.

The next morning, we visited the Venkatramana Temple near the Rajagiri Fort. It was probably built during the Vijay Nagar period. The original tall, graceful monolithic pillars from the temple are said to have been carried away to Pondicherry by the French and to have been fixed around the Place de la République, near the old pier. The temple complex is several sub segments all of which display relics of intricate carving and artwork in stone. Ranganatha is seen reclining on the serpent with his head turned to a side and accompanied by two female figurines on the side who are possibly his wives Rukmani and Satyabhama. The expression on his face is gentle and pleasant. It is considered to be one of the most beautiful Vishnu idols anywhere.

After brunch, we left for Sathanur which was about a 2 hour journey from Gingee. The Sathanur Dam is one of the major dams constructed across the Pennaiyar River. We also visited the crocodile farm there. The cool breeze blowing from over the reservoir was invigorating. After spending some time at the beautiful gardens by the side of the reservoir, we left for Bangalore. We reached Bangalore refreshed and rejuvenated by this weekend trip.

Written by – Srujan Desai.

Join Bangalore ASCENDers @ CLICK HERE

Date: 21 & 22 Dec 2013

Expenses per head: 997/- includes costs towards hired vehicle, lunch, miscellaneous, entry fee.

Composed by: Sandeep Kulkarni

Event organized by: Vinay KGS and Dr Harish Babu

Image Gallery: Vinay KGS, Sandeep Kulkarni, Srujan Desai.

The team: Sandeep Kulkarni, Dr.Harish Babu, Nishit, Srujan, Ashish Urs, Harsha, Gagan, Vinay S, Rajath kumar, Priyank Goel, Pragathi Agarwal, Vinay KGS, Jhanvi Lakshmi

Bike Trip to Hampi – Post 2

noreply@blogger.com (Swetha Padakandla) — Mon, 23 Dec 2013 04:38:00 +0000

When I saw this event on the BASC group, to be honest, I was elated. We are getting a chance to go to Hampi, which in itself is a great place to visit and that too on Bike. It is like a cherry on top of cheese cake. So I registered immediately and luckily got shortlisted.

We got enough preparatory mails from Deepak as to how to get ourselves and our bikes ready for the long trip. And finally the day (or night) of the journey arrived. Usually common to BASC treks the pickup point is Majestic, but this is not a regular trek and that was apparent when the journey start place was set at TAJ Vivanta near Yeshwantpur on Tumkur Road at 2.30 am(yes, it was am and it is not a typo). All of us gathered on time for the amazing adventure that was to follow.

Before we started Deepak shared a small incident. Apparently Rakesh called him at 2.30 am the previous day and asked if people have already started. So you can feel the excitement, people can hardly wait to start on this trip.

It was decided that Deepak would lead the group and Vijay would sweep the group. Being my first bike trip, I and some of the folks were riding a bit slow and soon we were left behind by the regular bikers like Deepak, Devansh and others who were literally flying past us.

Soon we reached the 1st toll post, re-grouped and continued. This time I was determined to not lag behind. Soon we were riding at 80+ kmph, stopping occasionally for tea/coffee and regrouping. As the night progressed, it became chillier and riding at such high speeds became difficult. I could feel the wind gushing and howling past and even with two jackets, it was cold and we had to stop for fire to warm ourselves.

It was decided that we would continue on NH4 till Chitradurga and then take a right onto NH19. It was a different kind of sunrise that I saw that day, riding on my bike and on a National Highway. We could see windmills all along the way. We reached Chitradurga almost at the break of dawn and took a right to reach NH19 as planned.

Unlike NH4 which did not have much locality along, NH19 was different as there were a lot of small villages all along the route. We zoomed past most of the sleeping villages. It was an amazing road meandering along towards Hampi and riding on it was truly an amazing experience. We stopped for breakfast or just to enjoy the view and rode steadily towards Hampi. Soon we started seeing the ruins of the Vijayangar Empire on both sides of the road. At around 10.30 am we reached the temple town of Hampi.

