Sunday, July 27, 2008

Sathvik's Blog>> Savandurga Trek

This was a trek to Savandurga near Magadi ,off Bangalore , karnataka ,INDIA


This is believed to be one among the largest monolith hill in the world.


A week before 25th july 2008 , two of my friends planned a trek to a place called Savandurga, I had no idea as to how tough or easy it is , where it is and how it will be , everything was a mystery until I discovered it for myself with them .

It was 2 day plan ( 1st day to Karigudda and 2nd day to Biligudda )

I will write a blog about our first day trek here , second one which is Biligudda is pretty easy compared to karigudda and u can find lot of blogs about Biligudda but rarely about karigudda.

We were 4 of us (Aditya,Yshanth , Rohith and myself) , from different parts of Bangalore , n we had not met each other from long time ( all got separated after our 10th ) but we were in touch . With the agreement of all, we planned to trek this place .

Ok , It was morning 6 :30 , n we had all planned to meet at Kalasipalyam (market) , aditya n me met in the same bus to Kalasipalya , n Rohith in the bus stand of Kalasipalya , But its not that easy to meet people in market :) , Yshanth had come long before but we were not able to find him in that big crowded place ,(mainly crowded with buses ) . Finally with a bit of struggle we all were able to meet n it was like finding ur lost brother in mini Kumbh mela :) , Anyways we were happy that we all met each other n our trek had finally a beginning .

We got the Bus to Magadi from Kalasipalya (market) around 7:45 am , ok here Adi had small game to play , We had to guess what will be the traveling cost to Magadi from Kalasipalya , everyone guessed , mine was the closest :) I had guessed 20Rs , It was actually 18Rs . Savandurga is about 60Km west of Bangalore , We had to go to Magadi first to reach there which was about 45 to 50 km from Bangalore.

At the starting point Bus was empty ,but as we reached nearer to Magadi , it got filled up . While nearing to Magadi we got beautiful view of Savandurga and many huge rocks ,which gave the initial kick for the trek .

We reached Magadi at 9:45 , We had to have our breakfast , so we searched for good hotel , This is a kind of village , u wont find good or hygienic hotel , somehow we got one managable hotel , To our surprise food was pretty good , but warning be careful about Masala Dosa here , (its not that good n dipped in oil :) )


We packed for ourselves a few pound of Bread , biscuits , but Adi is addicted to Curds !!!!! :) so we had to search for it , n finally with a lot of search we got Curds . Still we were in Magadi , We had to go to Savadurga by bus , we dint know how to go , asked few people there and came to know that we have to go to Nayakanpallya and from there to Savandurga . Adi had maintained an Itinerary !! so according to Itinerary we were at the right time leaving that place , so we reached a place called Nayakanpalya around 11:15 am , There I had to buy a liter of water , after that we left to Savandurga which is around 4 km inside that village .We reached there by auto , 10 Rs per head with a minimum of 6 people in auto , so we had to share with few others .



Anyways when we were about to approach that place , we got very near to Savandurga hill , Rohith exclaimed saying "man!! , rock seems to be too smooth" . We discussed a bit why it is so smooth :) just enjoyed every discussion we had after so many years .



We reached the foothill , there we had plan to trek a rock called Karigudda ( very rarely people trek this place ,though it is very adjacent to Biligudda that most people trek ) , We were in a mood of adventure we wanted to trek the least trekked place. People in that very place has confusion as to which is karigudda n which is Biligudda, With the help of a good Auto driver named Rajesh (really helped us ), who guided us in right direction . We paid some money at the counter and we were on our way .

We were on our way to summit of Karigudda, I have trekked previously but the problem here which I was facing was I had this huge luggage on my back and I had cold, but I dint want any excuses to dampen my spirit . There was no direction as to where to begin with , we got lost in the starting only !! and we got to hear famous dialog from Adi ,i.e. dead end. wherever u go , he use to shout Dead End :)

But our lucky mascot with good omen for the day was Rohith , he used to lead us to the correct way . ok finally we started the best part , i.e. climbing the rock , I could sense the steep in the starting only ( I am not as good a trekker as others are :) ) The biggest problem with me was the luggage or say bag which I was lifting on my back , It was taking a toll on my body , by 1/4th stage I declared I cannot continue with this bag around , but I was in no mood to quit , I took a chance and with the help of Adi I hid my bag behind the tree plunk , We were pretty sure ,no one would take the bag , because it was that a deserted area :) . So we continued , We were amazed at every part of the nature that was getting revealed as we were going to the top .



