Velliangiri Trekking

During my course of life, I have come across many worst and best days. But if I need to point a day that was both my best and worst day at the same-time, its 16/July, the day we decided to trek Velliangiri hills. 

We were a team of 6 including me, volunteered to trek the hills. Our trekking plan was simple, 

1. Start to coimbatore from chennai on Saturday [16/July/2K11] morning

2. Reach Velliangiri by afternoon

3. Start trekking by evening

4. Reach hill-top by midnight - Stay a couple of hours in hill-top

5. Step-down by early morning and catch the afternoon train

6. Return to chennai by Sunday night

The plan sounded fantastic..and we all agreed to it. Acting a bit professional, we watched for the Coimbatore weather report a day in advance and knew it was raining there. So our trek bag implicitly had a Raincoat along with other items. [Torch, Glucose, Snacks, Dinner, Additional clad].

As planned, we all started by 16th very happily without being aware of the nightmare waiting for us. On the way to Velliangiri foot-hills from CBE railway station, we heard our first demotivating dialogue from the cab driver, who has already trekked the mountains 5-6 times. He said "Trekking at this time? Its heavily raining at the top and you cannot cross even 4 hills. Iam not sure even you will be allowed to trek.."

Having heard enough of it, our worries were all about whether trekking will be allowed or not. With our pulses raising, we reached the foothills of the mountain, and heard from a localite that trekking is allowed.. Felt a bit relaxed we said to ourselves "No one can stop us.. :)"..

By then, it starting drizzling in the foot-hills itself. We casually enquired a local shopkeeper there about trekking who nodded his head side-side and replied strongly "Dont trek now. Its heavily raining at the top and you cannot cross 4 hills. Its very risky"  - Same piece of caution as said by the driver. 

Hearing the caution twice, we had a opinion from one of our friend to "return back safely, rather taking risk". I think thats the time we saw a group of young chaps coming down the hill after a successful trekking. They have started trekking in the morning [7am] and have reached down by 3.45pm. Damn energetic. We again enquired them about the situation at the top, and the reply was - SAME, but with a bit positive statement. "If you have raincoats and torch lights, you can trek". Those guys must have thought we are professionals :)

Hearing these words, we got the courage to say "Lets make it up"... Wise decision indeed.

After finding a suitable "third-leg" [cane of course!], and throwing all burden on Lord Shiva, we entered the zone..

Before going what happened next, a quick intro into what the mountain is all about.. Velliangiri, is a stretch of 7 hills that we need to trek to see a shivalingam on the top of the 7th hill. This hill is not as popular as Sadhuragiri or other spiritual places, and hence still remains a natural hill. Its very raw, shows no mercy  and very few people are trekking now. Professional trekkers rate this in "intermediate" level of trekking. For amatures like us, its obviously "advanced" level. Pathway to trek is clear but very "mountainy"..

1st and 2nd hill - Steps laid using rocks - Close to 4000+ steps, that will test your patience

3rd hill - Climb a slippery rock - Steps carved for better grip

4,5th hill - A Rough path - No proper steps and way full of rocks. Covered by Trees on both the sides

6th hill - A Rough path - No proper steps and way full of rocks. Open landscape without any trees

7th hill - A steep climb to the top. Hill in open space without any trees

Each of the hill demands atleast 45-60mins for trekking..

After 2hours of non-stop climbing in the steps, we reached a small Ganesh temple located at the end of 2nd hill. Meantime, it started raining. Sensing the situation going out of our hands, we had only two choices

1. Stay that night in the temple itself and proceed trekking the next morning

2. Get down and travel back home.

With this discussion going on, we saw a couple of military guys crossing us to trek the hill. Added surprise, one tamil guy was stepping down the hill after his successful darshan. This gave us an additional boost up to take the third option that was not in the list earlier - "Lets proceed"

We walked up, walked up and walked-up is what i could say.

The third hill and the fourth was enjoyable to walk, since both the sides were covered with trees, it was chill and drizlling like heaven. But one thing we kept on hearing above us was the howling of wind.

When we stepped on the fifth hill, lighting fell off and darkness started surrounding. Torches ON, we couldnt see anything next to us. The fifth hill has no trees surrounded, its just a plain area and the wind played a storm here. With heavy wind and severe rain around, we could sense chill up down our spines. To be honest, i have never been in a situation like that before. It was enjoyable, daring and life threatening. I never even imagined in my wildest dream that the sound of a wind could be such scary. More than rain, the wind - its chillness and the sound it made was a perfect mix to make one scared, if he is all alone.

Sixth hill was a real challenge - it was like playing a game where challenges gradually increase with levels. With sixth hill, we had the toughest challenge of our life-time. Wind was so heavy that many times we are about to get pushed-off. If at all, not having the cane for support, we are close to be carried away dead. Such an intense wind. We were literally praying [and joking as well] that lightning/thunder should not happen. We are in midst of the rainy clouds there. If at all, two clouds clash, our scream will be the thunder for the night. Now the rain became very thick and continous and we are walking with bare-foot immersed in water for close to 6hrs - feel the pain.. 

