Yesterday sixteen of us from i2 went "trekking". The location is called Savandurga. Durga means fort in Kanadda. Sethu organized this adventure. He's 23 and probably the most fun of anyone here to be around, and that's saying something. He sent out several emails before the trip to get us prepared. I thought a bit of two of them would be appropriate to include:

"Hi guys, looks like if i say it's 7:00 in the morning everybody is likely to show up at 7:30 (30 mins buffer time). So for ppl who work on IST it is 6:30 am & for others(the punctualest) its 7:00 am. Juz kiddin. Guys plz be there at the B Towers(DD) entrance sharp at 7:00 am, the reason being if it is gonna get delayed here we might have to climb up the hillock when the scorching sun will be right abover our heads. Earlier the better, coz when the sun is up we wud have started descending instead of turning late and takin a painful ascent (do i hear u saying its quite obvious ? :-)). Hope you guys understand and 'll make it right at 7:00 am tomorrow."

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"Single largest Rock dome in Asia. This place is ideal for one/two day adventure outing. There is greenery (Reserved Forest) all around. The few lucky ones might get to see some wildlife like leopards, peacocks, deer, rabbits, foxes etc. (spooky but xciting :-) ) "

So yesterday I got to the office about 6:30, wanting to read and write a couple emails before we left, if possible, and wanting a 30 minute buffer just in case it was hard to get here. In the hotel, the lobby was deserted when I came down, but the night time taxi driver, Alex, stuck is head in the door after a minute and I asked for a ride. So I did have my 30 minutes for email.

At 7:00 I went to the B Tower entrance and there was nobody there. I looked in the driveway, waited around, and finally came back up to the office lobby on the 4th floor. At 7:15 there were 5 people here. Sethu himself got here a bit before 7:30 I think. By 7:45 we had most of the group present. The company the trip was planned with sent two busses by mistake, so we spent 10 or 15 minutes deciding which was the better, and somewhat after 8:00 a.m., with two of our anticipated 18 still not present, we left.

Trekkers at Diamond District office, about to leave.

The required souvenir and greenery restroom break.

Common tombstone-like road morkers.

It was a long and bumpy ride. I was tired, having only slept 5 hours that night, and I dozed as we bumped along. We made a rest room stop in a tiny little town after an hour. The rest rooms were green, ... and covered with leaves. They grew not too far from the highway. And then we were on our way again.

In one small town we turned off the highway onto a one lane road. We proceeded to another town where we turned onto a smaller road that was less well maintained. I was waiting for us to turn off onto a dirt road, but the pavement lasted all the way to a little village that was situated at the base of one of the biggest rocks I've ever seen. It was just after 10:00 a.m. when we arrived. Way up on the top I could see a flag waving and there was a small structure of some type beside it. Some of the guys joked that we were going to climb up there, but it was no joke. That's just what we did. [Above: The town where we stopped, at the foot of Savandurga.]

The very top is to the left.

Savandurga

Of course we didn't climb straight up the nearly featureless face of the rock that was above us, we went off to the right and took a much less steep route. Even so, I was glad I'd worn my hiking boots which provided good traction on the rock. The first little bit of the climb separated those with experience, that being me and one or two others, from those without, that being the rest. I took a relatively easy route up the first grade while many of the others decided to just walk up the rock in front of them. After a bit many of them gave up on the hard route and decided to follow me. A few were too far along to go back by that time, and they had it rough but eventually made it.

Starting up.

A wrong turn.

Another group poses in a tree.

Sethu had been right. The delay had caused us to be climbing in the heat. Our strategy was to climb up a ways to a big rock, maybe the size of a car, or a wall, and sit in it's shade and rest, then go on to the next shade. The main rock, the one we were climbing, had been well fortified at one time. There were walls, remains of other walls, and higher up, remains of buildings.

We were not alone in making the climb, by any means. There was a mixed male and female group, about the size of our own group, that came in another bus just after we arrived. They delayed less and were just ahead of us as we climbed. There were other groups, and individuals going up and down.

As I said, we had started off to what was the right when standing at the bus facing the rock. At about half way up we rested and then turned left and went up what was a sort of ridge along the side of the rock. At that resting spot there was a curved wall with holes for guns. There was also a little shelter in a depressed area where water would run it it were raining. It was cool underneath the shelter and Sachin, Murali, I, and several others sat under the stone roof to rest and escape the sun. Two young ladies sat down there too, just under the end a bit away from us.

As I sat there I notices the remains of the weeds that had been growing in small clumps but now were burnt. I wondered why anyone would burn them. They were not a fire hazard and insufficient to provide warmth for more than a few minutes on a cold night. It crossed my mind to ask one of the i2ers with me, but I thought they probably wouldn't know and I ask so many questions anyway, I figured I'd skip this one.

