FREAK: 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. :)