More pain is hearing the sound of rain drops hitting our rain-coat. 6hrs of hearing the "SSSSHHH" sound continuously, it was hell like watching DD channel when signal is cut. Biggest risk again is that at the sixth hills, we are just wakling on the edge of mountains with the deep-side just few metres away and there are is no support to catch if we fall down. Even if could catch the grass and other stuff, we are sure to get sucked by leeches to death. [kirumi-bojanam?]

Completely exhausted, we reached the foot-hills of seventh hill and its one hour straight climb from there. Ela was saying us the seventh hills is just opposite us, but we couldnt actually see even the shade. If at all we couldnt even see such a big mountain in front of us, think of our condition. Just trapped in dark. Such a darkness around us, and looking up for a second will fill our eyes with rain water.

One of our member called for a adhoc meeting at the foot-hills to confirm "Whether to take this ultimate risk".  While many of us were mentally fit to make the ride, our physical conditions showed a lag - 

1. Drenched in rain for 6hrs, we could feel chill down the spine. We were for sure unable to bear the cold. 

2. Wind around us was getting mad [rudra-dhandavam] as well damn chill making the conditions even worse. 

3. Rocks were already slippery with water flowing continously and taking a ride on a steep hill is tough

4. Even if we get to the top by midnight, we cannot stay there for that long to enjoy the sunrise during morning

Finally it was decided its more than enough risk taken till 6th hill, and not to bet nature anymore. Its was 9.30pm or so we took the stand to return back. Biggest challenge again was to walk-down the hills for 6 more hours without any break. But we had no other choice, rather taking it up.

After a non-stop walk for 5hrs - by 2.30am we reached the temple at the base on 2nd hills. Frankly, I have never walked 10-12hrs in my life continously. The trip was such tough, and sucked up all our energies. Biggest pain was we still have to trek 2 more hours to reach the base. Luckily, there was one other group staying that night in the temple and they have already lit campfire. That was a big releif for us to get ourselves warm and had our dinner [or breakfast] that we took with us. After a 30mins break for warm-up, we trekked  [stepped] down 2 more hours to the base by 4.30am.

Other fun down the base was that everyone's alternate clothes were also dripped wet in their bags, except me - for i had them wrapped them in polythene cover. Though it sounds simple, that was the need at the moment - a dry cloth to wear. After managing somehow, call-taxi reached there by 6.30am to get us back to railway station. Luckily rooms were already booked near the railway station in a decent hotel. A good hot water bath relieved all physical pain. 

Though the mission wasn't complete as planned, the experience we had was at its extreme. Even if we had trekked all the 7 hills on a fine breezy day, this raw experience would have been lost. We witnessed a part of how fierce nature could be at its den. Neverthless, Iam not sure if i will face such situations anymore in life - and I dare not. That's one other learning we get from such trekking - face the toughest; and we had it till our spine. But this is not going to drain away our desire to trek the mountain again - if time permits and shiva wishes we will trek once again to kiss the peak. 

PS - After we reached home safely, one of our trekking member informed that he saw a cobra during our way up watching-us in its full-form [padam eduthu ninnuruku]. Not to create any panic, he didnt inform us, but did alert us to take different side of the path. Appreciate his care towards us, but still we missed watching the cobra in a jungle. Anyhow, will watch it next time and write a big blog on it.

Fun part of the trip  -
1. One funny part in this trip was from our team mate Naneswaran [Guy with red-cap in the below picture] who was trekking for the first time [excluding his mini-trek of 1000 steps at kolli hills as preparation for this trip] . At 9.30pm when we decided to return back from 6th hills, he said he was hungry and wanted a dinner break. But since it was heavily raining at the top, we couldn't stop for break anywhere. In 4th/3rd hills, we were under trees and had some shade [only leeches problem here], and he again prompted that he was damn hungry. From there every 10mins, he was reminding that he was hungry and Ela was consoling him that we will reach the temple at end of 2nd hills and plan for dinner. No one cared for stop for him. For us all, it was "lets end the trip somehow". Food was secondary. Finally, it was at 2.30am in the morning Ela allowed him to have his dinner. Though everyone was hungry, he suffered a lot. Poor chap.

2. After reaching the base of 2nd hills at 2.30am, there was one other team who already lit campfire and were warming up. When we reached there, one of their folks asked us to collect some firewood scattered few meters away, since campfire is running out of fuel. Since we were completely drenched and not in mood to face rain again, we just started warming up. After sometime the guy who asked us to collect the firewood, said that he saw some "bright-eyes" in the dark woods and hence scared to go and collect woods. He was cleverly throwing that risk on us. Though we came up from the same path where he said he spotted "two bright-eyes" we were more desperate to warm-us ourselves than getting scared. Ela was consoling us that it could be some forest dog sniffing around. Hope it was so, else we would have missed watching a tiger/cheetah face-face.

Just one sample photo taken at 5th hills on our way up @ 8pm.. This picture says me hell a lot of stuff...

Read Velliangiri Trekking - Part 2 here