The curved wall fortification.

Just after the turn, straight wall at left.

After the turn, a ruined building.

There were the remains of a fairly straight wall leading down to the curved wall at this location. I took a picture with the thought, as I told one of my friends, of telling the folks back home that this was the very southern end of the Great Wall of China. The remains of the wall were only a foot or two high. The rest was gone. On the back side of the ridge it looked like another wall, but it was only one stone high on either side, and someone later, on the way back down, said that it had been a road on which horses brought supplies up to the top. It was a mighty steep road and I'm glad I wasn't one of those horses.

As we walked up there were a few large (10 ft. across) depressions in the rock that looked like they would hold water when it rains. Of course this has been a dry year and the depressions were dry. But as we went up farther we came to one with water in it. It was green with algae, and there were plants growing in it. Several little boys from the village had climbed up with us. They must do this all the time. They were barefoot. One of them motioned us over to the water. We had each been given a liter of water at the beginning of the trip, but we wouldn't have been tempted to drink it anyway. As we went on from there we saw two or three other large depressions that had water in them. One was only 3/4 depression in the rock and 1/4 dam/wall that had been build to keep the water from running down the face of the enormous rock we were climbing. There was even a tree or two growing there as I remember.

[View from near the building toward the top.]

Eventually we got up to a level spot where there was a building maybe 20 ft. by 10 ft. It was missing part of one wall, and it was obviously very old, but it appeared to be structurally sound and some of the guys rested in the shade inside. Several others of us went to another shelter, rather low and without walls, that was just beyond the building. We rested there a while. We could see the flag and top of a small temple farther on, and so after a little more rest and a few pictures we started on again. This time there was a trail, of sorts and the climb was very gentle, other than the fact that you had to climb over rocks the size of a Volkswagen here and there.

There were white arrows painted on the rocks where one might turn the wrong way, and at one point they indicated that there were two ways to go. I think it was Saiju or Sachin who was with me at the time, and we tried the path to the right. That turned out to not be too good and as we were climbing around looking for a way to proceed, and working our way to the left, some of the guys came down the left path. When they were 5 or 6 feet behind us, with a good trail in-between, I heard a crackling noise and one of them said, "There's a fire". One of those dead, dry weeds that I had seen burnt elsewhere, had spontaneously burst into flame, catching its neighbors in that low spot in the rock on fire. I got out the camera and took a picture at the height of the fire. What fortunate timing to see an event like that up so close. Later, when we'd returned to the village, we saw another clump of weeds on the face of the big rock that were on fire. It's quite an interesting phenomenon.

We crossed a jumble of boulders with trees and bushes of various sorts growing among them. At one point there was a flowering tree. The flowers grew in clusters. One of the little boys from the village sat up on a rock and picked a couple of clusters and handed them to us when we caught up with him. The flowers were very pretty, and I took a picture of the boy holding one cluster, but they weren't as bright and beautiful as the flowers on some of the trees in that area or in Bangalore. Their virtue was their small. I can't describe it, but it was wonderful. Someone should make a perfume with that fragrance.

Rocks near the top.

Rocks near the top.

What a fragrance!

We got to the flag and the little temple. It has a statue of a bull, which represents Shiva, looking out over the land below. I took quite a few pictures from the top. Some were of the temple, which looked to be a couple hundred years old at least. Some were of the land in different directions, and my hope is that maybe 200 degrees of the view can be pieced together from the pictures. I took a couple pictures of the village where we'd started, almost directly below us. And after the group had trickled up, over the next 20 minutes or so, many of us took pictures of us all sitting there on the top of this enormous rock.

The temple to Shiva.

The village where we started.

Beyond the top.

At the flag pole on top.

A view from the top.

Going back down was a lot easier, as you can guess. We made few stops and didn't need to drink water very often. There were places where we had to hold on to rocks to climb, and some of them were uncomfortably hot to touch. The first group of us reached the bottom at about 1:45 and rested in the shade of some trees, sitting on a couple of table sized rocks.

As we waited I saw a butterfly fluttering over some bushes. It wasn't too close, but I believe I saw both bright red and blue patches on it's wings. I wish I could have gotten a picture for Linda, but I couldn't. It was gone very quickly and never lit.

When all of the group was down, and that was quite a wait, we started toward the bus. There were a couple of coconut vendors along the way, there being only one path and the vendors knowing how hot and thirsty we climbers would be. For Rs. 5, about 10 cents, you can buy a coconut. The vendor, a boy of maybe 15 or 16 in our case, would hack off one end with a heavy knife a foot long as he held the coconut in his other hand. In this way he would open a small hole to the inside. You could help yourself to a plastic straw from the pack attached to his bicycle, and drink the coconut milk. We bought 20 coconuts from this boy and some of us bought from his older partner, who was selling coconuts from his bicycle 30 feet up the path. They were large, heavy clusters of maybe 50 coconuts that were attached to the bikes. The bikes were held nearly vertical as they sold coconuts with forked branches about an inch in diameter. A part of the bike frame would rest in the fork and the other end of the branch rested on the ground.

