Day Trek To Rayakottai

Someone wise said,” Travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape you’. One such travel experiences was the ‘Day trek to Rayakottai’ organized by BTC through it’s able organizers – Dinesh Gupta & Aravindh J. The day started with us gathering at the ticketing counter of the Majestic Railway Station, where we took a train to start our journey. In our effort to board a compartment with seats for 21 of us, we kept switching from compartment to compartment. It was already 7:13 am and the train was scheduled to start at 7:15am. What could you expect from a group of young, energetic, risk aggressive adventurers! With the objective of being together during the journey, we did find a bhogi with place for all of us. But, by then the clock had already struck 7:15am and the train started moving. We experienced the famous DDLJ moment of boarding a moving train! (passenger train though! So it was quite comfortable for us to do that :P). What better way to kick start the event! 

We quickly settled down and were trying to break the ice. Soon, the BTCians at Bypanahalli also boarded the train. Then organizers said, “We need to introduce ourselves to the group. And, this needs to be done through dumb-charades”. It was a fun-filled ice-breaker where each one of us tried hard to convey our names(sir names & second names too!) to the group. SuDEEP’s “deep pit”, LatHa’s “5 letter name”, Tihar’s..oops TAahir’s “Nashta”, SOUmya’s “10X” were acts that added more fun to the event.Little did we realize that around 2.5hrs were already over and we were almost reaching the Rayakottai railway station. With a great company, time didn’t bother us much. At around 10am we reached the Rayakottai railway station.

Just when we thought we’d started the day with an amazing train journey, something greater awaited us. It was the “auto ride” from the railway station to the entrance of the Rayakottai fort, which was around 2 kms away. 2 autos & 21 people!!

This can happen only with a group of accommodative people, which reassured the first timers of their day’s companions for the trek.

We were all set to capture the Rayakottai fort and started the trek with a great zeal and energy. The fort is situated in the Krishnagiri district of Tamil Nadu and is now one of the protected monuments of Archaelogical Survey of India.

It was quite an easy path as there were steps all along the trail of the trek. The trek started off with Aravindh leading and Dinesh trailing. To add fun and memories, we had a couple of fellow members who were passionate about photography. With them around, there was no scarcity for amazing group pics, selfies, cover pics, profile and display pics. Thanks to their patience and passion!

On our way up, there was a small temple under one of the rocks – like a cave temple, dark and cool. We offered our prayers, rested for a while and then resumed our journey up. It was then the weather’s turn to test our energies and it became quite hot while we were trekking up. Undeterred by this, with ample amount of motivation from the organizers and fellow members, we all tirelessly continued our treks. Very soon we reached the top, where there were ruins of the Rayakottai fort.

There were many brick structures and decent amount of vegetation around, which again became amazing spot for the posers in the group. The view from the top gave a miniature glimpse of the Rayakottai town below the mountain. There was a big lamp at the top, which is said to be lit on festivals and special occasions. 

It was then time for lunch. We had carried our lunch boxes and had a pot luck. It was an amazing way to have lunch and to know each other better. After lunch time, it was some fun. We played “Ping-Pong”, which was a great game with lot of fun…which even made a couple of us forget our real names and own the pseudo names. It was thorough enjoyment with some fun performances.

We had to then head back. With a sense of accomplishment (especially for the first timers), we started trekking down at around 2:30pm. Descending downwards was a lot easier and faster. By 3:10 pm we were at the entrance of the fort again and started walking towards the Bus station. We boarded a bus to Hosur after having savored a medhu-vadai, a local snack. The journey in the bus was also time for us to empty the snacks that we had carried. Soon we reached Hosur and boarded a bus to Bangalore. The day trek event was almost reaching its end, and it was feedback time. With a lot of contentment, we all expressed joy and happiness about the trek and the way it was organized. Soon we reached our respective destinations and boarded off the bus with a hope to reunite at another such trek.

To sum it up, it was a day worth our memories. With not even a single moment of inactivity during the entire event, the organizers ensured that we all had amazing fun all along. My sincere and heartfelt thanks to each one of the group, for it was a wonderful beginning of my journey of trekking!!!!

Written By       : Priya K

Organized By   : Dinesh Gupta & Aravindh Jho

Date of event  : 30^th July 2017

Place               : Rayakottai

Pictures           : FB Pics