Recently I joined flickr and become a member of Bangalore Weekend Shoots (BWS). I heard that BWS members go out for group shoots on weekends. I joined the group on Friday and their was one thread going on for upcoming weekend shoot (lucky me.... :) ). The destination was Skandagiri Hills, 70 km from Bangalore on Hyderabad road.
The plan was to leave Bangalore by 3 AM in morning so that we can reach on hill top by sunrise; coz climbing on hill requires 6km trek also.... :( BWS Member's who participated are:
Shailendra (myself), Murugan, Ravi, Nitthilan, Jay and Gourav
Friday midnight 2:30 AM I left from my house and picked Ravi and his friend Nitthilan from Murgeshpalya. Outside HAL gate some cops stopped me and asked me to come for breath analyzer test. I got tensed as i had two beers in evening but somehow I passed and we took the BEML road to pick Gourav from KR Puram. In between Joy kept on calling Gourav for the routes cause travelling from koramangla to hebbal is quite dangerous at night. We meet them near Hebbal flyover. There were no others members who were scheduled to come, so we got little worried as we all were new and it was our first group shoot, on top of that none of us was knowing the route to Skandgiri.... :D
We all showed much courage and started our journey @3.15. We took tea break after crossing airport….and asked for the road direction. Tea wala told us that take a left for chikballapur after crossing the two railway lines on Hyderabad road after Nandi Hill Cross. When we reached chikballapur there are two roads, left one leads you back to Nandi Hills (its the same road which buses follow to reach Nandi Hills), the right one goes to Skandagiri Hills. After taking right, the road turns to left and goes straight, but you have take a right again instead of going straight. After 500 meters or so, we saw one gate in left and we took that left.
Any ways we reached at the foothills by 4.30 after lot of permutation and combination in the dark lanes. The weather was quite chilling but the atmosphere was filled with morning chants from temple which is located on hill foot. The temple parking lot provide nice and secured space to park your vehicle. The local guides stared spoofing around "bega bega banni sir ....................."come first sir you are late for the sun rise. But we decided not to take help from them (thinking that they are trying to fool us).....and started walking.... BUT in hurry we missed the right path and ended up landing in a dead lane. Finally, we all decided to take help from a local guide...and asked him to show us the way...In pretext of taking us by short cut…..he made us walking through thorny bush, scaled walls, but we enjoyed...At last we reached at the base from where we have to trek. We saw lot of people like us climbing ahead. We organized ourselves by calling us by no’s....as in NCC... :) so no one will get lost in that dark. We started trekking with much enthusiasm... as we were already late and none of us wants to miss the sunrise moment. The top of the hill was covered with clouds and before starting only we knew that we have to trek 6km which will drain out lot of energy from us. As we covered 3 kms things started changing, it was 5.00 AM but there was no sign of sun and we could see actually that we are moving thick mist. At times it was Zero visibility and we used our NCC skills we stay together rather getting lost in jungle.... :P
As we climbed up, we started thinking, OMG.... its 5:30 still no sign of sun…. :) Now we could see the place a bit clear but strong wind added more to the plight. In between we tried taking pictures, but our hands were shaking due to cold making all pics shaky and blur.....as we climbed more, more we sailed inside sea of clouds.
Its 6:15 we were close to the top with no sign of sun..... only clouds....mist..... and chilling wind.... We say many climbing down with blur face. 6:30.....yes we made it..... we are at the top, accompanying us was one chayewala....and a couple of dogs.... but on top things were more worse.... strong chilling wind and very low visibility. There we had some breakfast with Jay’s horlicks biscuits (the secret of his energy.... :) ) and chips (secret of Ravi’s energy.... ;) ). We tried to shoot some pics but thick mist kept on fooling our digital SLR's.... :D
7:30 we lost all our hope as things were not getting better, same position with no sun light. But even that could not let down our enthusiasm and we tried our best for the best results.
8:15 we started trekking down....now it was more painful....with our as our legs were paining and shaking. By 10:30 we reached to the base, to our surprise we found that the guide made us fool in the dark. We were actually on the right track.... only missed one single left turn (now we know what happens when you miss one turn..... ) And that guide took 100 bucks to show us the left turn.....LOL .We all took some rest before starting back home.
