It was a rainy Sunday morning and who would wish to wake at 5 am, instead of wrapping yourself inside the blanket in that amazing weather. 17 girls had a tough fight with their beds and made it to the Shanthala silk house meeting point to enjoy their day at Siddarabetta. I took the 6.35 metro from Indiranagar, where I met Sandeep geared up for his run in Cubbon park. Reached Majestic at 6.50 and hurried to the meeting point.
The entire group was new to me other than the organiser Raksha whom I've met in a prior trek. Introducing myself to the entire group, I was excited to be in my first women only trek and waited eagerly for the next mission. Boarded our TT at 7.15 and started our journey. Tejaswini joined us in yeshvantpur and the van was filled with pretty women.
After a quick round of introduction, the ice was broken because we are surrounded by women and just women! The noise level increased as everyone started to chat with their fellow seatmates. That's when I started my conversation with an amazing woman Lakshmi, from whom I learnt how to lead my life confidently and follow what you love the most. At the first sight, she looked very smart and I was sure that she was married, but little did I expect that she would be a mother of 12 year old girl. Then we stopped at a restaurant near dabbaspet where we had idly, dosa and the best akki roti that I've ever had in my life.
Finished our breakfast and headed towards Siddarabetta from dabbaspet town. Since the journey time was going to take an another hour, Raksha initiated the food antaksharie game. Different varieties of dishes started to fly around from the entire nation, especially the south Indian items as the van was filled with majority of south Indians. For once, Hindi didn't dominate the group!
We reached Siddarabetta around 10.30am and started our ascend. There was a small temple at the base and all we saw later were multiple steep steps to the hill top. Started off with my prayer and managed to stay in the front of the group as always. It started to drizzle and we couldn't ask for a better weather. While local people were walking in barefoot including the little ones, we tried so hard to move forward despite wearing the expensive shoes. The only creature which disturbed us on our way were the monkeys. Indeed they pounced on a lady's bag but thank God it ran away.
The climb became even more interesting when we had to climb small steps carved in the rocks. Reached the peak and waited for the entire group in a clifftop to join us. With the monkeys entertaining us now and then, the view from the top was truly mesmerising. Meanwhile everyone completed their mission and we went to visit the cave temple in two groups as someone should be there to safeguard our shoes and bags from the monkeys.
The temple was completely different from what we expected. Lord Shiva was inside a cave with Nandi in front of him. Also we saw lot of people, including few girls from our group, who got themselves drenched completely in the water that started from the cave. It is a belief that this water would help ail your body pains and keep you healthy. After visiting the temple, we explored the mountain even further that we started to climb up. The weather started to change slowly and we didn't know if we should be happy or sad about it. It started to get dark and a heavy downpour was waiting for us. Even though we enjoyed the climate, we were worried about the descend after the rains.
After clicking lots and lots of pictures, we started our way back as it started to pour heavily. We were searching for a place to hide from the rains. Once the rain slowed down, the real adventure began. With few drops and crawls and jumps, we managed to finish our mission completely. Barefoot walk indeed really worked out in finishing our mission without slipping on the rocks.
It was 3pm when we reached the base and hunger panic began. We heard it from the local people that the temple arranges annadhanam everyday and we headed there to have dal rice and buttermilk. Got into the van and headed to Mahalakshmi temple near dabbaspet. Flew back to Bengaluru as we were getting too late. With a quick round of feedback, our trek came to an end and became memories to be added to the future. Kudos to the organisers Raja Lakshmi and Raksha for organising it so well!
thats wow time for sure
ReplyDelete