Moonlight Trek to Bramhagiri

Well I am not much of a writer but just I have shared the thoughts and the journey from my end so that we can look at it after days and remember the time we spent together.

Night trek to Bramhagiri was conducted by Bangalore ASCENDers (BASC) on 18th January 2014. The moment we all met up in Platform-9 it was one heck of a journey. To start of with, we were in wrong platform with no idea of which train to climb into until BKS called up asked. That’s when we realized we are in wrong platform & ran to platform 8 and got into train. Subratho was supposed to enter in a DDLJ style but could not make it, probably he was not as fast of Kajol, but jokes apart, sorry that he missed it.

We took out attendance and some informal introductions in the train. The moment we started with dumb charades is when it lit up more. We were so involved that we would have missed the Nandi stop if it was not for Mudassar (of-course he was the organizer). Got down and went on with formal undertaking and introduction while Mudassar was negotiating with Auto. After a long 4 kms auto (since I was in back seat & Jyothsna was continuously saying she was hungry) we finally got down at our trek's starting point. Packed food at nearest cafe and told the owner to be ready with next day's breakfast. By almost 9 we started ascending just when the moon started giving us its light to carry further.

We trekked for almost an hour and half and came to dinner point where we had some nice view of the city and airport. We took photos, had moon light dinner and some more photos before we continue our trek. With my obsession of being in front of the group, I carried on with Mudassar and Preetham. We took wrong right turns searching for the temple; after 5 wrong turns we reached the temple by around 11PM. We explored the surroundings and gathered wood for campfire. After cutting birthday cake we started with individual trek stories, BASC blood camp initiatives and others. After all the fun we tried sleeping for few hours by around 2.30AM. When I opened my eyes at 4.15AM all I can see is a human standing next to door seeing out, got scared. It was Mr. George who apparently could not sleep. Eventually everyone got up and it was cold!! We went for fire and thankfully it was still burning. We spent the next one hours constantly struggling to burn the damp wood and finding that warm air from the fire.

By almost 5.30am we took the stairs for peak and found that it’s even more cold and windy. We all snuggled up behind a rock to avoid the wind where I listened to iPod. It was one of the most amazing moments of this trek. We took group photos and fooled around a bit till 6.30am but sun was still not up. Also thanks to Surabhi's impeccable mobile network service that we confirmed that there are no train back on Sunday. Then we decided it’s time for us to head back, started descending half way through we saw the sun rise, started picking up whatever trash we can find (thanks Preetham for this), lost our way badly and lost track of  other half team. Finally everyone grouped up reached the cafe and probably did more business to that cafe owner than any single day of his life. We took the bus back to Bangalore and this is where I had the best one hour sleep of my life.

Now thinking back thanks to Mudassar for arranging it so nicely without any hiccups and all of you who made it as one of the most memorable trek for me.

Written by: Akash

Post- 2

Here comes the first trek of the year. From the very start the plan was a roller coaster ride. I persuaded my friends (Tiwari and Piyush) to come for a BASC trek and I ended up not making to the list. Later the wait list got cleared and we went for the trek.

As opposed to previous experiences, this time I went from train. We all assembled at platform 9 at around 5:30 PM and suddenly got the news that this is the wrong platform. We rushed to platform 8 and boarded the train. We had great rounds of dumb charades on way to base camp. After reaching a small village we reached the base camp from an Auto (two fully packed autos). Our stomach already started asking for food. We packed some food from hotel and had tea & nariyal-pani. We started climbing at around 9PM.

As we were there for a more special purpose celebration of Tiwari's Birthday, I was hoping that we should reach top before 12AM. Apart from frequent chocolate/biscuit breaks we killed our most of the time in getting ourselves by anyone having the camera. Some people got new names on the trek (for instance - Majnu). In between we had a break where we enjoyed fried rice and tomato rice. Surbhi enjoyed it more than anyone else as she liked the curry a little more than others.

We reached the night camping site just in time (@ 11:55PM). Piyush and I quickly started assembling the cake we bought with us. We celebrated the birthday there. It was a very unique experience to me at-least, I hope Tiwari also felt the same. Fortunately, the cake came out well and everyone enjoyed, we also had the camp fire going on. Mudassar and Shrinivas  exchanged some BASC programs and Trek stories, which were very interesting. At about 2AM the fire started dying and temperature started dropping. I didn't wanted to sleep as I wanted to make sure that I am up at sunrise. Still we had a small nap in freezing cold.

When I woke I saw George's silhouette at the door right in front of me. We were very happy to see that fire hadn’t died completely so we enjoyed it for some more time. Around 6AM we reached the peak where it was freeze cold. We had to hide behind a rock to avoid the chilly winds. After sometime we had some clicks and then we started descending. While on our way back, we lost track of the correct path which delayed the plan a bit. But overall it was a nice experience.

Written by: Vivek V V

Post - 3

It was a wonderful trek with BASC. Trekking in moonlight has always enthralled me. In short, it's a beautiful memory of playing dumb charades in train with loads of fun, a moonlight dinner over bed of rocks, trekking in the moon-lit trail to the temple, cold windy night, incinerating the remnants of doors and windows from the temple (that we eventually rejoiced as 'Camp fire'), birthday celebration of Ravindra, inspiring/scaring experiences of Mudassar's OG ventures, exploring the camping place with less than 100m visibility etc...

Our struggle to find the way back to the village in the morning mist engulfed us all around, truly added some fun and we ended up doing little exploration in a small over-night trek! It was an icing on the cake.

Thank you guys for making this trek delightful. This will always make me feel exuberant whenever I take a look at that full moon and contemplate about my next moonlight trek to relive every moment! Happy trekking!

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Written by: Abhishek

Image Gallery: Akash, Vivek V V, Abhishek

Composed by: Jithendra B N

Event organized by: Mudassar

Event Date: 18th January 2014

The Crew: Srikanth BK, Preetham G Raj, Devchand, Nishit Desai, Srujan, Shailesh Thakur, Deepika Muthusamy, Abhishek Gupta, Guru Prakash, Akshar Kowlani, Prawin, Surabhi, Sanjay Kumar, Badrinath Padhy, Ravindra Tiwari, Piyush Jain,Vivek V Velankar, Jyothsna, George, Mudassar.