Oct 24 4:00 PM...
Hey dude Its raining cats n dogs, you think we're gonna make it, Rads uttered those words at the other end of the call. "no thinking abt canceling come wat way, no looking back unless that mountain itself is gonna vanish. we are gonna get there, even in the worst rains and thunder. rains cannot scare us frm having fun!" is what I precisely replied back....these text flashed on my screen from Rad's end "lol what about thunder and lightning? thats the highest point there" for which I replied "we ll fight, we are spartans :)" (I know its so filmy) for which rads sent these smileys ":) lol"
(Flashback: I was so looking forward to Nagal/7 with Peter and group but unfortunately it got canceled as Peter had a costly deliverable at hand (Which I totally understand). So somehow I wanted to make it to Parvadamalai)
Oct 25 00:00AM...onwards
Adventure started for most of the CTC'ians on the 24th itself. Beating the city's traffic with our mighty motor bikes in the water clogged roads was the biggest challenge and I was no different!! I slept at Kalai's place that night and we started at 3:00AM to Guindy Rly Stn!! But stars weren't favoring us!! More adventure waiting for us!! A lorry was parked in the middle of the highway with its side stand ON :)!! We are Spartans, so we lifted the bike onto to the foot path and started riding it!!
There was Suresh and rads in one bike following (Though I haven't seen either of them before) and Rads shouted "Paravada malai trek?" I was like "Well...Yeaahh...You Radha.....?" in a doubtful tone for which she nodded her head..."We gave a high-five with a wide smile on the drive in total excitement"!! This was my first trek with CTC and I was glad about this cool reception!! Off we started to trek at around 4:35AM, not knowing what's in store but were so sure that it's going to be a great day!!
Most of CTC'ians dozed off which is when I started talking to our mighty scientist Rekha. A mycologist, a geneticist, biologist etc etc etc. She was telling me about the myths behind the "virus" shown in the movie Dasavatharam. [Facts guys: The ebola virus doesn't kill anyone instantly, but it spreads to a radii of about 1 km and kills the infectious person in about 5 days -- Courtesy: Rekha :)]. We talked about so many things including the places we have trekked since we were in Karnataka for sometime. We had yum breakfast and started right away to Parvadamalai.
There it was standing majestically right in front of our eyes as we stepped down from the van. We were welcomed at the ashram. Excitement meter was in its high level for all of us and we made no delay in proceeding further after taking our group picture. The initial walk to the mountain base was very pleasant as we crossed several paddy fields and our photographers capturing nice shots. It gave me a chance to get to know everyone, more and it was pleasure knowing every one of them!! Zoom...we started climbing the mountain and the trail signs were pretty neat!! No chance of losing track. A cute little dog joined out trek, though Rekha was freaking out a bit and was scaring the dog :), rest of the gang were enjoying its company :) (You can infact see the dog in our group picture in Nidhi's album and in mine too). Moments after, 3-4 people came with guns and I my devilish mind started thinking....Off I took the guns from them! (actually requested then to give it to us) we took all the guns from them and took pictures...as we were posing with guns pointed towards the photographer, I said what if we pull the trigger by mistake for which some one was said "Shoot the shooter"...huh, but truly I couldn't resist the temptation to pull the trigger!! (Barrels were empty though). I showed the pictures to Rads and we started walking. Rads had difficulty in walking as she had a wound in her knee which was bothering her much. We applied band aid and she was all bright with a big smile all set to walk!! That was the last I saw her during ascend :)
I and Kalai moved up together stopping by every 10 minutes to catch breathe. It was a sunny day and our lungs were gasping for more air. We pushed our self asking the localities how far the mountain is and them replying that it's very close. That thought kept us pushing though the destination was miles apart. Took Glucose's help to get some energy. Somehow reached this store where several others joined. Tangy Goli Soda with Lemon and Salt added to pep it up was heaven. We relaxed there for sometime and off we headed again!!
But energy levels dropped drastically which is when I sought my music player's help. Eminem came to my rescue when glucose and chocolates failed :)
'Cause sometimes you feel tired,
feel weak, and when you feel weak, you feel like you wanna just give up.
