Mekadatu .. which we could never reach

Being lost and found is what every trekker dreams of.

And this is what happened to me this week end.

I t was Friday, we had no plans as such and I was itching to get away from the town at least for a day , I asked some of my friends but they refused, finally Only Gaurav , (his relative) Manik and me agreed to go somewhere.

As we were only three guys, we thought of going to some nearby place, so that we can have fun while riding and come back and relax on Sunday.So we all agreed upon going to Mekadatu.

It is at a distance of around 85Kms from Bangalore, so we thought of leaving Bangalore by 8 in the morning.

The biking starts, we took Kanakpura road, which is in a good condition now-a-days, traffic was very less and the scenery was absolutely picturesque. Not even a single one amongst us had read much about the place and we were wondering what to doover there, moreover the place is quiet a cliché, in the sense that many ppl have been there and there are n number of blogs describing the place.

So we were discussing what and how , when all of a sudden we saw green fields anda hill at a distance, I stopped to have a few good snaps of the place, all of a sudden Gaurav asked "Trekking karega kya " , and I was like "kaha? " , he points his finger towards the hill and looks at me . I smile back and we look at Manik, who says "chalo".

This is how the plan of trek came up, we drove our bikes in the muddy road , through the fields and came nearer to hill , when we saw it was almost impossible to continue on the bike we parked it in some deserted place and started moving towards the hill. "Bhai , apne paas khana hai na pani " was the cry I heard from Manik and I realized its true, but it was too late to go back gather these and start trekking , so Gaurav suggested we go in ask the farmers in the fields for some water. Very few ppl were there, but some kind person told us that there is a hand pump at certain distance from this place, so we started moving towards the place , we had to cross the fields which had a lot of grass, and while we were moving we saw a green snake crossing the place at full speed , all of us were taken aback, for one or two seconds no one said anything but after that we were back to normal , as no one wanted to show that he’s the one who is terrified, anyways we reached the pump had some water to drink and started moving towards the mountain again.

There was no fixed route for climbing, but we could see a shepherd standing at quiet a distance from us, so our first target was to reach the fellow by somehow climbing up and then ask him how to proceed further. We has to make our way through shrubs

and bushed but we were finally able to reach the guy , we asked him the way up and he showed us a road(kacchi sadak as we call in hindi) , he told it would take us to the top.

The road was , steep and we were getting tired and Manik was feeling hungry too, we asked him to come with us for some distance and as we climbed further we had a glimpse of a house at a long distance from us , and it was there that we decided our next target . It was to reach the house and ask water from who so ever stayed there, but the building was not as close as it looked, we had to walk a lot and when we finally came near we realized it was not a House but a temple. It didn’t matter to us temple or house anything is ok as long as we get some water or food.

In the temple we saw one panditji, how helped us in quenching our thirst, there was a small pond sort of thing there so we washed ourselves and had some rest. We were quiet happy at this point, we decided of getting down in an hour or so and ride to Mekadatu.But this is when the mystery starts; it was already 4'o clock in the ev-

ening when we started descending. We took the same path for descending which we took while going up(at least this is what we thought), but after walking for half an hour or so we realized that we were at the same altitude , this path is not going down and it was a bit late to realize that we had taken a wrong path, "ab kya kren , wapis mandir chalte hain waha se rasta mil jaiga" was Manik's suggestion , but neither me nor Gaurav wanted to go back, "thora aage chalte hain , shiyad fir se reate main aa jainge", but unfortunately we were going deeper and deeper into the forest , it was getting late too and we knew if we didn’t do something sooner than later we are gone for the night at least.

One good thing was all of us were interested in seeing Man Vs wild and then we remembered the Quote:"IF YOU ARE LOST IN MOUNTAINS, GO TO HIGHEST POINT AND THEN YOU CAN GET A SENSE OF DIRECTON". So accordingly we started climbing again, by this time all of us were dead tired and hungry. Luckily from the highest point we could see that , we were on the other side of the mountain , we could see the road as well as the temple where

we had taken refuge. But the was down towards the road was very steep and was passing though a dense growth of forest; we had already seen a snake there and were afraid of seeing more of the same kind. Still we didn’t want to go all the way back (moreover we were not sure abt the way back too), so we took the decision of descending down from the new path , we had hardly walked some distance when we saw a dead end , but now we were not in a shape to go up , so all of us picked up some sticks and started making the way . Gaurav to ahead of us leading the way when all of a sudden, I heardhim

scream, I ran forward to find him face to face with a giant spider that he had encountered, Manik and me started laughing and I took some good snaps of the spider, then we saw some leaches and strange insects, but luckily we were able to make the way and return to the same path which we took for going up . After that we hurried towards the bike as it was already getting dark.

Going down we sat for a while and thanked God for such a wonderful and safe trek ;), and promised Manik for more of these sorts of adventures (poor guy was on his first trek and had a terrible experience). Then we picked our bikes and moved towards Mekadatu which was still 14Kms from there but it was alre

ady dark and we could n

ever see the place so we drove back ........HAPPILY.