Moon light trekking to Skanda giri hills is a good experience, no second thought about that. Skandagiri hill offers its own uniqueness, especially for the hiking enthusiasts in and around Bangalore. The beautiful view of sunrise from the hill top is mesmerizing. For a change this time, our team decided to do the ‘Sun Light’ trekking on this hill for a different reason. This article is aimed at giving importance to the aspect of enjoying the nature while preserving it for future.
We planned for this trek just a week back and we were a team of twenty members in all to make it on early friday morning. Entire team was at office premises by 6:30 am and we started our journey towards Chikkaballapura in a bus. After stopping for a pretty long breakfast session at Chikkaballapura, we focused on our way to the foothill. We were well equipped with food, water and wireless handsets. Soon we reached the foothills where the ‘Papagni Mutt’ and ‘Omkara Jyothi Aashram’ are located. We distributed the fruits and snacks among ourselves, so that everyone carries a distributed backpack for the uphill task. It was decided much before that Narayan will be pushing the tail from back while I will be leading the pack from the front. We both had a Motorola (Walky – talky) wireless handset each to communicate in case we need better co-ordination.
Each one of us were full of enthusiasm and energy to start with. I am sure, it is not an easy job for most of the software engineers to face such kind of physical work. That too uphill climbing is very exhaustive when it comes to Skandagiri. Even before we could cover 1/5th of the distance, many got really tired and started to breath heavy. We had a couple of folks in the verge of calling it off. However, we managed to inspire them enough to continue climbing up instead of giving up. We kept on giving short breaks every few hundred meters and start again. We were following strict instructions on not to litter the hill with our food wrappers, we made use of our backpacks to store them separately.
The weather was very sunny. As we went up, the beautiful scenes around the hills kept us motivating to reach the peak. Towards the end of almost 3 hours, all 20 of us managed to reach the hilltop in spite of sun burns. The sense of satisfaction was very much evident in everyone’s face. The tiredness had gone. All smiles around and the ecstasy of making it to the peak was priceless. We roamed around various locations over there and finally settled down at a place where we had one of the best views. Enjoyed the cool breeze while enjoying the beauty of the nature. Though we missed the exotic view of clouds beneath, we surely had a great time. We had a great view of the adjoining Nandi hills, and the plain lands below. There were few nearby villagers who were collecting sticks for bonfire, looked like they were planning to sell them over the next two days of the weekend. After relaxing for more than an hour and having our lunch, we started our journey back.
We split ourselves into small teams and started to collect the garbage that many others had left. We found lot of disposed plastic water bottles, plastic tumblers (used for coffee/tea), plastic food wrapper covers, etc., As planned earlier, we had bought big garbage collector bags and started collecting all these plastic stuff on our way down to foot hills. This is where we made the difference. We not only enjoyed the nature but made it look more greener. We bought as much as plastic back to the base and handed that over to recycling shop on our way back to Bangalore.
This is our sincere & humble request to all who trek this skandagiri hill or any other:
* Please think twice before buying or carrying plastic.
* Leave not any plastic behind.
* Avoid campfire/bonfire, this may lead to forest fire.
* It would be a great gesture to nature if you help to preserve the premises for future.
* Be environmental friendly and join hands with us to clean up such great places.
You can see the photos clicked during this trek on flickr. With the hope that each one of you will remember all these points, I wish you all a happy trekking where ever you go. Live Green and let the the mother earth be greener than ever!
karthik says
good works guys!! kudos for plastic clean up!!! clean and green!!
Rajesh says
U guys did the wonderful job by cleaning all stuff. Hats off to you guys.
Rajesh says
U guys did the wonderful job by cleaning all stuff. Hats off to you guys.
Priyank says
Hi,
For tracking on skandagiri, are ropes and clamps necessary??
Priyank says
Hi,
For tracking on skandagiri, are ropes and clamps necessary??
Mohan says
Nope… you can summit without those!
Pooja says
Wow! seems like fun..
And cleaning up the plastic littered and handing it over for recycling- that’s an awesome thought.. congrats! something we all should incorporate..
naga reddy says
great workguys..dont know who you are…but thank you very much ..you all have done a great job…i wish people will see nature as nature .
Mohan says
Nice to find a person who thinks similar to us! Shall keep more of this sort to nature enthusiasts in the upcoming days.
lostworld says
Thats impressive, it sure was a fruitful trek !! 🙂
I’m gonna take a leaf out of your book & do the same in future..
lostworld says
Thats impressive, it sure was a fruitful trek !! 🙂
I’m gonna take a leaf out of your book & do the same in future..
Mohan says
That would be great! I would be more than happy to see so many getting concerned about mother earth and following strict guidelines to keep it greener for long 🙂
Selva says
We are planning to go there tomorrow evening. Is it a good time to visit this place? Any possibility of tent pitching on top of the hill? please provide more info so that it helps our planning.
Neeraj Gupta says
Very nicely done Mohan. I am pleased with your efforts to make nature a plastic free place. Even we will plan to do some activities like this in our trekking expeditions going forward. Thank you so much for a detailed information.
Neeraj Gupta says
Very nicely done Mohan. I am pleased with your efforts to make nature a plastic free place. Even we will plan to do some activities like this in our trekking expeditions going forward. Thank you so much for a detailed information.
Mohan says
@Deepti
There is no specific team I associate with. I just make it once in a while to get a break from routine city life and enjoy the nature. Usually, it happens with friends & colleagues.
Well said. ‘No Plastic’ should be adopted by all the trekkers to enjoy the nature at its best and to make it attract many more over decades to come!
Deepti says
Great! Do you have a specific team you go with? Are you part of any club?
And the “no plastic” initiative is something all trekkers must adopt!
Its very saddening when we go to peaks and see empty beer cans and chips packets lying around.
Mohan says
@A Viswanathan
Yes, you are right. We really need to plan for something on that direction. May be we should carry some placards next time to place them in various points all the way.
@Radhika Ganesan
Thanks for pointing me to that openID issue. I will look into it soon.
Radhika Ganesan says
by the way i am commenting using my other gmail id (not the one for blogbacchan, i wonder why its not letting me comment!). Ok…even if i can’t use my original id , there is a backdoor to this place :):) !
Radhika Ganesan says
by the way i am commenting using my other gmail id (not the one for blogbacchan, i wonder why its not letting me comment!). Ok…even if i can’t use my original id , there is a backdoor to this place :):) !
Radhika Ganesan says
Hi…. i have been trying to comments since the day this post has been published but i guess my OpenId is not being recognised in your site, its working fine in the rest of the blogs ! Sorry, i am not writing anything relevant to your current post but i would have done that a hundred times in all these days and i am fed up of seeing the error ! Can we fix it somehow ???
A Viswanathan says
I would like to add that the 10 – 12 bags of plastic that we collected was but a fraction of the waste that still lies on the hill. While cleaning it up might be a one time solution we should try and find better means to prevent the menace that is littering.
A Viswanathan says
I would like to add that the 10 – 12 bags of plastic that we collected was but a fraction of the waste that still lies on the hill. While cleaning it up might be a one time solution we should try and find better means to prevent the menace that is littering.
Srinath says
Good one, especially getting that plastic stuff back..
Srinath says
Good one, especially getting that plastic stuff back..