I went to Skandagiri to trek, during night. It was both fun and exciting. It was totally a different experience. This place is around 70 km from Bangalore. We started off around 10 P.M. from Bangalore in a colleague's car. I liked travelling at that particular time with completely traffic free Bangalore Roads. It was some 21/2 hours journey. We never had a plan.We didn't even know the route. So, we had to make some phone calls and stop by few places to inquire about the route. At one point, we ran into a cop, who demanded money. We, finally, reached the village at 12:30 AM.There were some people(guides) on the road brandishing their torch lights to catch our attention. One of them ran to our car side and started talking something in kannada. I could make out that he was convincing us to take him as a guide. The only thing we were concerned about was parking space, so we hired him. We parked our car in the guide's friend's house(where there was a dog, which barked at us perennially).We took our trekking paraphernalia(torch,water,eateries etc) and set out at 1:00 AM. It was completely dark out there and the only thing that I am afraid of was snakes. At one point, I was the last in the trekking line and I some how remembered some bizarre scenes from the movie predator(A alien used to come and eat away the last person in the line). We hired the guide for only half of the distance. Before, leaving he tried to convince us to hire him for the full distance. He tried to a create a big scene(as if this is a Jurassic Park and a T-Rex is gonna come and rip you apart). But, we bade him farewell and continued out trek. It became steeper and steeper as we went up.It was around 70 to 80 degrees at one point.If you slip a bit, you would kiss the butt of the hill. The rocks weren't slippery, so it wasn't very tough. We halted at around 2:30 AM. Some how people started discussing about ghosts(one of the points, I remember: You can sense the presence of a ghost by the temperature, it would plummet drastically). We started off again, we came across huge boulders. I have never seen the sky so clear, full of stars. We could see the nearby villages, all lit up. We somehow lost our way in the middle, we came across a dead end.So, we had to come back and go in another direction where we thought we came across another dead end with full of 6 ft tall bushes. We didn't want to go back and try another route, so we went through the bushes and found a trial, which lead us to the summit. It was very cold on the top. We were the first to reach on the top on that day. We explored a bit and tried to sleep.In the meantime, people started coming.Bonfires were lit up and the view of the sunrise from the summit was fantastic. We took some photos of all the sceneries and we started descending.It was a fun filled trek.The only thing I would like to complain is hygine. All the so called well educated people trek and litter away all the rubbish they bring along with them. If you eat a choclate and if you do not throw the wrapper in a dust bin you don't have any right to complain about cleanliness in India.
