Saturday,8th August, 2015

In a Hotel room in Kollur

Had a very long day visiting the Mookambika Temple.
Yup, You've heard the name before in My Recipe Blog of Paneer Ghee Roast.
I was really tired and was about to crash for the night, when I got a forward text message from a friend saying.

 Independence Trek to Mullyangiri:
 Two Days and One Night trek to Mullyangiri hill in Chikmangalur 
 for Rs2500 Only with 18 strangers. 
 We Plan to be at the summit of the hill on India's Independence Day
 Contact Puthraya for more Info:98******90

Well, A Trek did sound really interesting, but I am a Ambivert kind of a person who can be really quite with some people while really chatty with the rest.So at that point going with strangers was the best of Ideas.
It was a totally new concept for me
Besides I had gone to Chikmagalur a couple of times before with My Fam, but never heard of this hill named Mullyangiri.
So I did what any other uncertain person do at such a situation
Google for Images
The Images of the place were so Pretty, Lush green landscapes everywhere.

Just like the one below.

The Images made me want to visit this place. I was still not comfortable about going with people I dont know, but I thought Ill drag and friend along with me. If that dint work out, I was going to join My First Job on the 10th August, I knew some of My colleagues already as they were batch mates in Pre university College, So I thought ill keep that as a back up plan.

Thursday,13th August, 2015

At My Office

I had a good first week so far, started friendly conversations with a lot more people than what I expected. I did ask a few of them to accompany me for the Trek, but all of them denied saying that they had guest who was expected to visit at the weekend or had to go somewhere else.
You know, The usual reasons people when they don't want to do something
It was the same response I had got when I asked My Friends outside My Office.

This got me contemplating about The Trek again.

"Should I be going to Mullayangiri without anyone I know?"

"What if i never got along with the rest of them?"

The Dual Nature of the mind came into play. It was also My last day to decide and confirm my seat to Puthraya who was The Trek Organiser. Given the situation, I was more inclined to say "No", but the google images of the Beautiful Lush Green Mountains Flashed in my head once again.

That, Made me make up my mind and say Richard Bransons famous line.

Saturday,15th August, 2015

At The Boarding Point

This is where I actually met the rest of the Trekkers and to My Delight they were mostly People of My Age group.
Most of these guys were Travelers and had already been to such Treks before, So they were very open to conversations and were quite warm. Tejaswi(A Microbiologist) and Navneet(An Final year Engineerring student at that time) were the first people I spoke to. Tejaswi is Tomboyish in nature and Navneet was that goofy guy who always upto something.

It was in the Van where we really started getting know each and started having fun. Puthraya(The organiser) and almost everyone else in the van were die hard fans of the folks songs of Raghu Dixit(A singer from South India who once played for the played the Queen of England)and we spent most of our "on road" time in listening and singing his songs. This was Pretty much My Formal Introdution to Raghu Dixit's Music and Lokada Kalaji was my favorite track during the Journey.

Apart from this, we spent the rest of the time chatting with the next person, which in My case was Tejaswi and Navneet.
Also, Watch watching this Dude named Chelson Vlog about his Trek on his Phone in his Malayalee Accent which was really amusing. He occasionally gave us some camera attention too.
LOL.
I wish I had a copy of his vlogs for this blog.
They were GOLD.
but sad truth is none of us have a copy of it.

We then stopped by at Deviraama Temple for lunch, small formal introduce ourselves session and a group picture before we left to the Hill.

At The Summit of Mullayangiri

This is when the plans changed, We initially planned to stop at the foothills and then pick up our Rucksacks to Hike our way up to the summit through the Trek Path, But Due to heavy rains and winds, we had to go on road in our van to the top. So you read it right.

We still had a lot of fun on the way and pretended like we trekked all the way in front of other passerbys.
We love showing off

At the summit, Since It was Indepence Day and we had the Tri colored Indian Flag with us, We were a little patriotic and chanted the Famous Slogans of Indian Freedom Struggle.
Here is the proof

We actually repeated these slogans on the way back home as well XD.
HaHa

It got really dark soon and visibility was bad due to the mist, So we had to go to the place where we had pitch on tents.
The weather had to play spoilt sport again, The heavy winds dint really let our tents to be pitched properly. So we had to to move to a temple nearby to crash for the night.

Some of us did smoke a joint which was followed by a serious deep conversation of Our Perspective on life