But you gotta search within you, you gotta find that inner strength
and just pull that s@#t out of you and get that motivation to not give up
and not be a quitter, no matter how bad you wanna just fall flat on your face and collapse.
How true are the lyrics!! You gotto search within you and find that inner strength. Wow!!
Till I collapse -Eminem and other songs of Timberlake, Black eyes peas etc were a treat as I was walking, also to mention Hans Zimmer with his electrifying music. Kalai was with me all the while and walking walking we reached the Gadaparai rock in no time! Gadaparai rock was like a giant looking at us and laughing!! So meek we felt. But we ain't no cowards :) Off we started climbing. Kalai was freaking out but with little push he was all set. What seemed like a 15 minute task took us a good 1 1/2 hr climb. The walk through the slim ladder, metal bridge was truly exciting. Mission accomplished at last!! Yay, finally we reached the mountain top. Our legs were aching so bad that we laid in that hot concrete floor with burning sun singing lullaby!! Sun was merciless and got medieval on us that day!! It got lot better moments after we reached. The rest of the team joined in about an hour.
The view was spectacular. Treat for your eyes. Now here's the moment. I crossed the fence line and sat on that huge rock facing the blue sky with cool breeze blowing on my face. I was watching the distance mountains and the depths in awe. Solitude is bliss :) It was so beautiful. It was like a moment that you could freeze and live in it for a long time. Radha, Gopi and I had a long chat there. I was endless. Thanks for listening to me patiently guys!! We were sharing our lighter moment at that mountain top, 4500 ft above laughing and chatting!! Life is indeed beautiful :)
Now enough of philosophy and sentiments!! Back to business. Anna thanam at the temple was pretty good. When it wasn't sufficient, out came our breads, jams and chapatis. Our tiff with the monkeys started. I should say they were truly daring. A small cute pussy cat was bothering us on the other side. Keeping them away from our bags and food was a big challenge though we tipped them handsome before leaving :). After spending some more time, off our journey started downhill. Captured some beautiful shots and lied on the lush green grass for some time before getting on top gear to descend. Getting down was tough as well but our funny conversations and stories kept us light and moving. All of us reached down safe and sound. Only thing we missed in the entire day was the rain which finally showed up the very moment we were about 5 mins from the van. Everyone had a great time getting drenched. Rest rooms at the ashram came to rescue for changing. Nothing like hot cuppa tea in that pouring rain sharing the moments about the trek with your fellow trekkers who are all friends to you by now...
It was a fun-filled overall which was organized and executed perfectly!! Rads, Jegan, Nidhi, Santhosh, Bhagath and the team...Kudos to you folks!!
Naresh
===============================================================================
The day before Saturday, it was poring in Chennai and Tiruvannamalai received flood warnings. Here in CTC a handful of amateur trekkers joined together and decided to go on with our plan to touch the Parvatha peak come rain or shine. We had 14 people in our team and no vehicle; thanks to some brainstorming sessions we decided to hire a tempo and move on. The day before the trek one person dropped out and 13 moved on, since we had jammed this trek to a one day event we decided to start early and managed to start just 4 minutes late from the scheduled time, at 4.34 am. All the Gods seemed to be smiling on us, the weather was crystal clear roads were good and we reached Kadaladi our destination by 9 30 am. Spent 10 minutes talking to locals, did photo shoot and were on our way to the top. . It all started with the guys complaining that the ratio of gals and guys not being proportional, there were just 2 gurls J.