Deepak had booked accommodation across the river in a place called Hampi Island. So we parked our bikes near Virupaksha temple and crossed the Tungabhadra onto the other side, kept our luggage, freshened up.

For those who are not familiar with Hampi, it is a village in northern Karnataka state, India. It is located within the ruins of Vijayanagara, the former capital of the Vijayanagara Empire. Predating the city of Vijayanagara, it continues to be an important religious centre, housing the Virupaksha Temple, as well as several other monuments belonging to the old city. The ruins are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, listed as the Group of Monuments at Hampi. It is situated on the banks of Tungabhadra river. Hampi formed one of the core areas of the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565, when it was finally laid siege to by the Deccan Muslim confederacy.

We decided that we could complete the local sight-seeing. We crossed back onto the Hampi side, picked up our bikes and went for a local tour. Deepak had arranged for a guide and with his explanation it seemed as if the pages of history book are coming to life right in front of our eyes.

We saw places like Elephant Stables, Statue of Ugra Narshima, Shivlinga, Zanana Enclosure, Stepped Tank, Lotus Palace, Queens Bath, Hazara Rama Temple, Stone Doors, Dasara Dibba, Sasivekalu Ganesha Temple, Pushkarini, Vittala Temple etc. Both architecturally and sculpturally each one is better than the other. In the buildings we saw instances of Konarak architecture, muslim architecture, jain architecture, hindu architecture, Ceylonese architecture and even chinese architecture. Being situated on the banks of Tungabhadra the region is extremely fertile and the hills on three sides provide a natural fortification, thus making it ideal for a prosperous empire. I was truly amazed by seeing the aqueduct system build at that time to provide water throughout the city. It is truly amazing.

Since Hampi is a world heritage site, it is frequented by many foreigners, so the village has adopted itself with the ways of life of the foreign visitors. You get anything from German bakery, to French, Italian and anything you can think of. Our sightseeing ended with a visit to the famous Vittala Tample. And after that we retuned back to the main town. If you are thinking that our adventure ended for the day, you couldn’t be more wrong. The best part was still left.

We wanted to see places on the other side of the river the next day, but the problem was that going across to the other side was a ~44 KM ride and no one was willing to ride another 44 KM now. So we decided we would cross our bikes across the river in the small boats in which we ourselves cross in. We were scared and excited at the same time as this was an experience none of us has ever experienced before. The boats were just fit enough to carry humans, we had no clue how they would carry bikes as heavy as the Bullet. We reached the crossing place just in time before they close for the day around5:30. God only knows how we managed to cross the bikes without any mishaps and finally all of us along with our trusted rides were on the other side.

We took rest for some time and then headed out for dinner. You get variety of food in Hampi and you can get almost all world class cuisines.

An interesting thing happened during our dinner, in the restaurant some foreigners were celebrating birthday. Suddenly they came and offered us the birthday cake.

After dinner we all went and slept like a log, as we all were really tired after such a long and eventful day. Next day some people wanted to go and see the sunrise from hanuman temple. Most of us opted to sleep instead.

Next day morning I woke up long after sunrise. We decided that we will have breakfast and go and see places on this side of town. We realized that the people who went in the morning were not back yet. When we were able to contact them we found that one of them had a flat tire and were getting it repaired. After everyone was back and had breakfast we started on our sightseeing. We went to the Sanapura Lake and it was just beautiful. While we were riding past the Dam at one place we saw few foreigners standing on a bridge and then they suddenly jumped into the water below. We were all very excited and wanted to do this stunt. All of us who knew swimming stood in a line on the bridge and jumped. It was truly amazing, frightening and exciting experience culminated into one single moment. The water down was cold and it had strong current.

After our morning adventure it was time for us to leave. Again time to cross the river. This time we crossed from another point and it was relatively easy.

