Mulliangiri - 1

I had been starving for a trek since long. After having completed my college it had been a boring affair, with just routine stuff of office work. I needed to be out of Bangalore and relax in some cool and serene environment, out of the noise.
It was some time after the rains and I thought of a trek to Mulliangiri, I had heard a lot about this place from a lot of people so decided to try it out. There were only three people on this trek. Gopi, Vinay and Me. Vinay was on his second trek and this was the first with me. Gopi was one of my usual compnion during college days. He was one among us in the trek in which we lost our way.
All three of us met up at the KSRTC bus stand and then boarded a bus to get to ChikMagalore. The Mulliangiri peak is not far away from the bus stand. We landed in Chickmagalore in the wee hours of the morning... it was around 4:30am. We had cup of hot coffee (coffee in coffeeland) from the local shop there, and enquired about the route to Mulliangiri. We came to know that there was a bus which would leave at 7:00am. We enquired for any alternate transport... the suggestion was Autos... but we did not feel like taking any. We decided to wait.
We did our morning ablutions and then had some breakfast at a local hotel. We then decided to have a tour of the locality and just made a small morning walk.
We found a bus ready to go to Bababudangiri via Mulliangiri. We did not want to loose any seat that would be available. The time was approximately 6:30am. We took our seats and waited for something to happen... ha ha... nope for the bus to move. I had a small nap, when I woke up the time was 7:30am. I then realised that this bus would leave at 7:45am. At 7:45am the bus set... as we looked at the beauty of this awesome place with the chilling weather... we found a lot of people climb the bus and in no time the bus was completely jam packed. We asked the conductor to let us know where to get down... and when the stop came... it was real tough getting down.
Some time after getting down, we started off with our trek. The trek is more of a uphill walk on a path that is followed so frequently by trekkers. The only problem that we had was... it was very cloudy. We could not see anything beyond one meter. It was our experience of "Walking through the Clouds". The route we chose to climb is called "Sarpahadi" - meaning Snake Path. The whole path is serpentine... winding till we reach the peak. Remember, when ever there is a fork prefer the left over the right. It’s a nice trek. I was not very tiring as all this was done in the clouds. Some times we would get the wind blow away the clouds to give us a very beautiful view of the valley. We continued our uphill trek and reached the "Nandi" temple that is below a tree. We just waited here for some time to pick individual snaps and then moved on. Just before we reach the temple a small deviation will take us to two caves. We did not waste time to probe into the caves too deep. We just went till we could and came back with the snaps.
We entered the temple premise, had our breakfast there... called as many people as we could to tell them "I am on the tallest peak in Karnataka". We rested for around the temple and then continued our trek. We asked the directions towards Bababudangiri, and then tried following it. We just lost the way while trying to search our way. The clouds were getting denser and we did not want to risk taking the wrong foot. So we went back to the temple and asked for guidance till we come to a route without ambiguity. The guide was kind enough to help us till we came to the correct route, then he returned back. We continued on the track and reached a nice view point. We could get down to the road easily from this spot. The clouds slowly started clearing out.
We sat viewing and clicking the entire nice and serene environment. We spent nearly 45 minutes doing this. There was a Vivekananda statue nearby and some cement benches. We rested having our lunch there. We could also spot a old telephone exchange and a check post nearby. All these were posing for our photos. After some rest at the spot we decided to continue our trek back to Chikmagalore.
We waited for some bus, or some jeep that would take us to Chickmagalore, we could not find any there and then finally we decided to walk down the road in that direction and climb any vehicle that could take us to Chikmagalore. We walked for nearly 1 hr when a jeep came down that way. The jeep owner was kind enough to drop us till Chikmagalore. We reached Chikmagalore at 4:30pm, got into the bus to Banglore. All along the route I was thinking of the beautiful day I had... what an experience! Cherish it for life - the memories, the temple, the cave, the winding path, the guide, the walk through the clouds, the sight seeing spot, and finally the walk back...