Trekking - My First Experience

This being my first trek, i was really not sure if i would make it but my stamina really gave me a pleasant surprise. One thing I realized during this trek is that there are no limits to what you can do with will power, at least the limits that I set for me were so so incorrect!

Ok, we started on friday night and took 8 hrs to reach the forest office in Srimangala for the required permissions to trek inside the Brahmagiri Wildlife sanctuary. You also get a guide at this point. Once we all got freshened up, it was time to start. We went straight ahead to Irupu falls - also called the Lakshmana Theertha River, 1km Up.

These falls has a story behind them. It is said that holy water was created by Lakshmana with his mighty arrow to quench Rama's thirst on their way back from Lanka after rescuing Sita. After a really gooddip in the Chilled water at the irupu, we had to start for our nextdestination - narimale base camp. It was like noon and the camp was4.5km from Irupu - Uphill. The first Kilometer was real pain - more sobecause of our sedentary lifestyle.Then it started becoming a little flat when we could manage to walk without complaining :-) I must mention here that we had a lot of luugage to carry uphill - sleepingbags, food for 2 days, water, ropes, clothes and a lot of otherstuff....which made our bags real heavy.

We reached the Narimale base camp at around 3:30 - very tired after asteep 1.5 km stretch towards the end. By this time, everyone was almost dying with hunger and thirst. We quickly finished our packed lunch and some people had the good luck of a nap in the very few beds available. I finished my afternoon merely by staring at the surroundings and tryng to get used to them.

Just relaxed for a while and started for another destination - narimale Peak, thankfully, this time without the bags. It was about 3.5 km from the base camp, Uphill.A part of this was really really steep....At one point I almost gaveup...I told all my friends to proceed to the top and pick me on their return. But somehow I thought I will not come to this place again and strengthened my will to do it....with a bit of help on the steepest parts, i made it to the top! It was awesome up there.....I really cant believe I made it when I look at the snaps of the peak that were takenfrom the botttom......We were almost in the clouds.....Heaven!!

After a very rewarding sight of the sunset from the Hill top, we trekked down and soon it was very dark.....and now we had to cook dinner....we had taken some instant food and quickly made it....and then you can all imagine the kind of masti 20 ppl around a fireplace can do.....we had a nice cheasy round of introduction and games with alot of teasing going on..... ....well wondering why the introduction....hehe, actually we were all a mixed group from variuos companies....ppl got their friends together and stuff....i did notknow 75% of the crowd before going.....but it was really nice knowing so many people and they were all very sweeet, i was so surprised at how co-operative everyone was....We slept on the very thin sleeping bags, some ppl also on the floor...the rats had great time eating our food and i dont know watelse.....:-D

Ok, now day2 - we started early in the morning.....hey actually, i forgot mentioning that we had finished up all the water we had on the first day....so we were really stuck...We had to manage with some dirty (stagnant) water at dinner....huh! Though it was boiled, it had this brownish colour, so i slept without touching it! :-(

Ya, so we started early in the morning to Muneccal caves, they are inKerala....Ok this place called brahmagiri is actually in the karnataka- kerala Border..... the funny thing is that one of the guys had the signal on the moutain (Airtel , super!) and was worried if it would be roaming if he made any call ..hahaahahha.....The caves were 3.5 km or even more from our base camp....this time most part of it was flat, thankfully....we spotted some deers on ourway....and guess wat, we found a fresh water stream..it was flowing and the water was awesome.....chilled and tasted gr8!! it was a like a gift from heaven......we got back to the base camp by 11am and started the trek downwards after a short round of photosessions .....this time it was easy....yeah, but quite risky in the slopy parts.....i actually fell down twice but both times moved no further coz of all the weight....all that was there in the fall was a loud sound "THUD"and then I coolly dust it off and started walking :D
After a cool and refresing dip at the Irupu, we got back to our vehicle and started for Bangalore....Well the drama and the adventure did not end here.....our vehicle stopped moving at mandya, on the mysore highway.....some diesel leakage was the answer to my curiuosity and irritation.....then we, in very filmy style, stopped a bus on the highway and got toBangalore.....i finally reached home at 2am on monday with 2 blisters on my feet, almost broken legs, lots of unused tissue papers, mud allover my clothes and shoes....and wonderful time to cherish!