The trail was well marked and clear to follow sadly the place was littered with a lot of plastic wrappers. It was a sad sight to see, we moved on. We were all carrying 3 liters of water and a raincoat thanks to our Meteorological department's flood warnings, but the sun showed us no mercy as it continued to heat us up. The climb was upward all the way and soon some including me started to lag behind. Soon we encountered some local folks with guns and speculated if they were hunters or terrorists J but who ever they were Naresh was not ready to go without a photo shoot with them. The walk goes on and we could see that the trail was clear and there was no way that any of us would miss it. Some people were fast and would start going ahead while others follow from behind. We were drinking water, glucose and eating chocolates and pushing on. The view below was awesome as we gained altitude every now and then I would ask people if we were close and they would say yeah you are very close, encouraging answer indeed J. It was really amazing to see people covering this mountain with loads of wood, food items and other stuff on their head and walking with a rubber slipper. There were also pilgrims who would walk in Dhoti and a carry bag in one hand. We would look at ourselves and our gears compare with each other, laugh and move on.
Thanks to the height of the mountain the more we walked the less sunny it felt and the weather was getting pleasanter by the day. We had a lot of photo sessions and we got so relaxed that we started shooting photos of shoes, and a scenic view with the shoe as the center piece J. Gotta give credit to Shrinidhi and Rudra our photographers with their state of the art digi cams! The views got better and better as we climbed. We could see tents which sold yummy Goli Soda, we decided that we would treat ourselves with this after we touch the peak!! On the way one of us had a bad knee and decided that he couldn't do it any more and sadly we had to leave him behind. From this point on we decided to speed up the walk and took lesser breaks and the altitude and the low heat helped us too or maybe the sun shined less I don't know what exactly was the syndrome but the heat was pleasant and soon we reached the Kadapparai climb. So far we have been hearing different reviews from different people now we saw the rock for ourselves.
It was an amazing view the rock was pretty vertical with nicely carved foot holds and iron rods, chains and what not on the sides to give us support. We could hear shouts from our fellow partners in crime who had managed to go to different stages of the huge rock. Some where trying to scare us off while others were encouraging and over all I was pretty excited seeing this rock formation and was all set to climb it. We said a small prayer to Shiva and started our climb, it was a bit exerting but pretty nice. Soon my friend started looking down and got pretty scarred. It was funny to see him get hysterical we laughed it off once we reached the peak. We all reached the peak between 12:30 to 1:40 pm and it was nice and foggy and warm and cold in the peak. So slowly we climbed and climbed and finally reached the peak. …and what a view it was!! It looked like you could see the entire world from out there and soon us greedy ones were not content with reaching the top of the mountain. We wanted to be in the middle of the mountain J and Naresh started talking about para gliding, rock climbing, bungee jumping, rappelling and what not... maybe we could have an episode of one of these soon.
The monkeys were all around giving us company and taking special care of our bags and making sure that they enjoyed our bread more than we did J. Soon people started the puja inside the temple and went for the Prasad our lunch yummmmmmm. Once our stomachs were full part of us decided to start the climb down, none of us wanted to brave the Gadaparai in the night, and we missed the sun rise and set L. The climb started with some hysteria from my friend, there were quite a few funny dialogues like why did I listen to you, why did I meet you and not once did he look anywhere other than his hands and foot and he was climbing down with his front body facing the rock and making life more miserable for himself. We were looking at him and silently laughing as we found the downward climb pretty interesting. Sadly not many photo shoots happened because we wanted to be the first to reach the ground. Soon we made it past the Gadaparai, looked back and promised ourselves that the next time we come here we are scaling the Gadaparai twice. Then stared the downward decent we were all pretty fast here we soon reach our prize for the feet, Goli soda. Nothing tasted better and it was so darned cheap on the top, just 8 bucks!! We decided to do the decent non stop with very short breaks, by this time our legs started shaking and we moved on with more GluconD, water, chocolates, fruits and peanuts. We went on and on and met our guy who we had left behind, over took him and went on at a nice pace. After 2.5 hours of the downward climb we see flat ground and some of us started running and a call was taken to go for a group photo shot. We waited for the rest of the lot and posed for the camera and go to the van and loo it starts raining heavily and all of us have a nice bath. Soon we changed had some piping hot tea and started. By 6:45 pm we were moving back towards Chennai, Chennai here we come!
