Could not find another category, so writing it here.
Continuing from my revu on coorg. Finally on the second day at coorg we decided that we 7 will go for the trek in the night, so we bought all the necessary stuff, torches et al and started from madikeri by our tempo traveler to reach the base camp, we missed out on the route to the base camp and reached there at around 11:00 p.m. to find nothing there I mean we were told that we could hire a guide from there(we were planning to hire a guide as none of us had earlier done this trek) and we did not even knew of the route. and as per our friends who had done this trek earlier it was very easy to lose way.
But no guide but we found a cottage there and there was a guy there who made us the map for the trek, if it wasn’t for that map, we would have never reached the top, or probably even back for that matter..(Guys who need the map can m2m me and I ll send it across)
So finally we started the trek at 11:35 p.m. sharp on 22 April 2005, we seven, I still remember the words the guy who drew the map told us ’I do not want to discourage you, but you are already being very adventurous, so don’t be over adventurous in the jungle’> he also told us to be careful against Tigers and elephants(How stupid he was, even if we knew there was one right behind us, we could not have done anything, no weapon, nothing we had.) but we 7 bahadurs set out.
the starting was ok, a wide tar road for around 1.5 km and it was not very scary as well. then the tar road ended and the mud road started still it was very wide and we all were walking together.some more distance on this wide road and then the road started to get narrow, enough only for to follow each other, through the jungle. One interesting thing here. when we started everybody was hungry, shouting like hell, But walking till here nobody even uttered a single word about food, at one place when we were giving out chocolates.one of them said that “Chodo yaar, upar chalke hi kha lenge”.
After some 5 km from the base camp, we reached a place called “The Rock” which was a landmark to the trekkers and we were told that we could rest there, without much risk, since it was open ground for a long distance….we rested there for around an hour or so, had a lot of fun…. Since we planned to reach the peak before the sunrise and started from there at about 2:30 a.m.
The next stretch was to be the most tiring and it also had the biggest surprise of the trek…
The initial part was through the grass lands and was very steep and with nothing to hold and walking on the rocks, it was very difficult and I was thinking as to how we are going to come down from here…. And then cam the biggest surprise. We were following the map very religiously and then we saw a jungle entrance we were approaching… it seemed to be a dense jungle and that was the only place we needed torches on that night(It was almost full moon) and visibility was good….
After a long thought we agreed on the point that we are on the right route and we will have to cross the jungle. As soon as we started the jungle our torches begun to fade out…(That’s Murphy’s Law I believe - The problem with stuff arises when you need them the most) and we were running out on our spare batteries as well… but after 15 min of climb thru the jungle(Yes climb, this was also very steep and we held on to tree roots to climb through) Coming out was all the more relieving and we felt as if our trek was over….The next part was also very steep but we had grip as there was grass all around… finally we reached the top of the peak, around 4:30 am and after that the wait for the sunrise begun. I was not very hopeful as luck has always against me… and it was looking very cloudy, but it was not to be… first of all we saw the moonset on one side and then the sunrise…. It was so beautiful…. Though we had to fight a lot of things to see this, but everything seemed to be worth… the time stood still… No one to look for…. It was so beautiful… no words can describe it…
After spending a lot of time there on the peak we started back… it was very scary to see the route we took to come as nothing was visible in the night. Overall a wonderful trip and we took around 2 hrs to come down and start back to our lodge… story cont—in the other revu….
But I ll say a place to be for all the trekkers… and for non trekkers as well. as it is not very tiring and exhaustive, … but avoid trekking in the night, prfer evening, carry sleeping bags and tents, reach the top by 12;00 camp on the top, carry a lot of water….and enjoi the sunrise and come back.thats all I need to say….