Kabbaladurga night trek

It was a Saturday and it all started with a simple question by Raj on the Intrepid Hikers Whatsapp group, " hey guys shall we do Kabbaladurga this weekend ? It will be a night trek ".  Since I had dropped out of the Nagala East trek by CTC for that weekend, I immediately said yes to this.  Also, it was a place whose name I had been hearing since many years but never managed to visit.  Thirdly, night treks on the cute little hillocks surrounding the city of Bangalore are really mysterious, and have a flavor of their own; that eerie feeling you get while you watch suspense movies.

Bangalore is a really cold place to begin with; the outskirts even more so, and doing a trek in the middle of the night in an unknown village with only the hooting of the owls for company, definitely adds to the thrill and excitement of a trek.  After getting a sufficient number of members (9 of us) to say yes, we booked a car for the trip and managed to leave Bangalore city by 12.30 AM.  This was good in the way that we would be able to do a quiet night trek while the whole world slept, but had we left earlier, we would have had time enough time to cook food and get a good nights rest as well.  We decided to keep that plan for another weekend.

By the time we hit Kanakapura town, it was well over 2.30 AM and dew was falling fast.  The air was much cooler and dense here, since we were in a thickly forested and rural area.  We got out of the car right at the point from where we'd have to get off the main road and get onto a muddy village road.  We rechecked the map, completed our morning ablutions, and, set off for the base of the hill which was just 2 Km's away from this point.

The moment we reached the base of the hill, we spotted a little bunny rabbit hopping around in the bushes but it was really fast and we couldn't take any photos of it.  There was a marriage ceremony taking place in a nearby temple, so it wasn't as quiet as we had expected it to be at 3 in the morning.  Raj and I went to look for the correct trail, located it, and came back to take everyone else.  Since we were already pretty late, we didn't want to waste much time at the base and quickly proceeded to hit the trail.  The trail seemed to be lit by a long line of light poles which went all the way to the top.  We decided to quickly head for the first light pole and regroup there and then have fun with discussions and jokes.

Initially, we didn't feel very cold, (as we had already acclimatized to rural air) but as we kept ascending the hill, the temperature kept dropping and the wind started blowing harder.  Raj, myself, and another girl had got separated from the group somewhere at the start of the climb, and it took us a while to find the trail and regroup with the others.  After this, we all started moving as a single group.  The climb got really steep at some points, and the authorities had thoughtfully installed railings and carved steps into the stone at these points.  It barely took us an hour and a half to reach the top and start taking in the scintillating night view of the well lit towns below.

We then proceeded towards a temple which was located at the center of the hill.  We also figured that this place would be the most wind resistant as compared to all other sides of the hill, and set up the tent here. By the time we set up the tent and tarpaulin sheet to sleep on, it was already 4 in the morning and we knew that we would barely get to sleep for an hour before the sun came up, so we slept for an hour before someone woke up and said, "wow, what a view!".  That was enough to wake me up from my half asleep state and take in the mesmerizing view of clouds floating all around and below us.

After that, everyone started waking up one after another and started taking photos of the floating clouds.  The next one hour was spent clicking pictures, hopping from one side of the hill to the other, visiting small shelters that were built there during ancient times, eating snacks, and dismantling the tent in order to pack it up.

We started for the base at sometime around 8.30 and didn't take much time to descend the hill as it was easier.  We encountered a couple of folks climbing the hill to go to the temple at the peak.  We reached the base by around 10 and hit the main road immediately to have some tea and snacks from shops located on the state highway.  After that, we headed to Kanakapura town in order to find a decent restaurant from where we could have breakfast.  With that done, all that was left to do was to head home and hit the sack as not a soul had a wink of sleep the previous night.  The return journey took a bit longer as we had to face some traffic while entering the city but we all managed to reach home by around 1 in the afternoon.  Not bad for a night trek; we would at least get a good half days sleep.