After a failed plan to revisit Savandurga(I’ve posted pics earlier) last weekend due to people pulling out at the last moment, I decided to go on another one of my whimsical trips; looked up a random group on meetup and followed them for a two day trek to the Thirumaleguppi & the Hirumareguppi peaks. Admittedly, I didn’t know much about the place or even which state it was in, but I had more fun on this trek than I’ve ever had, both because of the sense of solitude you get at the place and because of the super cool group I was with, dumb-charades were never this fun! Also this was the only trek where I had a lot of photographs of mine thanks to another fellow photo-trekker.
After an eight hours long bus ride and then another couple in a Jeep on muddy terrains, you reach this amazing place with lush green flora all around you. From the moment you arrive at the base camp, you’d realize how different this particular route is in terms of (very bad) accessibility and (very good) untouched natural beauty. One needs a special permit from the forest department just to trek this route, and even then you aren’t allowed to camp anywhere on the mountains.
The trek route was quite literally a slippery-slope with all the mud and algae infested route going downhill, and the trees everywhere, leaving us little room for a proper grip:
#1. Slippery slopes
Just about everyone, including me, had their share of falls and injuries. It was all good though as the leeches welcomed us almost as soon as the trek started, always reassuring us with their ever-close presence and periodically sucking a little blood out to help relieve any increase in Blood pressure!
Here’s a fellow trekker shaking hands with Tom the leech:
#2. Shaking hands with Tom
#3. Tom, waving us goodbye:
The greatest part of the trek was the rain; coupled with the extreme wind it made our trek really difficult and extremely fun simultaneously! We trekked through the torrential rain that penetrated my heavy raincoat to dampen my camera gear, winds that made human pendulums out of us and shifting fogs all around us that made us lose sight of of our team all the time. It was fun beyond what can be put into words.
#4. In the wind & the rain
#5. Yeah that’s me in the wind & the rain [credits: Mani(photo above – left)]
The rain was so heavy that I couldn’t even keep my eyes open for this shot.
It wasn’t all fun though, I lost one of my lenses and all my shots in one of the cards to the extreme weather while trying to take a long exposure of the waterfalls. To be fair though, the weather wasn’t ideal for a long photosession standing against the current of a heavy waterfall. Surprisingly my trusty Point and shoot survived and was still going strong on day two. The current and the rain didn’t make it any easier.
And the best was yet to come, once the rain died down and the sun started to peek out from the apertures of the black clouds, the landscapes almost turned into the set of the Jurassic world. I was already starting to miss my damaged wide angle lens, but you have to use the tools that you have, right!
#6. Looked like the Jurassic World:
#7. A panaroma of the magnificent beauty:
I had some fantastic photographs taken with some help from my fellow trekkers. We shared experiences, age no bound. We sang in chorus all along the trek, language not a barrier, often resorting to humming if the lyrics were unknown. We made jokes, had in depth arguments about the rights and the wrongs. I simply don’t think that it’s possible to have more fun than I had with this group:
#8. We shared experiences, age no bound
We stopped whenever we liked to look around and let the nature seep in, spotted a hive of mountain bees hanging from a cliff, heard the odd peacock singing from deep within the jungles, spotted a lot of unique birds. Here’s the view from the top:
It was by far the most thrilling route I’ve trekked in South India, not just because of the grand company I had but also because of how close I felt to the nature all along the way. This was one of those journeys where the destination was of least importance, the journey was where all the juice was. And thanks to my sneaky photo-trekkers, had a few memorable photographs of mine as well…