These were young coconuts and the shell, which is inside the thick husk, was still very soft. Sethu ate some of it, and others tried some, but few were as enthusiastic about the taste. There was no actual coconut meat in these coconuts because they were too young. Well, there was one we bought later, after the second hike that afternoon, but the meat was minimal and more a cream than what we're accustomed to in the U.S. Rohith said that sometimes they sell even younger coconuts and the milk in them is sweeter, but this was good.

When we got back to the bus it was time for lunch. It was a traditional Indian meal and mostly far too spicy for me. I had been warned and so I'd brought a pack of tuna, some dried apricots, and my remaining granola bar. The bars come two to a pack, and this pack was half gone from one of several breakfasts in my hotel room. There were still some small boys from the village with us. I'd guess they may have been 8 to 12 years old. They were curious about my food and when I offered them each an apricot all three took one. There were some girls of similar age nearby, and when they saw this they came over and each took an apricot too. One more boy came over and had an apricot. Then some of the i2ers, who were interested came over and asked to try one. Of course these were purchased at Food World in Bangalore, but I guess they'd never had one. After giving away 3 or 4 apricots to i2ers one of the guys called out to the others that this was my lunch and to stop taking my food. So they stopped. I'd brought many more apricots than I could eat, but after giving away about a dozen the supply had been reduced to just the right size for lunch. Then I got out my granola bar. The girls had left but the boys were still there. The bar was soft, the package having been open for a week or more, and so I was easily able to break the bar into five nearly equal pieces. The boys each took one fifth and that left one fifth, about a bite, for me. I wasn't hungry, and maybe the kids were, though later our guide, Balagee, though I don't know if that's the spelling, gave our remaining food to the kids. He also brought some food that he thought was not spicy to me and I ate it for politeness sake since I was no longer hungry. It was somewhat spicy, but not at all compared to the rest, and it wasn't hard to eat.

The village well was near the bus. As I've mentioned, Indians eat with their hand and wash after eating. On this occasion, we were so dirty from our climb that most, if not all, washed hands and faces too before we ate. It was a bit hard to get the pump started. There was no way to prime it, or none that was obvious. Before eating, the pump supplied a lot of water for all, but afterward it took quite a while to get it started. A little while later some village ladies came for some water with a small, liter size, plastic pot. They couldn't get the water started and finally gave up. At that point the little boys started working thepump handle and soon had water flowing. I called to the ladies, and though they didn't understand a word I said, I pointed to the pump and they saw the water and came back. As they got there the water stopped. But after a moment one of us, Rohith I think, got it going again and they got their pot filled.

There was some debate about what to do next. Some of the group was tired and just wanted to go back to Bangalore. Some wanted to go to the Cauvery River, which looked so nice in the distance from the top of our climb. Some wanted to go for the jungle walk and see the panthers in the wild. So we got on the bus when it was decided we'd go for the jungle walk, but Balagee told us to get off the bus, that the jungle walk started right there. We'd been able to see for miles in all directions from the rock, and we knew there was no jungle within 50 kilometers or more from where we were, but 10 of us followed him into the bush. There were trees and bushes and rock surfaces here and there to walk over. It was dry and some of the group wanted to turn around and go back. But Balagee kept leading us on. Early on NaRa had asked him if he had a gun just in case we did meet any panthers, but it became pretty obvious that there were no animals of any sort, other than a snake or a spider maybe. It was just too dry and had been for too long.

We approached a stream bed, and nearby there was a tree with the brightest yellow flowers I've ever seen on a tree. I took a picture. Then we headed down into the stream bed. Again, I took the easy way and a few followed me. The others took the more direct and riskier route, but we all made it OK. The other side of the stream bed, unlike the side we'd come from, was a jumbled heap of boulders, many the size of a small house. We followed our guide over, under, and around these. There was one tight place where we had to pass our back packs and cameras through to the person ahead because we wouldn't fit through the passage with them. After a while we came to a moderately large gap under one rock where there were walls on either side and stone steps in front. Balagee said that monks used to come up there, far from distractions, to meditate in that spot.

