Skandagiri moonlight trekking

Skandagiri trek was my first trekking experience. I had to do lots of preparations as newbie. The group was quite smaller, me, anna, attige and shashi. Shashi had to stay in our house last night as we had to start quite early in the moring somewhere @ 2.30am. Juice, water, some food would be enough as preparation. Searching through google about this place excited us like anything and this time we are sufficed more than what we had expected! :)

We started from my house(byatarayanapura, on yelahanka road) @ 2.30am, we proceeded on bellary road till we crossed nandi hills diversion, went straight to chikabellapur. Its totally ~50+ kms from my house. When we reached near chikkabellapur marketplace, where we find Vishweshwaraiha statue on left side there we need to take the diversion. As we were travelling in my car, we had the legacy to drive our way. For travelling around 5-6kms we will reach paapagni matt. This will be the starting point of trek. When we reached there it was 4am. Wonder to see many vehicles already being parked and i could see lots of tourch lights heading towards skandagiri peak.

We hurried towards the road just besides parking place, which proved to be wrong route later. We spent around 45-50mins in wandering in wrong route as most of the people where heading in wrong route itself. Later at some point of time we realized its not feasible to continue with the wrong route as it was full of steeps and one needs to do rock climbing and stuff to reach to the hills. Also we had time contraint to reach before sunrise to make it to awesome sight seeing. Hence our group and with other 3-4 groups hired a guide who promised to take us by sunrise for 400/- as it was already 5 in the morning.

We started heading in the right path, as it was my first trek, it was quite straining. Finally we were able to reach the peak before sunrise, @ 6.20am. It was breath taking moment for us. All strain went in stain, we joined people for welcoming sun who were around 100 in number. I believe they must have tented there in the peak whole night. It was much more than our expectations to see sun rising and clouds covering sun to form beautiful sights, i couldn't hold clicking lots of snaps and enjoying the scene. We waited till complete sunrise and then had light breakfast and proceeded down the hills.



Climbing down took hardly an hour or so, I made note of right path everywhere so that future visitors will have no difficulties. Here is the right path to skandagiri:
From parking place u need to proceed to adjacent road near "Omkara jyothi ashrama"(man over cycle in pic). Take left deviation near the street light post shown in picture. Proceed further till u find 2 big giant rocks, where u will find direction to take left between them. Further route is quite gettable with so many directions written over the rocks. The next confusion point will be to take left in sixth picture shown below. Rest all will be cakewalk though its full of steeps. :)



Things to carry:
Tourch per person is compulsory,
Rucksack,
Food,
Juice,
Glucose,
water bottles filled with water

Exploring Coorg & Tadiyandamol Trek

The main objective of the trip was not visting place, but trekking. We were 5 members: me, shashi, vishwas, abhishek & rahul. We went by my car, hyundai i10, so as to make the trip as economical as possible in this recession condition :)
Started from Bangalore saturday 24th jan-09, early morning @ 5.30am. Everyone were on time except shashi(always late). We were able to reach kusahl nagar, golden temple by 12pm. After spending an hour or so, we moved to madikeri where we started hunting for lodge to stay that night as we decided to start trekking next day afternoon, and saturday we had plans of visiting some less known places in coorg. Some of the places which were there in our cart were: abbe falls, mandalpati, chettali falls.

We succeeded finally in finding a home stay for 5 of us costing 1000/- per night. @ around 4pm we started from lodge & moved to abbe falls with lots of excitement in thinking that we will have great time in taking bath and playing there till 7 in the evening. Though vishwas enlightened us that getting down to water is prohibited after some death causing incident had happened, I still had enough encouragement and enthu left. It was totally great disappointment once we get there. Finally to mitigate our disappointment, we explored near by stream and played a lot there till dark and returned to lodge.

Sunday, early morning as per plan we started moving to mandalpati. Ride in i10 in the curvy road was awesome and full of joy. 50% of the road to mandalpati was quite awesome, and the remaining was quite horrible. Mandalpati is less known place in coorg & also very less people visit this place. People can surely plan for one day trip there & camp till the night. But its too dangerous to stay there.

Reaching Nalknad palace @ 11am(not later than 12pm) was our next milestone , which in fact we were able
to achieve. After taking some snaps in Nalknad palace, we started our trek. Even though there were quite a gud number of places to park ur vehicle on trekking way, i preferred to park it near palace so that security guard can take care of it till next day morning.
Trekking path is around 8kms, and it should not take more than 4-5 hours for any trekker. It consists of 2-3kms of tar road walking, then around 2km mud path trekking, and remaining is footpath not that difficult one, hardly having some steeps.
One need to carry enough food, water, and tent for one night stay there. Once its half way through, refilling of water can be done in nearby stream


We were able to reach hill top at around 5pm(as we started @ 12.45pm). When we reached top we were almost amazed to see that there are other 2 group of people already planted tents. One groups was 6 members and other was quite hug, consisting around 20 members. We started hunting for place to put our tent, and unfortunately none of us had experience in planting tent. Finally somehow we succeeded in the activity before it was quite dark. We can see only hills all around us covered with full fog. Sunset was quite awesome to shoot in sony cybershot camera(mine). We had "mandakki" for evening snacks, and cards for sparing till late night as we were 5 people need to adjust in single large tent which had promised to accommodate only 4 people. I learned rammi and bluff card game and it was fun beating bluff masters shashi and rahul. :)

We were planning to have as little sleep as possible, but even that was getting tougher in heavy wind and cold. Finally woke up at 5.15am to catch up with sunrise. But little disappointed, as we were expecting fog and dense clouds out there. But it wasn't. Started climbing down @ 7.30am. Which too us till 9.30 to reach near palace. From there we decided to take bath @ chettali falls as it was already 2 dayz since we had last bath. :)
Chettali falls is also less visited place in coorg. Its just 12kms from nalknad palace. Which is also near to virajpet, just 12 kms. :). But water there is damn damn cold. At around 12.30pm we planned to leave to bangalore from falls. It took only 5 hours for us to reach bangalore. Finally we r done with trekking. :)
Some more snaps:


Fact sheet:
Bangalore -> Kushal Nagar= ~230kms
Kushal Nagar -> Madikeri = ~30kms
Madikeri -> Abbe falls = ~8kms
Madikeri -> Mandalpati = ~24kms
Madikeri -> Napoklu = 20kms
Napoklu -> kakkbe = 12kms
Kakkabe -> Nalknad palace = 3-5kms
Nalknad palace -> Chettali falls = 12kms
Chettali falls -> Virajpet = 12kms
Virajpet -> Bangalore = 230kms