We followed NH19 on our way back. We rode together till Bellary and then we split up into two groups. One group that would have people who want to ride fast and another group with slow riders. As always I was in the slower group, with Sanjay as our sweeper and Subrata as our lead. We decided we would regroup near Hiriyur. It is an amazing road to ride at night and all of us had a wonderful time. When I reached Hiriyur I was shocked to hear that Subrata met with an accident on the way. Luckily nothing major happened and he too reached Hiriyur riding his bike. From Hiriyur we arranged for a transportation of his bike. Then we continued our journey back to Bangalore along NH4. The journey was uneventful. We took small breaks and had dinner along the way in one of the roadside dhabas.

Finally we reached Bangalore nearly at 2 in the night. It was a truly memorable experience, riding nearly 800 kms in 2 days and with some of the best fellow bikers for company, it cannot get better than this.

Like all good things, this wonderful trek also came to an end. I enjoyed it fully and could not have asked for anything more. Thanks Deepak for arranging such a wonderful trip, and thanks to BASC for letting me experience my first bike trip to such a wonderful place. Finally thanks to all the fellow riders who made this a truly memorable experience.

Join Bangalore ASCENDers @ CLICK HERE

Written by: Rajdeep
Date: December 21st and 22nd, 2013

Composed by: Swetha Padakandla

Event organized by: Deepak Saran
Image Gallery: Devansh, Subrato

The Crew: Deepak Saran, Sanjay Kumar, Rajdeep Mondal, Raghavendra, Devansh Patel, Subrata, Krushi Deep M, Vijaya Raghava, Rakesh MK

Read the other post of the same event written by Devansh at Bike Trip to Hampi – Post 1

Bike Trip To Hampi – Post 1

noreply@blogger.com (Swetha Padakandla) — Mon, 23 Dec 2013 03:33:00 +0000

PROLOGUE

Less than a week after my last trek with BASC, I was itching for a bike ride. I do keep going on solo rides, but riding with a group is a different song altogether. Having ridden before with other trekking groups, I was on the verge of asking one of the senior BASC guys to help me organize one.

As if it was a god sent, there was a registration mail for a bike ride to Hampi. Without a second thought I registered, excited about meeting a new group of riders. Mails flowed with detailed instructions, do’s and don’ts and something told me this was going to be exciting.

THE RIDE

On the day of the ride, we met at Taj Vivanta Tumkur road, more or less on time (Except Raghavendra :P) and after a short briefing, we started moving. It was cold like hell, and even with a thermal layer and gloves, I was shivering. We had to take a couple of breaks just to get some hot coffee into our systems. When we stopped for the second break, three bikers missed us and continued ahead.

After basking in the warmth of a bonfire and a cup of piping hot coffee shot, we continued our journey to Chitradurga. However we realized the three bikers that had overshot had moved towards Hampi and we were to rendezvous them there itself.
Here like in the movie Matrix, Deepak offers me a choice – blue pill or red pill. Blue pill is the shorter, straight highway to Hampi, while the red pill is a longer, “more scenic” route. Without batting an eyelid, I chose the red pill. We continued on that route, a scenic but patchy road.

The remaining 5 bikers were riding in a tight formation, never out of sight of each other. We finally make it to Hampi, through Bellary, after a late breakfast. We met the 3 “lost” bikers in front of a temple.

It was 11am already and we were all really sleepy, and we decided to go to our cottages, change and push off for sightseeing. The guesthouse is located on the Hampi Island, so we leave our bikes and cross over in the boats. We checked in to our “Bobby Guest House” cottages were really nice and colored in vivid shades.

After a refreshing and rather cold shower, the tiredness was gone as if it was never there and there started the journey to a number of monuments with a humungous amount of facts and history. SO MUCH HISTORY that I zoned out and simply focused on taking pictures. Including some that’ll never be forgotten. ;) From this I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking.

