The Trails of Makalidurga

October 2011:

Well as the positive feedback comes pouring in, AvvEntura has not just made it into the history books of RVCE but also to the hearts and minds of all those who made a choice of not treading a beaten track…

To give the newbie adventure-lovers of RVCE a hang of what AvvEntura offers, club had put together this day-trek to Makalidurga, just a couple of hours north from this 6 million inhabitant metropolis.

The first and foremost thing we are excited to talk about here is the tremendous response that we got from all the AvvEnturites! 80+ adrenaline junkies! Thank you all for making this a huge and successful event!

A perfect sunday morning sunshine adorning the landscape of the RVCE campus – there we were, as were all the new AvvEnturies who were filled with anticipation; excited about what AvvEntura and the Sunday had to offer.

After the scheduled breakfast, all packed up, AvvEntura left campus in college buses, courtesy RSST. 2 whole hours before we reach; well, as you expect – ‘The regular’ had kicked-off in both the buses!

"The regular" where our Vice-President is entertaining us

The Caravan Of AvvEntura

Since the buses were mostly filled with the new-arrivals to RVCE. AvvEntura veterans took the liberty to play the ‘intro-game’ with the juniors. Well, in the spirit of games, ‘seniors’ pitched in to entertain everyone!

The regular...

As the concrete giants alongside roads gave way to a blast of greenery, though everyone was busy with their gigs and others with cameras to capture them – we got a sneak peek into rich life of countryside before the rendezvous with train station of Makalidurga!

Heads up – Makalidurga has a fort at the hilltop which is a dialipidated state. The insides of a fort has a shiva temple. A regular place for rapellers. The view from the fort of Makalidurga is… Well, words fail me.

Divided into groups of equal number, a new experience altogether had begun for a majority present in those groups, an experience of following a trail which few care to trod, an experience of sheer proud and exhilaration one feels when she reaches the summit and shouts ‘Yes, nailed it!’. Apart from managing those groups, AvvEntura’s people had a daunting task of carrying lunch to the hilltop!

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Braving the scorching sun which broke many a sweat in everyone, they rose – they rose tackling all that came in their path. (Psst, not entirely a fair-tale kinda rising, almost everyone spent equal time in sitting-relaxing and climbing, we’ll kinda blame it on the hot and humid weather we faced that sunday)

Sweat!

Well, what can be said about the AvvEntura’s team who carried lunch containers to the hilltop, seems a cliche, but i have no other option than use it. “AN HERCULEAN TASK ACCOMPLISHED!”

As soon as the panoramic view of the much-talked-about fort came forth, hmmm… you can expect that i’d would write ‘everyone jumped up with joy and happiness’, sorry to let you down, but, almost everyone was down from bracing the sun!

Fort Wall!

An eerie entrace to the fort, though we all were a bit intrigued, nothing could stop us!

"Gateway to Heaven"

Exploring the interiors of the fort, we found it had a small pond which gave water to its former residents, a temple, and a myraid of view points along the walls of the fort which, indeed, was the USP of Makalidurga Fort!

83 guys, camping up in different places all over the fort place, savoring the silence and breeze of the hilltop, well, the blogger couldn’t go into all of the camp places and find out what the buzz was. We’ll rest all our inquistive minds for a while.

Caption contest

Exploring cliffs of the fort was in no doubt the high-point of the stay there, sitting on the edge and facing to the ocean of air and the terrian well below our swaying feet as the breeze wiped out all the sweat and tiredness through and through!

Good times at cliffs

Well, to think of these cliffs in a different way, as the blogger had immediately noticed, they were hand-made masterpieces for people in a beautiful relationship…

Lunch filled the gastro parts of our body and as a reason, sleep engrossed many a humans present there.

