Skandagiri.....My first trek..

I tempted my good old friend,Nidhi, with dreams of going up the hills to view the sunrise on a cold day....sounds tempting right?? Nidhi turns out to be this simple soul who is in love with nature and the small things in life....Finally after a lot of debates, I managed to convince my hubby about taking that big leap and do our first major trekking...Now 'Trekking' in my mind was a simple walk...probably jumping over a few boulders..Little did I realise that Skandagiri was much more than a simple walk....LOL!! Three friends backed out in the last minute and I got two new volunteers for the trek..(I dont think they will ever trek again for the rest of their lives...LOL!!!)...We set off for Skandagiri at 11:45pm in our Indica with loads of foodstuff, a bottle of vodka and some warm clothing....We had no clue where Skandagiri was and everyone on the road had absolutely no clue about this place called Skandagiri...Hubby calls up his junior and threatens him ...(One way conversation as follows:) : 'Hi Banu....Have you slept??Can you tell me the way to get to Skandagiri.....Okay.....Okay....Fine...I will call you after sometime..Dont sleep okay...Your appraisal is coming up...'....All of us in the car burst out laughing...After around 6 calls and asking close to 7 people, we finally find our way to Skandagiri....The last call to our guide : 'Hi Banu...We finally found our way to Skandagiri...Thank you....Yes you can...Good night'....Poor Banu had to get his Lead's Permission to Sleep also....Whew fate of we poor indian IT workers who have to work under others!! LOL!!

Anyways,we finally got to the base of Skandagiri and ended up bargaining with a guide to take us up the 'Betta'..we start walking..The ascend gets tough now...A few mins later...I call out in my hopeless Hindi... 'Guide Bhaiyya..Aur kitna door hai' the guide replies 'Madam its not even half way thru'.....everyone lets out explective's...In the beginning everyone used decent explective's...After sometime, we all started panting like dogs....By the grace of God it was a full moon day....In between I would get pissed off and call out 'Guide Bhaiya..Please torch dhikhayiyae....Cant see a crap...Sh&%'.The explective's get meaner and meaner....The one of the volunteers for the trip, Vatsala, turned out to have worn the wrong pair of shoes and she had to suffer the most...Her hubby was always beside her making sure she is doesn't get hurt...After sometime the ascend gets steeper and steeper..Rocks turn to loose sand and that's when things started getting hard..That occasional slip in the dark gives you that extreme rush of adrenalin and leaves your heart beating like crazy and you sweating profusely...It was an all-time dream of mine to visit the Himalayas.. And I think the trip to Skandagiri made me realise that it might not be all that possible...Hubby was openly relieved that I renounced the idea of going to the Himalayas...I was genuinely surpised that my hubby was much stronger and agile than he looked...Looks are indeed deceptive. ..;) Every step we started taking was getting painful and after sometime we were drenched in sweat and everytime I turned to look back at the others, my eyes would dart off to the sides and the way that we came up...I would get dizzy of the heights..Since when did I start getting this faint hearted...Damn it....Shame on you girl.... I secretly berated myself.

After sometime, we reached high enough to see the city lights..It was beautiful.Unfortunately the camera that we took didn't have enough clarity to get a candid distant shoot...Quite disappointing..After a while we hear a shout 'Jesus...where the F&Ck are you..Come down now...' We all looked at each other in surprise only to realise that we had company(loads of trekkers in fact)..We overtook a gang of guys (one of the guys' name was Jesus..)Jesus came down literally cursing the caller...We all burst laughing and continued with our journey..Nidhi and I would burst into occassional peals of our infamous laughter when we heard the guys screaming out 'Jesus, I am so tired of this F&*king trek...I am tried of taking mainframe calls on top of this place..'.Poor fellas...

I am skipping all the intricate details,but eventually we reach the top after constant motivation from the guide that there is a hotel and a temple on top where you can rest..My foot... We eventually reached the top, we see that the 'HOTEL', was infact a tent and a dilapidated temple ....There were a dozen people huddled up in the tent trying to catch some sleep...Whew..finally we reached the top...What a relief...It took a while for the sweat to dry off and then the freezing started..God..it was sooo cold....We were literally unable to talk....The breeze was quite strong and our guide left us to get the next batch of trekkers...We finally found a rock and hid ourselves behind it...With whatever little warm clothing we had, we sat huddled up next to each other..Our teeth chattering...Then the Vodka came...Irrespective of the gender, everyone had a sip to keep ourselves from dying from the cold...The vodka was a blessing ..I forgave the Russians for sometime for discovering this poison...:D..(Did you know: Vodka was originally called bread wine in Russia and Horilka is the Ukrainian term for "vodka )..Everytime Nidhi and I would burst into our uncontrollable peals of laughter some useless set of guys would imitate us..After sometime,my hubby chided us and asked us to shut up....Silence fell....Time was crawling....The night sky was beautiful and I saw the Big Dipper..The full moon was beautiful and we could detect the painfully slow movements of the moon. God those moments of waiting were terrible..We were so jealous of the other three friends of mine who backed out and who were probably huddled up under woollen blankets in the warmth of their houses and snoring away...After sometime our butts froze and we all decided to stand up and do some warm ups...It was much better than sitting on the rock...Finally, at 6:15am, we walked towards the summit..There were close to 300 people waiting to see the goddamn sun that was taking it own sweet time to rise!!


People started moving towards the summit and booking their places. At around 6:30pm everyone clapped their hands in unison when the city lights went off. In a few mins the horizon turned red.. Everyone waited eagerly...Most of the guys were cribbing that the sun wasn't even bothering to peep out...Whew...At around 6:50am, half of the spectators started departing...Everyone reasoned that there was too much fog and the sun has risen long time back....LOL!! I kept on convincing our gang that the sun will rise...Everyone lost hopes at 7am...We also decided to begin our descend...We took a few steps and then everyone started screaming at shouting....We ran like crazy back to the summit to find a beautiful blob of red peeping out of the red clouds...God it was beautiful....I had to praise God...It was an involuntary reaction...But I was a bit disappointed that the Sun wasn't very big...Cmon the Sun in Kaggadasapura(where I stay) is much bigger ;)

Anyways, everyone started taking out their DSLR cams and attaching lenses to capture the sunrise colours...I felt a pang of jealousy that I didn't have one to capture that moment...We did our best with the camera we had...After the Sun became bright and the red drained out to give way to bright yellow, we decided to descend down the rocks...The whole set of 300 people started going downhill...Vatsala had to get the help to two guys to escort her down safely...Jinu and I descended like robots dying to finally lay step on a flat land...Our legs were shivering out of fatigue....Finally at 8:20am, we reached plain ground...Whew finally ... yay!!! I did it...We did it.....We waited for another half an hour for the others to come down....The rest of the journey back home is still a daze...I have no clue how we reached back home...I remember uttering a prayer to God to take us back home safely...Jinu's eyes were so heavy with sleep that everytime I look into the rear mirror, I could see his eyes drooping...I tried to make conversation with him so that we wouldn't fall asleep...Anyways, we reached Bng and by 11am, we had breakfast and fell asleep. We had to take an off the next day to recuperate... This was our first major trek as a couple and I think we should go for more...;)


Guys thank you so much for making this trip a success!!You are the best!!