The beautiful weather last Sunday morning was quite encouraging for the day’s trek.
I started the drive at 6am and made way straight for Parth’s place in Koramangala.
When there are lesser people, we try to pick up and drop them if they’re on our way.
Deepak joined us there as well and at 6.30am we left from there to go to Antharagange.
Early morning drives are never a disappointment.
Our 1st stop was a fuel station.
Our 2nd stop was at an open field near #sherepunjab .
Our 3rd stop was coffee day.
And our 4th stop was at a road side dosa making truck.
The dosas were fresh, the vada was delicious as a non veg food and the chutney was peanuty.
This particular truck attracted a lot of crowd of all genres.
We reached the base of Antharagange by 9am. The skies were home to the dense clouds and blocked all the direct sunlight.
Deepak leading the way, me in between and Parth following, we started our monkey moves up the hill. 10mins into the trail, everyone was being sent back by a rowdy cop. I call him that because he abused the hell out of a young guide, younger than I am.
He would not let anyone go to the caves as some accidents had happened in the past and did not want to feel responsible for the public.
Some men spoke to them in Kannada for 15mins, post which he took down their details from a government issued ID to say that he’s not responsible if something happened to him or his group.
Amidst the heated moment during the blissful drizzle, Deepak, Parth and I slipped away like a few others.
We kept climbing until the trail led us to a field and we had to stop and figure out. I kept urging Deepak and Parth to get a guide not because we can’t do the trek but because we don’t know how to exactly reach the designated cave points, but both boys want
Turning back, we came back to a hut as it had start pouring heavily.
At the same place and time, we met another group of 3 men and 1 lady, equally lost. Our mission was the same, to explore and find the caves.
Someone told us, it’s up the hill from the hut point. All of us trekked up.
Deepak and Neil being the most active, led the trail, leaping from rock to rock and climbing boulders.
Pruthvi, almost as active as the other did the same but not for us to follow him, instead to click beautiful pictures.
The rest of us formed the herd.
After 30mins of conversing, following each other and trekking up the hill, we found another field but this time with a farmer.
We asked the farmer the way to the caves, little did we know, we had to go back to the hut and resume.
We hung around there for a while and explored the vicinity.
Listening to the farmer, we went back all the way to the hut.
Reaching the hut, we looked around for a local guy to tell us the way.
We found one, finally everyone was convinced about keeping the guide!
The guide took us the opposite direction, and through the trail that I had been via in the past.
Now we were on the right path!
We went under rocks, over rocks, crawling through rocks and jumping over them.
The experience cannot be explained in words.
He took us to the caves, out of it, back inside it, out to a view point, below the rocks again, and out to the grounds again.
This, I put very simply. But during the entire journey, we could not have done it without each other’s help and body support and we could not over take one another as the path through the rocks are that narrow.
We came out by 3.30pm. Half the team headed to the cars while Deepak, Neil, Pruthvi and I headed to the water caves with the guide.
The water cave had one foot of flowing stream through the cave which nobody knows the origin of.
That cave lasted 50m and made me wanna lose weight so I could glide through it faster.
After the water cave was done, we headed to the rest of the team and bade goodbye to the guide!
Post the exhausting trek, at 4.30pm, two cars raced towards #sher-e-punjab dhaba.
The food, as expected, was delicious. Me being the only vegetarian, I ordered dal and paneer with rotis while the rest of them ordered chicken gravies.
We had lassis as well and left from there by 6.00pm.
By 6.45pm we had entered Bangalore City, both the cars parted ways and the trip was concluded.
Photos and videos are taken by different members of the team.
