(Extremely condenced and summarised)

First Trek, Experience – Not entirely pleasant.

So I’m back from the trek. I’ll let it suffice to say that while it was quite fun in the beginning, it turned quite sour for me on the first day, mainly due to my suffering severe leg cramps which would not allow me to walk at all. I spent about the entire afternoon of Saturday sitting and wincing in pain due to the cramps. The other part was the monotony of walking along the track unable to enjoy the surroundings, the scenery, the view due to the requirement of watching the track and where one puts their next step.

Walking on the stones which are filled between the railway tiers is not good for the legs due to the stones being loose and hence unstable.

Anyway, so at the end of the first day, a few of us, about 15 decided to take another route which would get us to the highway faster and allow us to hitch a ride to our final destination point. So for that, first we had to go down a path which turned out to be quite steep. Due to that, it was very slow going and a distance of just half a KM took about 2+ hours (Or atleast it seemed so ;) ) At the end of the steep path, we reached a stream which was quite cool and rested there for sometime, playing a bit with the water, splashing each other with it.

Then we continued on from there cos the sun was climbing and it was getting hotter by the minute. As we trekked on, this time the path being a lot more stable and a lot less steeper, everyone walking at different paces, we all go seperated into smaller groups. All of us finally met up at a rather wide stream, or a small river if you want to call it that. The water was travelling at quite some speed and so it was a bit tricky crossing it.

Once we had crossed it, the highway was immediately adjacent to it and so we got on to the road where we tried to hitch a ride. At first, no one would stop to give us a lift but finally a truck did stop. So we all climbed on it. It turned out to be carrying a load of Iron ore (or some other mineral) covered with a plastic sheet. It was quite a bit of fun to experience that, spoilt slightly only by the hot sun.

We soon got down at another place which was the closest the truck would go to our final destination which was Kukke Subramanya. From there we had to catch another public bus to get to Subramanya. Due to lack of seats to sit on, two of us, being so tired as to not care, sat on the steps of the bus itself ;)

Once we reached Subramanya, everyone was so relieved that we just booked a couple of rooms in a lodge and crashed, not bothering to do much other than have lunch and wait for the other group to get there.

From Subramanya, we had our return bus back to Bangalore on which we departed at about 11, to reach Bangalore today at 5 in the morning.

To summarise some of the exciting moments of the trek for me, slipping a bit on the first railway bridge we were crossing, then stumbling on another bridge a few kms from the start (at that point I was like, ok that was close, what I told my sister jokingly almost came true :-D ) and almost getting washed away in the river thrice..

And the best part of the trek, meeting lots of people, fun people :) and getting lots and lots of time to think, to retrospect and more importantly, introspect!

Oh and I’m still limping slightly though my leg is getting better..