Rangaswamybetta Trek

RangaswamyBetta Trek

The Team

- Nirmal Sankaran (Me)
- Balaji Seshan
- Nari
- Arun S


Our Team was taking a little rest after our rather thrilling Pulicat experience, when I got a call from ever enthusiastic Balaji calling for another trip to celebrate Nari’s birthday which was due in a couple of days. A major reason that initiated this idea was the fact that his birthday fell on a Sunday which was a part of a long weekend with a holiday on Friday for a reason which I don’t remember. With a vertical nod from me, our next move was to plan a surprise trip and we zeroed in on Thadiyandamol, the second highest peak in the Coorg district of Karnataka to throw a surprise for Nari. Its was 10 am on Friday morning and we intended to waste not a minute extra and decided to leave Chennai by 2 pm the same day by bikes. Nari was still uninformed about the place and we set out and another good friend of ours – Arun wanted to accompany us on hearing about our surprise trip. We decided to keep the place we were heading to a secret, so neither did Arun know where we were going to. Finally 4pm on Friday we hit the Chennai – Bangalore highway at full throttle. It was just about getting dark when we broke near Ranipet for a cup of hot steaming coffee, as we were taking a sip could we sense that rains were just round the corner.

It was an achievement of sorts for Balaji to have kept his mouth shut about the destination for close to two hours now and rightly as one would imagine he broke it out. From here on it was no more going to be a surprise but yet another trip which would goes under our team’s belt.

After a small quarrel with Balaji, we set out again and it was not long before the clouds decided to pour down. We kept pushing irrespective of the rains as our plan was to reach Bangalore that night. With time it seemed more and more impossible of us reaching Bangalore that night. The intensity of the downpour only seemed to increase as we inched close to Kolar by 10 pm. Under heavy downpour with not so good head lights all Nari could do was to follow my bike into the highway Café Coffee Day near Kolar. As we entered Coffee Day with trembling legs and clapping jaws having got drenched till our bones, it was to our dislike that the air conditioning was at its highest best. It took quite a while for us to get accustomed and hogged for quite a heavy bill. All we needed was something hot to go down our throat. The journey from here to Bangalore was even more painful due to rains. Finally rains seemed to show mercy just as we entered Bangalore 30 minutes before the clock could struck 12. It took us not much time to get ourselves checked into a decent hotel and as we bent down to take a look at our watch, it was 2 am and we were starting to miss our dinner badly and needed food. Somebody in the group came up with a brilliant idea to get food from the bus terminus, one of the few places that will be active at this hour and it got as early as 4 in the morning for us to finally catch some sleep.

We managed to get up only late in the morning and realized that we had over slept and had no enough time to reach Thadiyandamol and return as everybody had to be back in Chennai by Monday. Balaji and I, had a back up plan keeping such a situation in mind, with a few phone calls and browsing couple of web pages using one of our mobiles, our new destination was ready – The RangaswamyBetta .

This is a great place situated South-west of Bangalore a distance of 85 kms, a very remote place lying tangential to the bannerghatta Forrest as we were told, though we didn’t get to see the Forrest. Getting to the base of these hills was very tricky with a dozen turns off the better roads on to the worse ones, which you will miss on any given day. We managed to reach the base and found a place to leave our bikes and unwanted luggage by 1 pm. It was an extremely remote place and people way too friendly giving a feeling of having set the time machine to 1960’s. We had to navigate through plantations and crop fields to reach the base, in which we were helped by a local school kid.

Before I start on the real climb process, I must admit on the first look of the peak from base, we did underestimate the difficulty of this one. It looked very plain and simple to climb and we started with quite an intensity and after about an hour and a half when we came to realize that we had covered only 25% of the climb, it was quite a shock, more so for Balaji who was rolling ground and crying for a break. From then on it was quite steep and we took a lot of breaks to catch the breathtaking sight of the nearby hills. The terrain was as that of what one would come across in any other trek, but the steepness was the hidden surprise which will easily go unnoticed when u planning the trek. It was close to 5pm when we hit the peak which had a huge rock formation converted into a temple. We hardly had 20 minutes to set our tent and explore the peak as rains came down heavy accompanied by lighting. It lasted for about 30 minutes wherein all we could see around us was color white, I still do not know if that whiteness was mist or rain or maybe even clouds. Visibility was near Zero when it poured. The moment the rains stopped, everything was back to normal like how it was when we had reached the peak. By now it was daybreak and Nari had already started the camp fire and we were living the campfire’s heat. Now, Balaji and I, set out on a small exploration and in the process found a small thatched roof place with quite a lot of facilities to our pleasure. It was pitch dark and we changed the campsite with the help of a high beam torch. The change of campsite was to survive the cold. It was indeed a great place which we later found out to be the place of the priest who takes care of the temple. We don’t know if the priest used this place earlier and left or still stays there, but that particular night there was no one other than our team. Arun and Nari actually felt the silence of the place a little spooky, what a way to spend Nari’s Birthday. It started getting colder and colder as the night progressed.

