Skandagiri Trek
It was nearly an hour and half journey to reach the village Chikballapur….Once we reached, the sight of fresh fruits; hot south Indian filter coffee & idli dosa aroma challenged everyone’s taste buds….And for Vikram, colorful kesari bath is an addition to the above… After ensuring a healthy breakfast, the team headed to reach the base by an auto rickshaw…. Those scenes one could find while passing in a rickshaw is amazing… Grapes plantations on one side, cattle, small huts, cute innocent children playing around, and ancient temples on another side makes
one feel the village so beautifully….
Once the team reached the base, we had an intro session followed by rules & procedures one must follow as a BTCian… After a warm up.., we all started to explore the amazing hill by 10 am… there were few who started to climb the hill with an amazing stamina & speed… there were some slow walkers as well who took interim breaks … Based on this Virander decided to head the speedy batch and ensured that Sreemoyee takes care of the slow walkers…. As a part of slow walkers, I started admiring the nature as I passed by…. After a 30 minutes climb, one can figure out the wind turning out to be chill & the altitude starts highlighting… As I passed the rocky terrain, could admire some wild lizards, colorful insects & some birds chirping at a long distance…
Now the challenge is to ignore the altitude that knocks ur eyes every time…. Slowly & steadily this time the whole group descended by helping every other person beside… Some jokes & cheers made everyone to take the fear out… and again beautiful captures across the rocks were spell bound… the feel of the clouds, fresh air keeps passing by & finally we reached the base by 4:30 pm… Viru & Sree made sure that everyone has descended safe & we all headed to rickshaw, reached chikballapur to sip hot coffee / tea to refresh… Feedbacks were shared as a group & finally without having a heart to say adieu we travelled back to Bangalore city ..:) Thanks & Cheers to the whole team for being a part of a memorable trek… Thanks to Viru & Sree for being such a cheerful & caring organizers throughout….Thank You All…
It was Virander (Viru) & Sreemoyee (Sree) whom one must thank for organizing a positive trek experience right from the start till the end…..
Skandagiri is around 70 KM from Bangalore towards international airport. It is around 25 Km from Nandi Hills and Nandi hills are visible from top of the Skandagiri hills. I heard that night trek is awesome specially the sun rise view. You will see only clouds surrounding the hills and it is a very good experience. It was a day trek for us and we reached on top by 12 PM so no clouds sighting for us.
It was my 2nd trek with BTC. Skandagiri was at least twice the height of Jalamangala trek. One way trek was of 8 KM. It is near to Chikballapur town.
We started at around 7:30 AM by bus from Bangalore majestic bus stand and reached Chikballapur town at 8:30 AM. We stopped at a restaurant and had breakfast. As planned we have packed our lunch. We took auto ride from Chikballapur till Skandagiri hills. It is a to and fro ride from Auto and we noted their phone numbers to call them back when we are done with the trek.
As we reached there, lunch packets were distributed to individuals and organizers gave instructions to us. We started walking at around 9:30 AM. Initially it was 1-2 KM of walk on road before we reached the point where we start our actual trek on hill. We stopped in between and have taken group snaps and we had a small introduction session. I was happy to find one more Vaibhav in the group.
People broke into 2 groups as we started climbing. We stopped at many places to take snaps. There was a cave in between and some of us have relaxed there for sometime before continuing their journey.
I did not check the time properly but it seems that it was minimum 2 hours of uphill trek. There were fort walls at top. As soon as we saw them we were happy that we are about to reach destination.
Ours was the first group to reach on top. After reaching top we started taking snaps.
We found one Stonehenge kind of structure on top of the hill and it became a place for taking pictures as background view was very scenic.
We found three dogs and wondered how did they reach on top of the hill. We also thought how do they survive at top of the hill with no water and food.
As the 2nd group arrive we all settled after taking spans and played dumb charades. We had strange movie names which we never heard so far. One example "Julm ko mita ke raakh ker dunga".
After playing dumb charades we all opened our lunch packs and finished our lunch. Lunch quantity was more so most of us left it and left over was served to dogs. Now we understood how do they survive at top.
It was 2:30 PM and after finishing lunch we all started descending the hill. We took one more group snap at a place while descending.
Descending was more fun but riskier as we need to balance our weight and speed while descending. There are more chances of slipping.
It took us lesser time to reach bottom of the hill as compare to ascending the hill. As we reached foothill we called up the auto persons and they came in 15 minutes. We visited the same restaurant again to have tea and coffees. After this we had feedback sessions. Then we took a bus back to Bangalore.
Written By : Savithri Nilakantan & Vaibhav Rastogi
Organized By : Virander Sirohi
Date of event : 14th Sept 2014
Place : Skandagiri
Pictures : BTC FB Page
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