Time to bid goodbye to the fort, after the very-much-necessary head-count, the bee-line of AvvEnturites spanned atleast half-a-kilometer through the Makalidurga trail. The fun had just started, especially around Mr. Kiran Kumar a.k.a KK, PR-Officer of AvvEntura. Since the blogger was at the tail of the bee-line, he doesn’t has much knowledge about it. But, there were people who would take off-the-beaten path stratergy, but, AvvEntura made sure that they didn’t go lost…

The worm...

Rain had made its landfall right after we had got in our bus, but it surely didn’t dampen the spirits of AvvEnturites inside the buses as they con‌tinued their ‘The regular’ with more intensity and kickass involvement!

AvvEntura had completed one more successful outing, but this one made it to memories of all the freshers of the RVCE…

This blog has come a long way, but this is truely a special moment in its history where it tries to sketch out experiences of a mindblowingly huge number of people. Well it might not be possible to chalk out all of the totally awesome things AvvEnturies did on the outing as the blogger could not be omnipresent.

One for the road from #pixelate!

The Barpole River, 120 hours: Part One

August 2011:Third and last month of our 3 month long vacation (which, perhaps, would have been boring as before without AvvEntura’s adventure camps). AvvEntura had organised a 5 days basic white water river rafting camp in Barpole River in Coorg, in association with GETHNAA.

Writing a travelogue for a 5 day camp keeping in mind the limited space is an uphill task, but, we’d like to take to the format of giving a day-to-day account:

Day 1: Embarking on our journey from the melancholy of the urban life towards the serenity of Barpole, 22 excited adventure folks from RVCE kept their fingers crossed. Boarding the shuttle bus provided by GETHNAA, AvvEnturies had shot up a good dose of excitement into themselves. Barpole is around 7 hours from Bangalore.

Say Cheeese, ready for an Big Ohhhh?

But then, the sheer anticipation of what the camp had in store for the guys kept the spirits at the roof all through the travel. Not to mention the scenic locations, the wildlife and the flora which kept everyone enthralled and captivated. Like, the deers which used to cross the road in Nagarhole National Park, the dense impenetrable forests of the Western Ghats, hills and valleys through which streams and rivers wiggle out like a snake, unrelenting rains which kept the terrain (and us..:P) drenched 24/7.

The deers, The flora, The another world!

Ground zero, we were divided into three teams for the purpose of organisation and also for the purpose of operating the camp’s mess. Yes, you read it right. Each group had to choose to prepare a particular day’s breakfast or lunch or dinner – upon a particular group’s discretion. Admist all this, AvvEnturites had noticed that thier cellphones were as good as dead. Reason: There are no freaking signal towers for miles from this place!

Day 2: Up from bed way before the dawn, 2 of the groups were off to jogging (a mandatory task in a day’s schedule) and one group was into cooking breakfast for itself and others. Breakfast at 9am and then- off to pick up the threads of adventure-adrenaline which we had left behind in the hills and boulders of Ramnagara.

And some dishwashing too...

The waters in the river of Barpole was chilled, a la a bottle of your favorite fizz. After a walk of 10km from the camp, we had reached the ‘mecca’ of all the action. The action which we were going to experience in the next 4 days.

The Long Walk...

...lo and behold, "The Mecca"

Instructions were out for the day’s activities. Day 2 was reserved to teach swimming, the fundamental neccesity for river-rafting. Donning life-saving jackets and other gear, guys were asked to swim to the other end of the river. Bracing the ‘jab’ of cold water on their bodies, they swam, they reached the other bank, they conquered! Shivering was synonymous to breathing for everyone on Day 2…

Interestingly, they swam!

Day 3: All packed with life-saving jackets and helmets, we were sitting in the raft with paddle in our hands…

All Set!

Time was ripe, and after brief instructions – “All forward, all backward. EVERYONE AT A TIME”; we were begin trained in a almost stationary raft in still water very near to the banks. Hard practice all through the day! Synchonisation of paddle movements of everyone in a particular raft is very essential, keeps the raft in motion all time.

In Sync!