Next morning we had more than enough time to explore the mountain, so did we but our stomach started taking control over our brains and we started heading downhill. Downhill was a piece of cake with no real difficulty and we were in no mood to stop anywhere and headed straight to Bangalore for a good sumptuous meal. We left Bangalore by 4 pm and reached Chennai by 10 pm the same day. Return trip was very smooth as there was hardly any rain. See with yet another trip shortly until then its buh bye from me and my team.
Aurevoir
-Nirmal Sankaran ( Setting new limits )

It was indeed a great experience. Incase any of you guys are interested in this place; please feel free to ask anybody belonging to our ahoyZz Adventures Club.

White Water Rafting

White Water Rafting – Kali River

The Team

- Nirmal Sankaran (Me)
- Balaji Seshan
- Mani

We guys got a team for such activities and our trekking trips, a bunch of like minded people with respect to trips who otherwise are people with very contrasting characters. Me and Balaji are the regular ones and of course Nari who missed out on this trip due to un avoidable circumstances which though didn’t stop him from coming to the station to see us off and to wish us bon voyage on the afternoon of 8th November 2007 . It was that day of the year where people are mostly bursting crackers and are stuck to the television set, for channels air special programs keeping people away from getting out of their bean bags – Diwali.

We had boarded a train from Chennai to Bangalore on the afternoon of 8th November, which was more than empty for it was diwali day. Quite a comfortable journey with the usual making fun Balaji and we saw all of us getting down at the Bangalore city station by 7.45pm . We had a good hour and a half before we had to board another train to Londa, so we decided to step out of the station for a heavy dinner. We navigated through the over crowded platform of our next train to Londa and we had just about time to find our seats and take a deep breath to see our train depart.
For, we having coming from place where southern railway operates we found the cleanliness and orderliness a little to our dislike. After a talk into night with Mani it was 1 am by the time we were all fast asleep. I was the first one to get up in the morning to the familiar tone of my mobile alarm. We all got up and took a peep out through the window and all we saw was thick deep forest in haze with the cold wind through our hair. Not everyday you get a chance to get up and experience it, more so for the people who live in the crowded cities whose best friend is the clock schedule. In less than 2 hours we were down in Londa junction, and I must admit londa was not half of what I imagined it to be. It was a village hardly twice the size of its own railway station which didn’t hamper us from getting a taxi to Ganeshgudi - our rafting base.

We reached Maamu’s shop with a bit of difficultly, where we were asked to wait by John, the person who runs white water rafting in this part of the world. We had more than decent breakfast to ganeshgudi’s standards and even before we could realize it was time for rafting to start and we had our guides Rana, Muna and Sunil pick us up in the forest department jeep in which we reached the start point of our rafting. We got a bit more comfortable with our guides by now and were making fun of Balaji and everyone seemed to enjoy each others company. We were now accompanied by a bunch of 12 people from Pune which spoilt the plans of ours and the guides to have fun together in the raft of throwing Balaji into the Kali River. Rana was the guide assigned to us, a guy from Tibet, vastly experienced. Others in our raft were Pankaj and his family from Pune who were equally interested in throwing Balaji into the river, afterall he is always our scapegoat and the only person in our raft who didn’t seem to know to swim. The training lasted for about 30 minutes which saw everyone jump into the water to get the feel of it and of course Balaji was great fun, trying hard to jump into the water. It was about time to get started with our rafting and we did. Pankaj, Mani and Myself seemed to be the only people paddling hard following ever single command of Rana’s.
The first rapid was first love, it was great with Mani and me at the nose of the raft we got totally got drenched and the rapids to follow were all great. The best thing I enjoyed about the rafting was paddling forward in the rapids were everybody was asked to take cover. Balaji as you must have guessed by now was never paddling and was always taking cover.

Few of us jumped into the river a few times for a dip, it was heaven. By about 3.30 pm we had reached the end point of our rafting were we had out pick up jeep waiting for us back to the maamu’s shop. We waved goodbye to John and co until next time in a more dangerous river – The Upper Barapole River, Coorg.

After a good lunch and couple of glasses of cold yoghurt we headed back to Londa railway station and took our train back to Bangalore which reached 7.30 am on 10th November, from where we split as I had to accompany my parents for yet another trip.

See with yet another trip shortly until then its buh bye from me and my team.

Aurevoir

-Nirmal Sankaran ( Setting new limits )

It was indeed a great experience. Incase any of you guys are interested in this place; please feel free to ask anybody belonging to our ahoyZz Adventures Club.