Caution: May cause addiction

I have a fascination towards mountains. In fact, I grew up seeing them. The town I was in during my school and college is surrounded by several mountain ranges (Western ghats, Kodai hills, Palani hills) from all the sides. All the bus and train journeys around the place are exorbitantly pleasing. I had always wanted to go into the mountains, see how the green carpet over the mighty peaks look underneath. The various shades of the mountains, seasonal changes, huge forest fires, etc are still fresh in my memory. I remember seeing a golden flame line in the hills that grew on and on for a week – a forest fire when I was in my 7th class. That was a view from my terrace. Having gone to the Kodai for about 15 – 20 times, I still love getting there and am ready almost all the time when someone ask me for a trip. Lavishly green, pure, cool environment, slow paced life, my superbia for scaling(??!!) up to the devil’s kitchen (which is now blocked for public after costing many lives) when I was 14 and what not – It has all. These interests have rooted deep in my heart when I was young, and now that I am grown, I am in the similar (even better) minded big boys league. The Boss is an avid trekker who has gone places jungles, mountains. He has created a wave of awareness in the local community about backpacking, trekking and weekend getaways from concrete jungles, as he fondly says. Briefly, he has made some difference in style.

Last weekend was a getaway to the Nagalapuram which starts from some 90+ kms from Chennai. We were entering the Nagala from the western side this time which took 50 kms extra one way. Most of the times, trekking was thoroughly enjoyable for most of the people, but for those who thought it as some kind of picnic or lacked some stamina, sometimes, it was penalizing. This time, we were told that we would not be seeing water for atleast 8 hours and were advised to take enough water for self until we get on to some source (free flowing water is the purest in the mountains than what we drink daily). Andhra summer had taken a toll on the trekkers and few were beaten up really hardly. Sweepers, as usual, did an amazing job of collecting the dropouts, motivated them, and brought them back in action. I saw water after 9 hours with some easy trek for first few hours and moderately hard trek for the rest. I was heavily dehydrated, did not drink water after 7th hour, went readily into the spurting stream and gulped like an animal. Never mind, it was refreshing and gave me life.

Initial relaxed walks into the mountains, breath taking view points, lonely walk along a dry stream for one and a half hours in jungles, socializing with some great new people, unlimited water fun in a natural water pool with a small cascade, swim and cross 40 feet deep pool, crossing huge gorge – these were all part of the trek. Not only them but also equally had risks like walking in the woods which houses number of deadly reptiles and animals, rock climbing and crossing where in a simple miscalculation could turn fatal, swim in deep pools, etc.,

Overall it was great, and I was under an impression that the first day was dry, hot, hard and the second day was cool wherein I had loads of water fun, diving, photography, easy trail walk, rain in the jungles, great weather, me getting pulled off by folks as a weirdo since I confessed something in the rain shelter and so on. On the way back, in the highway Sri Vari restaurant where we had yummy full meals at 1 AM, I thanked The Boss for the trek and said him that the second day was total fun. In a thick accent, he asked back “I thought the first day was interesting, wasn’t it?”. After coming back to the concrete jungle, a couple of days later, my heart still thinks about the first day where we had no trails, no water, no energy at last and nothing else except thrill and hope, yes, I could say that the first day was indeed INTERESTING!!!

For those who read this rambling to find any technical details about Nagalapuram, here are a few points:

• Nagalapuram is a reserved forest.
• Google maps show Nagalapuram in a very detailed scale… It shows satellite pictures upto 1:50m level where in one could see the even temples enroute, water streams, mount ridges clearly.
• Ofcourse there isn’t any problem if you exactly know what you are exactly doing.
• Somewhere between the mountains, airtel cellphones picks up signals
• Heard that the river gets flooded sometimes due to major rains which could block the trek progress easily and is not usually safe.

That’s all with this… Bye bye now, see you then!