Then we went on, climbing through more tight spots under rocks and arrived at a couple interesting places. One was a big cavity under one rock and along side another. The side rock in this cavity had large sections broken free and sitting there, one above another. Each was eight inches square in cross section and 4 or 5 feet long. Below the last one was a thick tree root that had split them all off the main rock. We also got to a place where there was a big tree root in a cavity under some rocks and this and it's smaller neighbors were just impressive for their size and the fact that they were there. Just past that we got to a place to rest, which we did for 10 to 15 minutes. There was a big dark space under a rock in back of us, like a cave, and one could only dimly make out part of the back. We didn't go in. It had been a hard climb and we just wanted to rest at that point.

One interesting thing about this area was that there was no litter. If the places I've been are any indication, most of India is covered in litter. But this area, on the far side of the dry stream bed, had not even one scrap of plastic trash and we discussed how nice this was and did our part to keep it that way.

On the way down there were some tight spots too and one particularly slippery rock where we each took a turn sliding a foot or two to the ground as we made our way down to the stream bed again. There was one place where we passed under and alongside some fine roots. It was almost like making our way past a very coarse broom. As each of us would pass some of the small roots would break off and give off the most wonderful smell. It was so nice that someone in the group grabbed a handful to take back, but the difficulties of the climb being what they were, he changed his mind after a moment and left them.

Near the bus we again had some coconut milk. Then after a few minor delays, we were all back on the bus and headed for Bangalore. At this point I was wide awake, but a lot of the group was tired and they soon fell asleep. I didn't look around to see how many were awake, but Sethu was sound asleep next to me and I saw Rohith, who was just across the aisle, catch himself a couple times as he was about to fall out of his seat.

Once again we stopped at the tiny village that must have been midway between Savandurga and Bangalore. We actually stopped not far from the public facilities this time, the real ones, not the bushes. They were rather open and easy to see into, but those inside couldn't be seen below about 3 feet above the ground. It was rather unpleasant inside, but not intolerable and better than being uncomfortable during a very bouncy hour's ride to Bangalore.

Some of the guys got coffee and wandered around. Others were somewhat annoyed at the delay and wanted to get home. I spent some time looking at the shops. One was medical in nature and had red crosses painted on it, though I'm not sure what it was. The majority of the signs were in Kanadda, which is beautiful to see, but quite indecipherable to me. I recognize "stop" in Kanadda because sometimes on a two lane road in Bangalore one lane will say stop in English and the other in Kanadda. There were a few signs in English and I noticed one that said, "Sri Vinayaka Borewell Drilling". I believe "Sri" means something like "The honorable". There was a sign on a second story shop that said, "Bakery". That sounded nice as I was a bit hungry by this time, but I wasn't tempted. Foreigners can't just go around eating anything here. After 25 to 35 minutes we were on our way again.

I got sleepy after a while and dozed a bit on the way into Bangalore. When I opened my eyes again we in the thick of Bangalore traffic, and it was thick indeed. There was mile after mile of road and I looked at the interesting situations in traffic and read some of the shop signs, when they were in English, as entertainment. One place had a sign over it that caught my attention. It said, "New Shoe Museum." Mentally parsing that as "(New Shoe) Museum" I thought it was strange indeed. I've since decided that it's probably instead "New (Shoe Museum)". That's still fairly strange. We were past it before I thought to look in the window. Too bad!

Finally we were on Airport Road and then we were at the Diamond District office. I came up and wrote and answered email for a couple hours or more. About 10:15 I got an auto rikshaw in front of the offices and took it back to the hotel. I went in to the Potluck Cafe and ordered grilled chicken and explained that I was going up to my room and would be back in a few minutes. I was locked out of my room once again by the housekeeping service, so it was a few more minutes than planned before I got back to my table for dinner.

There's a fellow who plays music and sings in the lobby bar, next to the Potluck Cafe and I had the table most toward the bar. But it was too late and he had gone home and instead the T.V. was on. From the accent of the anchor lady on the news I gather that it was B.B.C.- Asia. She sounded and looked rather British. So I started listening, or trying to, because the distance was just too great to hear every word. But I soon realized that there had been another space shuttle disaster. I couldn't catch the details. Of course something like that would be big news anyway, but with Indian-American astronaut Kalpana Chawla on the Columbia, it was a double disaster here. The news made an awfully sad end to an otherwise wonderful day. This morning a good portion of the front page of The India Times was devoted to the story and to India's famous daughter. Related stories occupied other pages of the paper.

That's my last Saturday in Bangalore. I leave for Frankfurt on Thursday, Feb. 6th, 2003. I can't help thinking that if I were given the chance to spend another month in Bangalore I'd be awfully tempted to stay or come back, as the case might be. Though this will probably be my last group email about my travels, my adventures aren't over quite yet. I'm looking forward to my visit with Sharon, a good friend from high school for any who don't know, in Germany. I'll go home to Texas after that.

Your friend in India,

Garr

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