Striving hard, AvvEnturies had found a decent amount of synchronisation in thier rafts. We were trained to go upstream of the river, getting into raft from river, crossing the raft under water etc. All in all, at the end of the day, we got to know many things about raft & rafting skills, rescuing ourselves etc.

Continued…

Primer campamento de AvvEntura – Escalada en roca en Ramanagara: la Segunda Parte

Plan for Day 2 had been churned out. Everybody was sure that they’d experience some more awe-inspiring stuff as they had done the previous night.

7am was the reporting time. They had planned to take us to ‘Ramadevana Betta’ a small trek from the base camp. Would serve as a ‘morning walk’ or ‘warm-up’ for the later stuff. Wake-up-freshen up-start walking was the call from Mr. Umashankar last night.

The freshness in the air kissed our faces. Sweet smell from the flora and the earth tantalized our olfactory neurons. Heavy rains on the previous day had caressed the lifesystem around us. Now, that lifesystem was beaming with happiness and we felt that happiness embracing us.

Taste the freshness!

‘Ramadevana Betta’ is a shrine. But, as far as my observation goes, a shrine in the midst of the nature is precisely located at a place that is filled with serenity. Good example: ‘Kalish-Manasarovar’. Though not a religious person, I strongly believe that there is an aura in such a place which would mesmerise you!

We had reached the base of the stairs to the temple. Mr. Umashankar started a game for climbing stairs in different styles. Running, hopping, jogging through. Condition: You should not miss any of the steps! Though they are around 500-700 steps, we had paced through it in minutes!

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The above pic's courtesy this guy!

Nothing special about the temple at the top, but the location, as I had expected, swept me off my feet! A cliff there was such a scenic place that I couldn’t just get the entire view photographed into a single shot, no matter how much one tried! Decided that I’d rather take contiguous shots and mix them up! In a nutshell: the cliff gave you a true bird’s eye view of all the hills in Ramanagara. And who can forget that fantastic group pic that we took!

"Cliffy"!

Aforementioned!

We wandered off the tracks to do some bird-watching. Long Build Vultures are native to that place and due to the gruesome human activity in that area, their numbers have dwindled…

Back to the base camp, a blast of surprise had hit everyone! Only a few among us knew that it was Vasanth’s birthday; but nobody, not even Vasanth had expected this. They beckoned us to the mess, placed a cake on the table, called on Vasanth. The cake read ‘Happy Birthday Vasanth’.

Vasanth was ecstatic, surprised, dumb-stuck: you could’ve used any number of adjectives, but you’d fall short in describing Vasanth for sure! Traditionally or so to speak stereotypically, one generally blows off the candles on the birthday cake. But then, there was a twist here. Vasanth was lighting diyas here! Hmmm… * this goes to the record book, might just try it somewhere *

Birthday Boy!

The classic “Happy Birthday to you” went off; cheers, laughter filled the mess. All this in an institute which is in middle of nowhere on Bangalore-Mysore highway!

Breakfast and then rappelling! Actually we had seen the location while we were hiking to ‘Ramadevana Betta’. Location: A solid rock having a vertical face had been chosen. Two parallel ‘static’ ropes had been dropped down from the top. Enough of the details! Lemme write some real stuff.

Real adventure sets adrenaline pumping through you veins. This surely was not for the faint-hearted! Absolute zero vertigo is a must! Though the height from which we’re rappelling was a child’s play for a pro. But, we were rappelling-virgins! So, any assumptions can be dangerous!

After instructions from Mr. Umashankar and Shanthi Devi Rani which had to strictly followed, guys and girls started rappelling and apparently they found it dead easy! But, was not the case with everyone in our group…

Geared up!

Monsoon winds at full force on our faces, the first few steps downwards were the hardest as one needed to gain the momentum downwards. The instructions at the top of the rock were really helpful in getting us going. Heartful thanks goes to them! After that initial inertia, one could hop-skip-jump. I guess you could have done any maneuvers while on the path down. Secured with two ropes and 3-4 guys minding the ropes at the top, there was a zero probability of anything going wrong! But in real rappelling, you have only one rope and no one to mind it on the top! All in all, it was more fun in rappelling than there was bone-chilling adventure…

Magnificient view of a Rappeller's behind!

