Recently my classmate and a friend of mine, Nachammai (fondly known as Nach) invited me out of the blue for a trek to the Guthereyan hills near Hosur. Taking a break from running due to my ankle injury, shin splint, and acute gout, I pounced on this opportunity like a starving guy on a thalapakatti biryani.
Initially I ignored the COVID 2nd wave that was looming large, but as time progressed my worries were largely focused not cancelling the trip and safely entering and exiting Tamil Nadu the neighboring state. But things start to go out of control when the Karnataka state government imposed section 144 from 2200 to 0600 in the morning. From our North Bangalore house it was not possible to start at 0600 and still reach at 0730 so were left us with no choice but to stay the previous night in the sprawling house of Nach.
The forest guards in the Aiyur eco tourism park had earlier agreed to organize the trek for a group of 10. Nach had gone to lengths to get the members, 3 from hers, 3 of mine, a runner classmate of ours, and 4 more from her township. Kannan, Nach's husband wanted to start the trek at around 0700, before the scorching heat from the early summer sun. Back calculating we had to leave the house at 0500.
Our runner classmate, Raj-Mohan, a protestant turned spiritual and yoga guru, married with 2 kids could not bring them as one of them was 7 months old and the other 7 years old. Difficult for a 600m ascent. The plan was for all us to stay the previous night at Nach's place, sleep early, wake up at 0415 and leave at 0500. But his guy shows up at 1015, had his dinner at 1800 and was a bit hungry and started savoring the Chettinad style curd rice, followed by a chat till 2300. I was both tensed and sleepy. But meeting him in person after 21 years meant that I actually enjoyed the small talk, but at 2315 timed out and went to sleep.
My 13 year old son who sleeps by himself these days had to sleep with us in the same king sized bed. These days he sleeps late, it seems and could not sleep but trying hard to. The poor chap was constantly changing position which woke me up from my REM sleep at least 3 times which meant that I was getting a mild ache. But managed to calm him down and went to sleep when my wife woke up with congested trachea and started complaining of some kind of breathing difficulty and chest pain. Head ache increased, but was careful in attending to her. Made her wear my Garmin and checked the HR which was at 90. It was so bad I was just short of calling the ambulance. All this drama ended at around 1230, and exhausted I crashed after that. I slept but had to wake up as sometimes the teen was all over me, and sometimes I was checking on my wife, if she is breathing. But all this ended at 0400 when I got up.
Normally I do not shower before a trek as I always thought showering takes out some useful energy, but this time I showered to just wake-me-up. Not a fan of milk tea but Kannan's early morning milk tea helped. I do not know to drive a car, not that I want to, meant we have a great driver. I planned to sleep all the way to the Aiyur camp. We started off in 3 cars shared our live locations but the constant back and forth communication kept me busy. But when I saw the breathtaking sunrise from inside the car I was spellbound. At these times I do not even think of taking out my camera, though Raj in our front seat clicked a few. Without sleeping at all in the car I had woken up completely.
We reached Aiyur camp at 0700, and were assigned 2 guides, Parthiban and Surya. While the former is a trained Forest Guard employed by the state government in its permanent roles, the later is a contract employee from the local village who I later learnt is also a snake charmer. On this day we had 2 groups, our group of 11, and another young group of 6 who I learnt trek almost every other week all around India. It was lead my a ultra-marathoner. But for the time being both the groups started together.
The ranger had arranged the breakfast, we got bread-jam-egg and about 25L of water. Each one of us carried a pack of bread, a jar of jam, and some eggs, filled our water bottles and setoff. The trek, was real, it started off from Kodakarai, a 20 min drive from Aiyur eco park. We started through a village alley where it is difficult for a motor bike, or even a normal cycle to venture. The place itself had a character on its own, the idyllic people, houses connected to each another is some odd jig-saw puzzled shape, the long horned cows, the less littered paths, and everything. The ascent was steep from the word go. Some of the 1st time trekkers were caught off guard with their Velcro walking shoes. While Parthiban was carefully guiding us with a smiling face, Surya had taken off with the younger and faster 6. Cows grazed what looked like dried grass, not from paddy cultivation the normal grass that had dried up in summer. The cows were tall, thin yet looked sturdy and looked back straight into our eyes when we tried to look at them. It was probably just a feeling when the guide mentioned that sometimes they attack. They are probably Kangayam or Hallikar, not sure.
Nach had mentioned about a seasoned trekker lady, Anjali who marched ahead of all of us with Parthiban, while we all followed with the group of beginners who had questionable fitness too. The 1st ascent was steep and blew the breath of many, but by then we had covered only 600M of the total 6KM, and about 50M in ascent of the total 600M. I could see that many were already visibly giving up. Throughout our ride we saw patches of the forest burned down, it looked like wild fires due to summer, but the weather was not so hot for wild fires and something was fishy. It's just Probably my ignorance.
