One Day Trek - Madhugiri

Scenes along the way:

Say Cheese [Suze, Sagar, Yshant, Me [KK with the cam]]

Suze in a doorway

A scene, partially, from LOTR

Graffiti on the walls

At the very top - 1

At the very top - 2

No Comments [In a supposed granary]Things that made the day:

Madhugiri – a place in Tumkur district, the town with several one-room-pig-meat hotels, alternating with hair saloons with an arbitrary sanghas interspersed in between, the only decent hotel – Hotel Woodlands, the best in the area, was comparable to Krishna’s (of NITK fame). The breakfast, though, was delicious because we were starving. The hill is supposed to be the second largest monolith in Asia, second only to Savandurga.

Along the trek – initial view from the bottom of the seven or more layers of fortifications, the ever widening view of the city as we walked higher up the hill, the semicircular water tanks on the way, crazy theories about other easier methods of replacing the stone fortifications with other defense mechanisms, wading through a picnic group consisting of hundreds of small school children and few harassed-looking teachers, the slightly tough part along the trek, which could be covered only by bending the upper torso by more than 50 degrees from the vertical, sometimes using more than three limbs for support, acrophobia while trying to shoot / pose for crazy photos, arbit discussions with other stray people climbing up the hill, the real cool breezes in the shade of overhanging rocks or the occasional doorway, a wide range of conversation from belting the harry potter seventh book, random comments from bash.org, discussing recent and not so recent events, theories on the coloring of the rock on which we were trekking, hilarious discussions on movies, serials, Tool, life, philosophy, and the other arbitrary stuff in the whole wide universe.

At the zenith - the broken down ruins of which was once a Gopalakrishna temple, the supposed stables to the side of the temple, and filmi-gansta-style hideout rooms at the very top, the view of the entire town from the top of the mountain, pulav and bananas, the telugu music that can be heard from miles away, when we were all lying under the shade of a huge cloud - and suze first imagining that some guy had left a radio behind, more dome shaped water tanks, the sun, and simple pure bliss for just being there in that moment.

21^st June 2008.

One great day. One great trek.

PS: This post is dedicated to all the fellow trekkers; the bakery at the bottom of the hill, the bang-on-time buses both to and fro, and the chance group conversation in gtalk which was the primary way the team and the trip became a reality.