Tent pitching competition was next, divided into groups, AvvEnturites started building using the instructions which were given the previous day. More fun than work! Thank you Ms. Yashashwini for being a mere spectator in our group! Packed with fun, this activity brought a fitting end to our action-packed, exiciting, eternally memorable camp. (Adjectives fail once again. ‘FAIL!’)

All tent-ed up!

A brilliant, dedicated group of instructors headed by Mr. Umashankar had shown us the paradise right in the backyard of Bangalore in these two days! Many-fold thanks to them! Their dedication towards adventure is impeccable! Rock Climbing Institute will keep calling out for adventurers to explore the diversity of Ramnagara forest and the instructors will always be there to guide them through the paradise.

Ocean's 'Eight'!

Time was ripe to bid farewell to the Institute and the instructors. As always, we carry back only the memories and the thirst to explore more…

Farewell!

See ya at our next adventure!

AvvEntura FTW!

PS: Who can forget this?

Dumb charades on the way back!

 

Primer campamento de AvvEntura – Escalada en roca en Ramanagara: Una Parte

Okay, don’t freak out. Going with the Spanish word ‘aventura’, i decided that a Spanish title for this post won’t be in any way incongruous. Hmmm, should we translate it for u? I guess we’ll be ‘lost in translation’. Wow, Whatte PJ!

For starters, AvvEntura’s two-day rock climbing camp saw a 50% increase in the turnout than its maiden outing. Success has been a shadow of AvvEntura since its inception. Witnesses? All AvvEnturites! duh!

The institute

There we were, at the gates of National Institute of Rock Climbing, utterly confused what we were doing here. Meet Mr. Uma Shankar, an athletic bearded man. Age: dunno. Life: An Adventurer!

The team for the camp

Mr. Uma Shankar welcomed us, asked us what we’d like to do in these two days. ‘Rock Climbing’, ‘Rappelling’, ‘Ghost Hunting’ (seriously vijay, did u see any?), ‘Night Trek’, ‘Rafting’, ‘River Crossing’ came in from the voices. After jotting down everything that had being said, Mr. Uma Shankar analyzed. “‘Rock Climbing’, ‘Rappelling’, ‘Night Trek’ –Yes, we can do it; ‘River Crossing’ –let’s see if time permits. Moreover, nature should co-operate with us. If nature turns its back to us, we’ll have no options! ‘Ghost hunting’-oh, I dunno. Hmmm, if I put up a torch under my beard and put some ash and twigs on my hair, well, I’d make a decent one!”

Mr. Umashankar and his ghostly beard

Bouldering-climbing boulders using only hands and feet and no other help was first in the itinerary. Some teaching about the natural ‘holds’ in the rocks went on and also a demo came through. Now, the time had arrived for us to do some real action. We pounced!

A daunting task!

Some were a cake-walk; some needed a decent amount of hard work. Hmmm, the rest were conquered by KK and the likes of him. Bouldering demands immense concentration on the part of the climber (and a spotter on the part of someone else…:P). Finding the right ‘holds’ where you can comfortably place your hands and feet is in no way comparable to riding on an escalator!

KK, and the likes of him...

Nail-tips ripped, cuts in fingers, bruises if someone misjudged a step, a torn pants-the rocks defended themselves in their own way. But then, one thing was for sure! Everybody had used all their senses, had put every effort and the guts they can muster to climb up and reach the top. At the top? “Hurrrayyyy! I’ve done it!”

"Woooohoooo!"