After the 1st brief ascent, we snapped a lot of photos, the entire group, then ladies only, followed by kids only, solo, and what not. I could see at least most of us had the energy to do this, or the other way around we got energized from the photos. We continued towards the next milestone. It was a lake in the middle of the forest where the elephants might come to drink water. The water was a bit dirty, yet filled with fish. We had covered only 1.6KM. I wanted to cover at least half the distance of 3KM before the breakfast, but hungry kids forced our first stop to eat the bread. The bread was filled with tutti frutti, which we mistook for algae and fungus. After-all who would add sweet bits to breakfast bread. The jam had to be scooped out with our fingers as we had no spoons. But then Raj's bread had "real" fungus in a slice, which Parthiban vouched was cream. On a normal day we would have thrown the whole loaf away, but with less options inside the forest we threw only the slice and ate the rest.
Bread, Jam, Egg, Banana, and some packed croissants energized the team. Parthiban had breakfast with us. Most of the members were vegetarian and the non vegetarians had to finish off the hard boiled eggs. They did not complain though. We threw bio-degradable garbage while we carefully packed all forms of plastics. Reflecting on this now, I think we should have packed the bio-degradable ones too.
We started off again, but I was clearly irked with the pace. This trek at this pace was no more challenging for me, it was more like a glorified walk inside the forest with my family and friends. So, I went with fast pacing younger group. The group had some funny characters, like a guy named Preetham who was wearing Khaki tops and trousers, and I mistook him for a guide. I should have thought about it, as he looked shabby and his fitness level did not suite a guide. The group had people who looked like North Indians, but spoke fluent Tamil. I walked with them, sweating, breathing heavily, watching every single step of mine and not looking up. Leaving the noisy crowd behind, I could hear my own breathing, every single bird chirps, and was just enjoying feeling as if the world was playing everything just for me.
If this trek is in any guide book, this will not be part of the easy ones. The ascent was too steep without much plains for recovery. I was starting to worry about my wife and kid, whose water and pocari sweat bottles were with me. After some 2KM of steep ascent we reached a rocky peak. The view was just breathtaking. I just sat down with the group of 6 and just enjoying myself and the view. The young group members were clicking snaps, and I joined the party too, felt a bit younger. But after a few minutes secluded myself to a corner of the peak and looked into the green valley in front of me. It was probably wilderness, it would have contained a lot of wild life, human beings, and what not, but it was now in front of me, completely within my sight. I felt a sense of pride, control and probably a sliver of arrogance that I am in control. When I was fighting this thought, the beauty of mother nature brought back peace. At this point I could see Raj coming along with Anjali. From about 80 or so meters away he snapped a few photos with his DSLR.
Both Raj and Anjali joined me in the peak, and suddenly the tranquility was taken over by ecstatic and noisy trekkers. It was time for me to descend. At this moment Parthiban showed up with the others. He broke the bad news that the actual peak was about 4KM away. My tired body was sad while my excited heart was happy to take up the remaining challenge. Along with the young group I started towards the next ascent through the thorny bushes. They scratched and bobbled out the sports t-shirt so bad that it cannot be used anymore.
But surprise struck when we reached the destined peak in another 300M, and Parthiban declared that it was the actual peak. It seems that his 4KM more story was to give all of us a pleasant surprise. The ladies were happy, but I missed the 3.7KM, and even contemplated descending and ascending again. But now, the team sat around Sadhguru Rajmohan who was giving a mountain peak lecture on religion. They were talking about pranic healing, some ritual, I remembered something called "sri vidhya", because it sounded like a beautiful Indian actress. I remember that my dad liked her too. The sermon continued for about 30minutes with all the ladies surrounding Raj and shooting questions which he was answering like a living encyclopedia. I was visibly bored, sensing this the members of the group resorted to group photos.
I was raring to go back did not know why. Probably just wanted to move away from this boredom or just wanted to keep myself moving. I was surprised to see that Parthiban buying time to take some more rest, in fact he had removed his shoes. Seeing me just roaming around, the team started the descent. As in any trek if the ascent is tough, the descent will be tougher. The slippery fallen leaves made things a bit tricky, many members including my wife fell and twisted their ankles. Lucky for me I just slipped 2 times but managed just to steady myself and did not fall.
Again I waited near the car for another 1 hour before all the members reached back. I was sleeping in a thinnai of a villagers house, and also had time to feed the dog with the left over of the breakfast bread. I washed my face with the water from a nearby tank. The water was sweet very different from the water we use, which is pumped out from 1000 feet below the earth. After this we reached Aiyur camp and had our lunch. The simple vegetarian lunch was so delicious for the hungry tummies. We deserved the food.