THE TEMPLE RUN @ HAMPI

First we went to the Krishna Temple, with a large market and reservoir in front of it. The history lecture here set context of the king Krishnadevaraya of the Vijayawada Empire in the 16th century, his ideology. He was a king who had expanded the empire to include Andhra and Orissa. His love and respect of different cultures was well documented and most of the monuments reflected influence of different cultures, including Jainism, Islam, and Chinese etc. He used to get artisans from these regions to build these monuments.

The next was Sasivekalu Ganesha, where the Ganesha Idol was made out of single rock and the temple was built around it. The special thing about this idol is that from behind it looks like Ganesha is sitting on Mother Parvati’s lap.

Next up was Lakshmi Narsimha, where Goddess Lakshmi was sitting on the lap of Narsimha. Unfortunately the Lakshmi statue was completely destroyed by the plunderers. Her hand is still visible on the left arm of Narsimha. In close vicinity was the second largest Shivaling in South India.

Then we went to the Lotus Mahal. This campus housed sandalwood palaces of the two queens, and this beautiful structure called Lotus temple. The palaces were burnt down, duh, but this Lotus Mahal supposedly has a state-of-art liquid cooling technology similar to those employed in modern day CPUs by hackers. Yes, I WAS listening… too. ;)

This campus also had the elephant’s stables, whose pictures couldn’t be taken due to too many distractions :P Then we visited a Ganesha temple, which is able to depict the story of Ramayana engraved in 3 rows on its outer walls.

At the King’s Balance – the first picture is of the reservoir where water is channeled from different places using aqueducts (shown in the second picture.) The third picture is of the engraving on the sides of the main platform at the king’s balance. These engravings depict the entire story of how the trade used to happen in those times, and how the kingdom was developed.

The last attraction of the day was the Vittala temple. This temple houses the famous stone chariot, and musical pillars. The musical pillars were quite fascinating, designed such that each produces a different tone, depending upon its thickness and material used.

After a rather long day of history lectures, we rushed back to the river crossing so that we could ship our bikes to the other side. The whole gang is pictured below.

CROSSING OVER
What was probably a first for many of the bikers, our bikes had the fortune of sailing across the river in boats. A truly exciting and somewhat scary experience.

I’m sure everyone was pretty relieved once our bikes were safely on the other side. This leads us to a completely different world, captured in the next section.

THE OTHER SIDE

This side of the river is quite the opposite of the temple side. Here, there is not much to see or do, due to lack of road access, I’m sure we pretty much accounted for 80% traffic on the island. This side has the famous Mowgli and Shanthi Guest houses. In a state of extreme hunger I made the group check out two places before we decided to settle for Sunny’s restaurant, run by an interesting fellow called Suko.

Boy we ate. We ordered and ordered relentlessly. Poor Suko’s clouded brain couldn’t handle much of it. During our dinner, a group of foreigners were celebrating a birthday, and being the civilized lot we were, we did clap and sing. They were nice enough to send cake to our table. (Those who couldn’t taste or see it, there was rum and raisin cake, and New-York style baked cheesecake. Next time, try harder :P)
For the next couple of hours, we stuffed ourselves till we could not eat one more grain. We sat there for a while waiting for food to settle down, so that we could get back on our feet and walk back to our cottages.

I however ended up jamming with this girl from Austria, who was playing the Ukelele, and meeting the proprietor of this music shop called Gali Djambo. An interesting fellow, with a passion for music. He was carrying this fascinating instrument called the Hapi, and he played some mesmerizing music on the mere 8 notes on that instrument. I learnt that every evening he organizes “Sunset Jam”, jam sessions on the boulders of the river at dusk, where any and every one can join or just drop in to listen. Something I regret missing this time, as we were to leave the island by noon next morning. But it’s a sure shot on my list for the next time.

Past midnight I decided to call it a night, and headed back to the cottage, where a couple of people were watching the screening of Inception at the Bobby’s shack, while most others had retired in the hammocks or cottages. A long and interesting day.