Saturday afternoon saw the best of ‘Mungaaru Male’, the monsoon rain. As they say ‘When it rains, it pours’. Well, somebody up above had really tanked up and took a giant pee in that place! But, oh yeah! Maybe this is inappropriate in an adventure memoir, but I admit. The atmosphere was damn too romantic! *Singing a romantic song*

Come evening, we were greeted with hot coffee and bhajjis. Seriously, it couldn’t have come in any better time! Then, twilight! On the cards-NIGHT TREK!

People say, ‘something’s are better left unsaid’. But, I’d also say ‘something’s can’t be said at all, it can only be felt inside our soul’. Night trek was one such experience; pardon me if I’m not upto the mark in describing it.

Nature has its own intricate ways of nurturing life. A forest is one such nursery where nature cares for everything which has taken birth in its womb. Watching this miracle of life during daytime is indeed splendid. But then, doing that in darkest of the darkness is a whole new paradigm altogether.

We walked through thickest of the bamboo bushes where the twilight couldn’t even penetrate. When it did, it shined like pearls through the water droplets on those leaves…

Shining droplets...

We had come to an open place, devoid of vegetation. Mr. Uma Shankar requested us to concentrate on the nature surrounding us; to listen to its voices; to listen to its music. But, at first we’d have to shut down our own thoughts, close our own world and pack it off…

Silence can unravel many things. The sounds which are unheard, which gets buried down come to focus. Mr. Uma Shankar had seen the forest around him in silence. He wanted us to do the same.

He talked in length about the human-wildlife conflict in Karnataka and how the forests flourished during the olden days. Darkness had been brought upon us by then. Time was ripe to move on…

The catch in this night trek was: strictly no torches! Theory behind this: our eyes are capable enough of seeing in the dark. All you need is to train it. Eventually, you can see an entirely different world.

A path of darkness...

Oh, what a blissful paradise it was. A paradise never seen before. We and the nature-darkness connecting both entities. Fireflies zoomed past us, reminding us that we were not alone but in the midst of teeming life! The only support one had in that night was the guy who was walking in the front. We just had to surrender ourselves and have faith, so we did! Result: we had an unforgettable and unique experience!

Owls chilling out!:P

This night trek really brought forth the unity and cooperativeness of our group. Helping each other out; warning other people behind in the line about the difficult path ahead. Night trek was a supreme example of the team work on our part. This trek bonded us; complete strangers became real good friends-all in the span of a few hours! AvvEntura’s principal objective had been accomplished!

End of an extraordinary day! Now was the time to put our senses and body to rest as it had toiled through all this, but had never failed to deliver. Well, one has to give heed to its needs.

Continuará …

The Big Bang at Antharaganga

Be that as it maybe, i’d like to say that AvvEntura has come out as a boon to all the adventure enthusiatics of our dull and boring college. No offense to other cultural clubs of RV, but then, there’ll definitely be a certain set of people in RV that’d demand something more. Now, there’s AvvEntura for them.

AvvEntura had an humble start from an idea of a group headed by our macha Vishwas who’ve given their hearts out to adventure. They called out in college for people to join the club. Lo and behold, they came in a mob!

AvvEntura planned out a simple outing as its maiden journey: Anthragange in Kolar. But i bet, it turned out to be a huge huge success! The fact that only a small part of the club turned up didn’t reduce the enthusiasm even a bit!

"The Kolar"

The trip started in Majestic as we headed out towards kolar. Base of the Antharagange is 3 odd kms from kolar. To give a warmup for all AvvEnturites, the team decided to walk out the distance through the road. It’d also serve a heads-up to the path that’d follow the asphalt. Trekking in a completely new place without a guide can be disastrous-then came the ‘thatha’, who’d remain with us for the entire day.

There’s actually a good flat road to the Antharagange shrine, but, what joy for us AvvEnturites? We asked ‘thatha’ to show us a path which’d befit us. We headed off the beaten path into the forest, and man! what was that path… climbing through the rocks which were of the height of around 9ft, impossible for a layman! walking through thorn plants, helping each other out on rock climbs which’d require a helluva lot more daredevilry than to sit on a couch in home and eat pizza!

