Shivagange Trek (Tumkur) - Dec 14, 2024

 

            This was Trek#13 after our Vista Brunch and Trekking Group (VBTC) started in Sept’23. Not bad, 13/16 months! We have had as little as 5 people, and as many as 40 😊 Age group 5-70. One trek to Annapurna Base Camp (ABC), rest all around Bangalore. 

             The pictures of Shivagange looked interesting, steep steps going up the hill with handrails, multiple temples, the intrigue of a famous suicide jump in bygone days, monkey threats, and a final 70degree climb to a Nandi sculpture. The weather was rainy the previous few days, but promised to clear up in time, and we took the risk. Breakfast was always there to enjoy anyway 😊

              We were 10 in 2 cars – Devaki and SrikanthR drove. The place is a little before Tumkur. We started at 5am and made good time, stopped for tea/coffee/biscut curtesy Vijay Mirji and were ready to start at 7:15am from a Gopuram. There are ~200 covered steps to the first temple, but we didn’t stop given our trekking shoes.

We saw a fort, passed through nicely carved pillars, and kept going up. Soon we were in the open, steps cut into the granite rock. The weather was very foggy, and it felt very nice to walk in the mist like in a hill station. We passed another temple with large statues of Shiva and Parvati.

Soon we saw this hill face with steps going up very steeply, with handrails for support. There was a large group from a gym, with bright yellow Tshirts.

 

As we started ascending, we heard some shouts, and found out that there are very aggressive monkeys who were snatching backpacks etc after jumping from rocks above the path. We saw a lady screaming and crying with a monkey perched on her back, trying to take her backpack. It went on for a couple of minutes before her friend found a stick. One monkey opened someone's backpack zip, searched and threw items out until it found a pack of glucose and started eating the powder. It was really scary. One person gave the backpack himself to the monkey, it took it very calmly, searched it, didn’t find food, and left it alone 😊We decided to put the backpacks under our jackets and then proceed, with 1 hiking stick for support. We moved very gingerly, saw a lot of monkeys staring and growling, but got through without any major incident. One of them did open Vivek’s zipper pocket, but only found a phone and let him be 😊

The steps were also uneven and steep, but the nice weather helped. Everything was very hazy. Finally we got to a point where we could see a very steep rock in the fog ahead, and one very big rock hanging above us. Turned out the steep rock was the one with the nandi sculpture, and the big rock is Shantala drop, where the queen jumped from. Sonali handed Srikanth his glasses and he was surprised. Turned out a monkey had unzipped the vertical pocket in his backpack, taken them out and thrown them away!! 😊

We spent some time at the large area of the Shantala drop which is all fenced now. Clouds were passing by us, it was like a magical world. The whether slowly started clearing, and we got some amazing views of the valley spread way below us. Some of us visited the temple. One monkey climbed on Sonali’s back, trying to get at her backpack, but was chased off by us.

Then we went to the next adventure of the nandi rock. The slope here is almost vertical, with very narrow steps cut into the granite. We went up to the nandi, where also there is hardly any space. It was quite thrilling.

  

It had taken us 2hrs to cover 2.5km for an ascent of ~500m. After spending one hour in the area, we started back down, to face the monkey menace again! This time the monkeys were kinder (I guess they know there wont be new food coming down 😊) Fortunately we had left the bananas in the car, otherwise it would have been a very different experience! Coming down was hard on the knees, but much quicker, and we were down by 11am.

              We had a lovely breakfast at Paakashala on the recommendation of our foodie Vijay. He ordered all kinds of dishes which created a “Maara-Maari” in the stomach – besides the usual fare of dosa/idli/vada we had lemon juice, dahi vada, coffee and paan all rolled in together 😊 We reached Vista at 2:30pm, very tired, well fed and happy. All in one piece and lots of memories to treasure!