The First Treks

My trekking experience started with a bike trip to Savanadurga during my 4th semester. Savanadurga situated 60 kms from Bangalore,near Magadi is a Beginner's Paradise for Trekking. Savandurga is a monolith rock hill at an altitude of 4,050 ft and has remains of the fort built by kempegowda.

We left Bangalore at 7 in the morning and reached the hill base at 9 after having our breakfast at Magadi. The trek took around one and half hour.There is a temple at the top of the hill.

After spending some time exploring the hill top,we descended and took the road towards the Mysore Road.On the way back to Bangalore, we visited Manchinabele Dam and Big Banyan Tree.

The Gang: Balu, Srikanth, Keerthy, Datta, Gupta, Rajesh

Siddarabetta -February 2006

After the trip to Savanadurga, more trekking was soon to follow. The next was a bike trek to Siddarabetta near tumkur. Siddarabetta is a hill in Tumkur district around 110 kms from Bangalore.One has to take a devitation to the left after 2 kms from koratagere while going to Madhugiri. It is famous for the medicinal plants that grows on the hill. There wasnt much diffculty to reach the hilltop since there were stairs. We visited the temple on the top. There was a guide available who offered to show us around the hill. The hill has a large number of caves and at places u need to crawl on your legs to move on to the next stretch. It is an amazing place for cave exploration. After going around the caves for over an hour, we came out to the open. We were told that there were lot more caves and it would take around 3 hours to cover them all.

Another interesting point is that there are no crows in this region.The Guide told us some mythological reason and I dont quite remember the story now :P

On the way back to Bangalore, we visited Devarayanadurga. It has a temple at the top and is a well known hill station.

The Gang:- Balu,Keerthy,Gupta,Pavan,Rajesh and Me.