Trek Path!

This was the maiden outing of AvvEntura, there definitely had to be an inaugural celebration of this club. Yes we did have one! What can be a better place for this auspicious (‘auspicious’? erm… probably) ceremony than the middle of a forest on a hill, on the line of the fact that ‘aventura’ means ‘adventure’ in Español. We had a simple cake-cutting ceremony- yeah, a birthday-party-at-home type cake-cutting but the only oddity was the location!

The celebration!

We found a couple of caves on the way, not big ones, but of sufficient size to hold a handful number of guys, we’d had some nasty fun in those creepy caves!

The Caves!

After our phase 1 of our trek, we reached the shrine of Antharagange, which gets its name from a natural spring present there. Everybody quenched their thirst from the spring water (though everybody had a notion that the spring water would be sweet, turned out that it tasted as same as a bottle of Aquafina would!)

Phase One Completed!

Phase 2 of climbing further to the top of the hill was met by a warning from a police constable present there. He claimed that leopards were spotted in the forest and  forbade us from going further. Who the name of lord would give heed for that warning! Even ‘thatha’ thought so; then we headed on an alternative route towards the top, a simple walk which didn’t involve any rock climbing this time and we made it to the summit in no time! (Apart from the fact that it was too hot and we rested and posed to pictures more often than we made some actual progress on our path, can’t help, those rocks and locations beckoned us to take pics!)

One such pit stop...

There’s a village on the top of the hill and we found that there was a road to that village! We had made another offbeat journey! Now was the time to rest and have lunch. Many thanks to Yashaswini and her father who’re from Kolar for arranging it!

‘What’s next?’ was in everybody’s mind. ‘Thatha’ decided to take us for further exploration of the hills, ‘thatha’ leading us all as he always did! Phase 3 had officially begun!

We expected to find the caves of Antharagange in this phase. Yeah, you are right, we did find a cave, and guess what-that cave was similar to the one which is featured in the movie ‘127 hours’. More to it- you could just stick your hand into the space between rocks and you might as well be James Franco!

Too many James Francos!

Further on the way, we found many more weird rock designs and by intuition, one of the AvvEnturites found a location which had a deep vertical fall. ‘Beautiful’, as it was described by Shifa, an avid adventurer. Everyone gathered around and Shifa started the ‘intro’ game, though the fun factor in that game was low, but the serenity of the location compensated for it!

I guess that much hands are enough!

With an AvvEntura flag-bearer in the middle (it was definitely a flag, doesn’t matter if it was made from a handkerchief!), the trek continued and we encountered many more weird rock arrangements, and many more pics! Soon, the descent began, and more rocks. Did i mention? AvvEnturites ROCKED on those rocks!

The Rocking on the Rocks!

Finally, we reached the base of the hill and it was the time to bade goodbye to our ‘thatha’. ‘Thatha’, you have been of great help and you’ll remain in the memories of all the AvvEnturites…

An awesome trek-sunday had come to an end. Though everyone was exhausted, AvvEnturites knew it in their hearts what they had seen and experienced…

We needed to travel until the bus station of Kolar which was around 1.5km from the place where we had landed. Some took the auto, but some AvvEnturites thought of adventure even there! They made a power walk and reached the station in no time even if they were tired! Now, that’s the true spirit of adventure!!

We boarded the buses which was crowded and only a few guys got seats, we decided to sit on rotation basis, that’s the unity among AvvEnturites…

Sun said goodbye to this extraordinary day with due respect, we got to see an enthralling sunset on the way…

An amazing sunset!

Now, only memories remain of that wonderful place and all the fun we had there, on a day that was custom-made for it! we’ve made sure that those memories are preserved forever…

Hold on! This is just the beginning… There are a zillion more such trips coming from the houses of AvvEntura, more such extraordinary days…

see you there!!

AvvEntura FTW!!