A few people decided to wake up and watch the sun rise from the hanuman temple. I wished them luck and decided to sleep for the next 16 hours. I got to sleep for 6.

THE NEXT MORNING

At 7am, Deepak comes to our cottage and starts a nice conversation. Like that will wake me up. After numerous such visitors and attempts, finally I decided to wake up at 7:40am. Not bad!

People were already up and around, and we gathered at the shack for breakfast, were I started my next photo spree. It was a quiet and a peaceful morning, the shack was decorated to give an ambience of laziness and the music was just totally relaxing. It felt great to know that there is no rush and I can kick back and relax.

The guys who had gone to see the temple got delayed due to a punctured tire and we were just relaxing till they reached.

After everyone was done with breakfast, we packed up and moved to check out Sanapur Lake, our last destination on the trip before we ferry our rides across and head back home. Now this is when I discover the nice part of the island. Small shops selling very tourist oriented stuff, Graffiti on walls, etc.

The first signboard we see when we reach the lake is “Crocodiles are in the reservoir.” So it was our duty to go and see if they’re okay!
So there goes the BASC official synchronized bridge jumping team, in perfectly synchronized dives :D :D :D

From there we headed back to our guesthouse for lunch.

One more river crossing later, we were all cruising on our way home.

3 CHEERS FOR THE ORGANIZER!!
May we have many more bike trips, and hope all of them will be as fun as this one! Keep it up dude!

Join Bangalore ASCENDers @ CLICK HERE

Written by: Devansh Patel

Date: December 21st and 22nd, 2013

Composed by: Swetha Padakandla

Event organized by: Deepak Saran

Image Gallery: Devansh, Subrato

The Crew: Deepak Saran, Sanjay Kumar, Rajdeep Mondal, Raghavendra, Devansh Patel, Subrata, Krushi Deep M, Vijaya Raghava, Rakesh MK

Read the other post of the same event written by Rajdeep at Bike Trip to Hampi – Post 2

TREK TO HIGHEST PEAK OF KARNATAKA –(FAST TREK 1)

noreply@blogger.com (patrick samuel) — Mon, 09 Dec 2013 17:15:00 +0000

Shadowed last peak is Mullayanagiri from where we started in morning.completed this long within half day.
Hitting the trail – Hard & Fast
The Trail: Sarpanadari Arch – Mullayanagiri - Baba Budanagiri - Kemmanagundi – Hebbe Falls – Kemmanagundi
The Distance: 60+ Kms in 1.5 days
The Team: Santhosh (Me), Patrick, Satya, Jijo, Anil

So, it all started with a call from Patrick. All he said was, we would be doing a fast hiking and it would be Mullayanagiri – Baba Budanagiri trail. While the first proposal was exciting, the second one made me agree as I already had an unfinished business in this trail. Of course, who could deny such a plan that’s both intriguing as well as interesting? I was itching to get back to my trekking ways after a three-month exile and there couldn’t have been a better way to start again.

On Friday, we gathered at Majestic and after the initial round of introductions, we boarded the bus to Chikmagalur. While we spent a large part of the time talking various topics, we did get some rest to prepare ourselves for the big day. Once at Chikmagalur, we hired 2 Autos, to reach our entry point for the hike.

Oh, and now I was excited, so.. damn.. excited at 4.30 in the morning. Soon we got into the trail and started walking upwards. Within 5 mins, Anil twisted his ankles and was in agony. He asked us to move ahead while he would return back. But we encouraged him to come up with us till Mullayanagiri and then re-evaluate his condition. 60 mins later, when the clock struck 6, we were at the peak. And waited for Anil to come. The peak was cold and breezy and refreshing, needless to say, early in the morning.

(view near mullayanagiri peak)

Anil decided to move with us till Baba- Budanagiri as we had to go downhill till the check post. We started at 6.30 from Mullaiyangiri and were soon on our way to face the next challenge. We crossed the checkpost and sneaked into the woods silently as we did not want to explain our mission to the guys there. Anil somehow was sticking with us though he was in pain.

