This is a very, very personal account of my trek along with

Prasad. Notes relating to the subscripts in the doc can be

found at the end of the doc.
************************************************
Malegudda 1

I had no particular idea of what to do when the day’s training

ended at 3 pm ( 2.5 hrs early on average). Deciding to wash
clothes I went to the room. As I walked along the corridor the
small hill next to the infi campus caught my sight. I could no
longer resist the temptation of climbing it ( it was tickling
from day 1, I had been to infi Bhubaneswar). This seemed to
be meagre substitution to my treks I would go around
Bangalore but it didn’t take long before I realised that it had
much more to offer than what I had expected.
“Hello, Prasad, I am planning to go to the hill next to
our campus…ya the one you can see from ECC ... ok da ..
fine..ok, I shall come to office and we shall start from there”.
Well, my guessing turned out right, for I and Prasad had just
been talking about philosophy, Shankaracharya 2 and stuff of
that sort, I felt he would be the best guy to accompany me.
Told Anish 3 , took Shino’s 4 mobile from which I could take
snaps and we left.

Each trek to me is a philosophical, spiritual journey, that

every time though not critically changes my perspective of
everything (well, this has happened many times) but at least
adds a new sublime vision.
We passed through small muddy road with huts on the
other side with surprisingly small entrances in contrast to our
villages of Karnataka. Discussion was slowly turning from
waynad, silent valley to Shankara and back to square …
philosophy.
By then we had moved away from human habitation, on our
left lay the vast semi-rugged stretches of kaanan vihar and to
our right, the hill.
Looking at the mountain-I was lost for few seconds. The same
feeling that had made me look at Nandi hills 5 , Savanadurga 6 ,
jog …
Somehow the mountains inspire me to explore my inner
consciousness, dig out of the spirit of adventure to forsake the
mundane for higher planes of human endeavour.

“Embrace the Un embraceable”

It had begun to drizzle; we had brought umbrellas as

downpour was on cards. To our pleasant surprise we
encountered a small stream on our path (for we were to later
discover that the hill fed the stream)
this after a distance joined a lake. There was a steady breeze,
as we strode towards the mountain neglecting small bushes on
our way.
My memory was awakened… the sampigehalli lake at the
outskirts of Bangalore for which I would nearly walk 10 km or
cycle, the Jakkur lake, Bellahalli, byalakere forest,
hessaraghatta, nandi 7 …. the last Sunday before I left home,
how all friends had a wonderful trip visiting a string of 5 lakes
.... Last two treks to Savanadurga and Devarayanadurga 8
which had changed ‘me’ transforming the way I looked at the
reality. This hangover had long vanished after the last Sunday
trip to Dhaulagiri-Konark-Puri which made me feel Orissa my
new home, from then on it has been a wonderful experience to
integrate myself into every drop of the rain, every blade of the
grass… and it continues…

For your facts and figures the hill is approx 7-10 coconut trees
tall. As we stood at the foot of the monster, path looked dense
and tricky.
“I will stand here, I think, you go and come” came the familiar
mallu accent. I had foreseen this situation, as I have
experienced convincing people to climb up in most previous
treks. I promised him of a safe climb and started narrating the
incident how my brother threw up his hands and started
crying while negotiating steep part of Nandi hills (this was
planned to keep his mind engaged). As we went up the forest
became dense. We had to stop as drizzle turned into rain. Still
up, thorns!
They stick to your clothes and never leave, you cant use your
hand, not do anything.

These thorns were like the ones at Devarayanadurga.

Back to memories.... I had figured out long before anyone
suspected that we would be lost, spending the night in the
forest. Being the group lead, I was in no situation to speak out
the truth. Everybody, me, Raghu, Sudhir, Neha and Sudeesh
were motivated to take the difficult track after our miraculous
Savanadurga success. Whatever consequences that did lead to
each of us at our homes on the next day, that trek was the
experience of our lifetime.
I still can visualize our joy and hear our celebration cries as
we reached to the summit the next morning. Invaders of the
modern era had deciphered the relics of Devaraya’s fort.
YogaNarasimha 9 on the top welcomed us with a smile. This
trek meant a lot to me beyond these superficial sentences,
which I cant mention here.

Ok, ok back to reality. We reached the top after some ‘soft’

rock-climbing. Panorama was awesome. Rain lashed. I called it
“malegudda”. Pristine drops slowly trickled down my whole
body. For some moments, time came to standstill; the
recursive aalapanae of nature would never end ….
We descended by a different route, an easier one as it was
getting late and dark. This experience had overwhelmed both
of us, internally. It took sometime for us to resume starting
again, but now the talk was about the experience, shankara
and philosophy escaped without hint. As we approached the
infi gate, sense of sublime conscious pervaded me .

We may have spent some 2 hrs into miscellaneous activity, but

it offered us with an inexorable spirit for a lifetime.
************************************************
Trek: 1530 to 1730 hrs on 31 july 06.
Author : Srikanth.K.S

Subscripts
1.malegudda:malein kannada means rain and gudda means
small hill.

2.shankaracharya:great Indian philosopher who proposed the

idea of advaita.

3.anish: my room mate and a sensible friend. Nicknamed

munna1

4.shino: A good friend, cool guy.nicknamed munna2.

5.Nandi hills: A hill station at 50km from bangalore where I

learnt abc of trekking.

6.Savandurga:A big rock and a wonderful destination for trek.

7.All these spots are nature lovers paradise near Bangalore.

8.Devarayanadurga :Hilly region near Bangalore with relics of

fort built by vijaynagara king devaraya.

9. Yoga Narasimha: god on top of Devarayanadurga