ShortTrip to MakaliDurga...

When we came to know about Makalidurga, I asked Aramis "is it a religious place? Kali Durga all goddess are there? :O"  He showed me some pics from google. When I first saw them ,I was not actually interested . After some google browsing, we found there is nothing but a rail line and some small hills . That made us interested ,if there is nothing then why people go there!! And finally  I told "ok ,lets go." Aramis was pretty much excited because he is very fond of train. Don't know why ,but normally when he sees any train or train track he felt nostalgic. So it's a great opportunity for him to see the train track  through hills. He was excited. Me, Athos and D'Artagnan were excited because we are going again for a bike trip which will include night journey and lot of famous food places to nurture our taste . As usual Aramis took the responsibility to track the route . Sometimes I wonder when there is no google how people found the route specially at night time. Aramis took google maps help, draw it in mind and as usual directed us to just follow him . Next day morning we started around  5:00 form whitefield. The road is almost known one. We went to nandi hills once and Airport several times through this Devanahalli route. But the problem was freezing cold. As I was  pillion rider with D'Artagnan , my job was to enjoying the beauty through this cold. So I did.  Normally when we  take this route we have some fixed spot Tea break . It was January 23rd ,2013 . Athos is guiding Aramis using GPS navigation and we were following them. We stopped for Tea, Aramis needs rest, we all need rest , it's already  1 hour bike journey. When you are at the National Highway you can spot direction for Nandi hills, but there is no sign board for Makalidurga. So you have to believe your map and your instincts that, yes you are at the right way. After some misdirection, some round and round trip in same road ,finally we reached at Makalidurga. First thing what you can discover on the way of this place is awesome road through hills and it will be splendid if you are ridding your bike through the hills and  suddenly you see one train is just passing by.  We reached the train station around 8 AM. It is a lonely small station, surrounded by hills and spectacular scenic beauty. I guess we are the only 4 other than  station master in the area.

 We asked the station master about the direction for the makalidurga hill. He starred at us with a peculiar look...like we are asking for the route for the moon. And then gave us the famous direction.."go straight".. We were also thinking from his look that this kind of  answer may come!! Ideally if you go straight then your journey will end here as there is only rail track lies in front of us. We gave him a big thanks for this straight direction . We heard he was murmuring .. "These freaking IT guys ..Full week you do some nonsense work and weekends you roam here and there..Who told you to come here, nothing is here...”
We were disheartened to hear the truth.  But we move on. After a short 1.5 Km journey through paddy field, we reached  one level crossing. And we can see 4-5 green hills are just in front of us. All are full of herbs, trees, but most importantly no visible route. We understood this is our base camp!! and we have to make our own route.. We parked our Bikes and boost our energy for unknown route trekking. 

 Now we are in a small trouble..We could see there are  hills spread across the area. 3 of them is really high. But which one is MakaliDurga????  This is the dilemma. Nobody is there. There are 2 more bikes parked at the same place, but no survivors visible!!! We thought about to play eeny meeny miny moe to select a hill!! We were watching for 30 min and argued a lot.. suddenly we saw two people at the  top of one hill, and then we realized that must be the right one.  So we started trekking for that one.

 

 

 

There was a small temple at the bottom of the hill, and after that there a long green valley. Starting phase of the trek is quite  easy  . As there is no specific route , we started with the aim that we have to reach at  the top. After some time it was really tough one. Sometimes big  trees close the route, shrubs with sharp thorns made us bleeding.  Thanks for the winter that we all had jacket. But still it made us injured many places. The path was also full of small rocks, sand and trench, so we were careful enough not to slipped, otherwise we have to miss one bike from next trip. After a stressful hiking for 3 hours we reached the top of the hill. It has a picture perfect view from there. You can see a wide view of greenery, and one big Lake.  That's all. Nothing more there. We took rest for a long hour as we all are exhausted. , finished our portfolio shooting, and started for down.

We forgot the route from where we came up. It was all tress, spikes, small rocks everywhere and we are lost now. Somehow we decided to take left route!! After getting down for 15-20 min we saw it can’t be the road, because it’s a trench after this road. So we change our path, we came back, take right direction, and then again back , sometimes up, sometimes down. D'Artagnan started panicing.  He started telling the story what he heard from childhood ,where some people could not get down and after some days police found their skeleton!!!!  We assured him that don't worry , we have full day to find one route and we will be definitely take him down. Finally after a 2 hours struggle we somehow managed to see the down valley and we realized that we are saved. :) .

We reached at the temple . There was nobody still other than god itself. We took rest and then kicked our bike.

This was a short trip, we thought it should not be a tough one, but  the trekking part and lost in the middle of the hill , made this one a memorable one.

Hunger warning:: If you take devanahalli route, open your eyes for one shop, Mayura bakery. It is at Devanahalli. And it’s all items are so delicious..