(beautiful trail)

Once we crossed the checkpost, we had a mild ascent on the ridges. The ridges were deep enough to get one scary. The trail went as close to the ridges as possible and we considered it as one of the most challenging trails that we have been to. The trail along the ridges leads us to Manickyadhara falls through another hill (where we spotted some sambar deers and a fox) and a BSNL tower. We reached here by 8.40 and broke to have our breakfast. We spent some time here, saw the thin waterfalls and then started to Baba Budanagiri. Anil decided to part ways as he was in pain and agony. So we waved bye to him and soon we lost Patrick in the woods (who went in search for a shortcut :P)

Me, Sathya and Jijo decided to head towards Baba Budanagiri and we knew Patrick will somehow make it to there as he was carrying a GPS (Carrying a GPS and getting lost?? Ask Patrick, How?? :P). We passed beside a pond along the jeep trail, which suddenly faded away. At a distance we could see the road to Baba Budanagiri and decided to walk through the bushes to reach that road. Once on the road, we were confused on which side to head. Luckily a jeep came uphill and asked the direction. Then in another 10 mins we were in Baba Budanagiri and there was no signs of Patrick coming here. Sathya and Jijo went to the mosque and also fetched water for me. In the mean time Patrick came down to Baba Budanagiri and it was a surprise to see Anil along with him.

By then, the time was 11 and we started to Galikere at 11.40 after spending some time here. This part of the trail wasn’t difficult as it was a clear road till the lake. At about 12.30 we were at the lake, having lunch and sharing snacks. We spent some time at this lake and decided to walk towards Kemmanagundi later.

This part of the trail was pure beauty. The hills, the ridges, the valleys and to top it, add some seasoning with herds of Sambar deers and Antelopes. The beauty of this trail mesmerized us. We came across the highest peak and Patrick told us this was the actual Baba Budanagiri hill. Me, Satya and Patrick went up this peak while the others continued along the trail. Then we came down and continued with the rest of the team for the long walk.

On the way we literally crawled through a few bushes where Patrick missed the GPS. We came back and crawled again searching it and to our luck, we got it back. After a long journey through hills, ridges and valleys and passing through the remains of an old building, we continued further. After 31 Kms of walk, at 6.30 it started to get very dark and we decided to call it a day. We had our dinner and then sneaked into the tarpaulin to get some much-deserved sleep. We were surrounded by sambar deers all the way in our trail.Even we heard their sound many times while sleeping in our camping site.

We woke up at 5.45 to see one of the best ever sunrise that we have ever witnessed. Couple it with some hard wind embracing us with the mist that it brought down from the hills. After relishing all these, we then started our day 2.

Soon we reached a jeep trail after walking for 30 mins. This jeep trail connects Kemmanagundi to Z-point. We then started heading towards Kemmanagundi, and then we reached the horticultural department’s guesthouse. There was a canteen available and we filled our tummies with lemon rice and omelets.

Soon we reached a check post, paid the entry fees and headed toward Hebbe falls. We took the shortcut instead of the jeep trail and we were able to save about 2 kms.

In 30 mins we reached the jeep trail again and started to move in the direction of the falls. This is a clear trail and hence each of us walked at our own pace and reached the falls in 1 hr 45 mins. Here we had our dip, ate our snacks and lunch, took some photos and spent some time. At 1.30 we regrouped and started back to Kemmanagundi. We had some more food (puris and omelets) at the canteen again and then took the 4.15 bus to Lingadhalli from where we took another bus to Chikmagalur.

In short, we travelled well over 60 kms, through hills, valleys and ridges, sighting sambars, antelopes and foxes, took back memories and all the litter.

A week has passed by and I still relish the memories from this trek. The END.

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Written by: JAYAN SANTHOSH
Event organized by: PATRICK SAMUEL
Image Gallery: satya