Night Trek to Kaurav Kunda

I am Vinayak Surve, a Veterinarian from Mumbai. My childhood and teenage life is spent in Sahyadri, Konkan region, Ratnagiri District of Maharashtra. Naturally, I have some experience of crossing hills, rivers, forest and different challenging trails.

Preparations:

Thought about going to Kaurava Kunda trek was exciting to me because it was my first trek with experienced trekking group where I was supposed to meet new friends with great interest in trekking. I received an email from Patrick (organizer) and rushed to buy trekking tools and gears like wind jacket, sleeping bag, torch, snacks, etc. Sharing this pre-trekking excitement was great fun with friends, family, colleagues and everyone whom I met during that week.

Read More >>

Night trek to Kabbal Durga

It was my first trek with Bangalore ASCENDers (BASC), I was so excited about the event and I called Vinay many times to know the details about the trek. Common meeting point was at Jayanagar 4th block near Jain Temple, we gathered at 7.30 PM but started journey by 8.30 PM. 

Since we all were hungry we decided to have food on the way, so we went to Kamath hotel and finished food and started journey by 10.30 PM.
There were 3 cars, I was in Promod’s car, Kunal and Sathish were accompanying along with me and we started our journey towards Kabbal-durga. It was a great journey, in-between Pramod was cracking nice jokes.

Read More >>

Aandi Gundi Night trek - BASC Birthday Celebration Trek

All right! Here goes my first write-up for Bangalore Ascenders. It had been a while since I did a night trek, so even a short one of a couple of hours held the excitement in me. Darkness has it’s own light: something which many people forget! But the more important excuse was it was the birthday of BASC.

So the evening of 19th April found a group of “not-complete-strangers” and “we-all-love-BASC” standing outside the KSRTC Mysore Satellite Bus Stand. Once we all had gathered, we started out for the trek without much ado. Midway, we decided to grab a bite and we stopped at the way-side restaurant. After much discussion over the dinner (read: I was discussing with my tummy whether a south meal or a north meal would be right), I chose the wrong one: the north meal, and realized this, the moment the south meals were served. Well no harm done. They say hunger is the best sauce, and it always is true.

Once the dinner was done, and I had tucked away my usual “Orbit – Lime flavored” strip in my arm pouch we were raring to go. In our car (piloted by Ravindra), we had a good time, discussing wildlife, cycling and Bangalore roads! And soon we had reached the village from where our trek was supposed to start.

After a couple and a bit more kilometers in the dark, a few wrong turns, and spotting black scorpions (the poisonous kind) we were on the right trail. For both me and Ravindra, the steep initial climb meant that we had to put our cameras back in our back packs. Then once the initial trail was covered, me and Akshatha fell behind, to stay a bit farther away from the torch lights. I tell you, darkness has its own light. The hills and the valleys in between looked so beautifully still in the light of the night. The sky was cloudy, hence all the stars were hidden above their generous cover. Slowly we climbed the trail, me making sure that I sweep the group (it was then that I realized that I take lead only when it is a completely unknown trail, the joy of finding untouched and un-trodden paths are a sheer joy).
Collecting some twigs for the fire, we started climbing up slowly. By the time we reached to the top, the folks had already settled down and were getting ready for the camp fire! And it was the sight at the top that always takes your breath away. On one side, were the city lights, and on the other, was the mask of perpetual darkness. Far on the eastern side, we could see small lights on the hills: signs of civilization. And on the west was the shades of dark. And amongst us were friends who shared the

Read More >>

Night Trek to Makalidurga

Get Set Trek!

So, finally I got to meet Bangalore Ascenders! It was so exciting to see my name get shortlisted. Thanks a lot to Rajesh for expanding the team size and accommodating all of us :) I started rehearsing for the trek as the day drew closer, thinking about the things to carry, people I'm going to meet, how to introduce myself and how to get over the initial nervous feeling and start socializing!

The day of Saturday, 18th Jan 2014, we were off for a night trek to Makalidurga hilltop Shiva temple, lead by Major Rajesh :) The schedule was to assemble in Majestic railway station at 5.30 pm and take the Hindupur bound train at 6.00. I had planned to start from home in Bommanahalli at 3.30 but as usual, got delayed and started at 4.15. I had considering to take my bike but was not sure of the overnight parking facility in Majestic railway station and how safe it was. So decided on taking a bus. But  I hadn't anticipated the route the bus would took - via Shanthi nagar and Double road, looked like a round about way and with inching traffic on a Saturday evening in Bangalore, I barely managed to reach Platform no.8 (Thanks to the SMS from Rajesh) at 5.55 after one hour-and-a-half long journey counting every minute :| 

Read More >>

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!

Join Bangalore ASCENDers @ CLICK HERE

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.

Read More >>