I was going out of breath at many places because of tiredness, but we took very short breaks in between . We did not have lots of time to rest , because it was kind of unexplored area with lots of thorny plants and trees around , with no direction clue .



We reached a place where there was a pile of bricks , I think it was a hiding place for sniper's of kempegowda's era. Anyways we continued from there It was tough with no living being around except we 4 of us ,We continued.



Then we reached a place where there seemed to be no place to go. In every direction we could see only overgrown thorny plants and lots and lots of rocks and hundreds of millipede . Again as I said Rohith showed the way (It was just luck that he could find :) ) .

It was risky we had to squeeze ourselves between boulders , somehow we managed to come out of it, after coming out we were surprised to see that we were in right track , how we came to know !! We saw some erased paint marks on rocks so it was confirmed that some human being had been to this place before Phew !! :) Then after few min we reached a cave kind of thing , everyone exclaimed by the beauty of it . We thought our trek has become a worthy n valuable one. we spent lil amount of time there enjoying.



so continuing our trek we reached almost our summit after an hour and 45 minutes ( pretty fast we felt) . But still it was not over, We were almost at the peak , but still somehow we were not satisfied , we felt this is not the top , then we gazed our eyes to the marking on the rock and we were amazed to see the slight grips made on the rock which is in the above picture , It was scary at first to climb , one slip and we are into deep hole (again u can see in the pic , me climbing), from where one can recover only bones(that is also doubtful) . We carefully with the help of grip step by step we reached the summit , top point of the hill , MAN !!! we reached it and woooooooow amazing beauty . At the top there was a small water reservoir kind of thing , It looks amazing even in the pic , check it out .



Wow and silence of the place , with only clear sound of wind blowing through , had been lot of time since I enjoyed that kind of a silence ( being in Bangalore that is obvious , One has to struggle for it )



From there on, still a lil story is there , where yshanth n Rohith showed us an dare devil show which I will not mention here :) that will be too long . It was already around 2 :00 clock and sun was showing up and temperature was raising , so we thought of finding some shade to have our light lunch . In 15 min we managed to find a good place , there we had biscuits , bread and atlast we had half a packet of curd and we used our very little water which was left very carefully ( we had almost finished our water), after having curds we felt somewhat energized again. Thanks to curds and thanks to Adi for his addiction to it :)



We kept all non-biodegradable stuff inside (**very important guys** Its our responsibilty to keep nature clean .) Climbing down was pretty easy , actually lot easier than climbing up , but I was almost down and out , my legs were shaking for every step ( I dint have confidence in my knees because of recent accident) . I took my time and went down slowly compared to others , To say I slowed down others pace ,because u know The speed of the whole system depends on the speed of the slowest part in the system :) , We reached the bottom of the hill around 3:45 p.m. We missed the guy selling coconut water , thought we will have that when we are back , unfortunately he had shut his shop for that day :)

But we enjoyed like anything , meeting after so many years , talked so much , shared so much , just enjoyed every bit of it and many thanks to yshanth who took the manager role and managed everything so well .



Finally our first day trek was hugely successful . We went back to Magadi , There we stayed in a hotel, 250 Rs per room and gave a rest to our body for second trek that is Biligudda ,the next day. Below is the view of the Nandi(which is on Biligudda) from the top of the Karigudda.



4 comments:

Aparna (Life Takes) said...

cool pics!

seems like u had a gr8 time trekking

Anonymous said...

Cool! Nice writing. .
"The speed of the whole system depends on the speed of the slowest part in the system" I agree :P

Surely, next on my trek list :D . . last time wen i went i only covered half of biligudda coz of fear :(paritogi

Ismail Muhisin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ismail Muhisin said...

great post , excellent information, i just covered biligudda,
my version of the story:

http://livingismyright.blogspot.com/2011/09/savanadurga-fort-of-death-with.html