Thanks to the comfort of having a driver we could get a lot of sleep and watch movies in the Tempo, boy it was luxurious and fun to travel together! We never felt like we traveled 10 hours the movies and talks were great fun, we watched parts of so many movies and the driver was nice enough to change all the dvds; comments would flow every now and then. We have dinner on the way and reach Guindy our destination by 11 30 pm and go home ready for a dreamless sleep and share our experience with the rest of us.
The day before Saturday, it was poring in Chennai and Tiruvannamalai received flood warnings. Here in CTC a handful of amateur trekkers joined together and decided to go on with our plan to touch the Parvatha peak come rain or shine. We had 14 people in our team and no vehicle thanks to some brainstorming sessions we decided to hire a tempo and move on. The day before the trek one person dropped out and 13 moved on, since we had jammed this trek to a one day event we decided to start early and managed to start just 4 minutes late from the scheduled time, at 4.34 am. All the Gods seemed to be smiling on us, the weather was crystal clear roads were good and we reached Kadaladi our destination by 9 30 am. Spent 10 minutes talking to locals, did photo shoot and were on our way to the top. . It all started with the guys complaining that the ratio of gals and guys were not at all proportional there were just 2 gurls J.
The trail was well marked and clear to follow sadly the place was littered with a lot of plastic wrappers. It was a sad sight to see, we moved on. We were all carrying 3 liters of water and a raincoat thanks to our Meteorological department's flood warnings, but the sun showed us no mercy as it continued to heat us up. The climb was upward all the way and soon some including me started to lag behind. Soon we encountered some local folks with guns and speculated if they were hunters or terrorists J but who ever they were Naresh was not ready to go without a photo shoot with them. The walk goes on and we could see that the trail was clear and there was no way that any of us would miss it. Some people were fast and would start going ahead while others follow from behind. We were drinking water, glucose and eating chocolates and pushing us ahead. The view below was awesome as we gained altitude every now and then I would ask people if we were close and they would say yeah you are very close, encouraging answer indeed J. It was really amazing to see people covering this mountain with loads of wood, food items and other stuff on their head and walking with a rubber slipper. There were also pilgrims who would walk in Dhoti and a carry bag in one hand. We would look at ourselves and our gears compare with each other, laugh and move on.
Thanks to the height of the mountain the more we walked the less sunny it felt and the weather was getting pleasanter by the day. We had a lot of photo sessions and we got so relaxed that we started shooting photos of shoes, and a scenic view with the shoe as the center piece J. Gotta give credit to Shrinidhi and Rudra our photographers with their state of the art digi cams! The views got better and better as we climbed. We could see tents which sold yummy Goli Soda, we decided that we would treat our selves with this after we touch the peak!! On the way one of us had a bad knee and decided that he couldn't do it any more and sadly we had to leave him behind and move on. From this point on we decided to speed up the walk and took lesser breaks and the altitude and the low heat helped us too or maybe the sun shined less I don't know what exactly was the syndrome but the heat was pleasant and soon we reached the Kadapparai climb. So far we have been hearing different reviews from different people now we saw the rock for ourselves.
It was an amazing view the rock was pretty vertical with nicely carved foot holds and iron rods, chains and what not on the sides to give us support. We could hear shouts from our fellow partners in crime who had managed to go to different stages of the huge rock. Some where trying to scare us off while others were encouraging and over all I was pretty excited seeing this rock formation and was all set to climb it. We said a small prayer to Shiva and started our climb, it was a bit exerting but pretty nice. Soon my friend started looking down and got pretty scarred. It was funny to see him get hysterical we laughed it off once we reached the peak. We all reached the peak between 12:30 to 1:40 pm and it was nice and foggy and warm and cold in the peak. So slowly we climbed and climbed and finally reached the peak. …and what a view it was!! It looked like you could see the entire world from out there and soon us greedy ones were not content with reaching the top of the mountain. We wanted to be in the middle of the mountain J and Naresh started talking about para gliding, rock climbing, bungee jumping, rappelling and what not...
The monkeys were all around giving us company and taking special care of our bags and making sure that they enjoyed our bread more than we did J. Soon people started the puja inside the temple and went for the Prasad our lunch yummmmmmm. Once our stomachs were full part of us decided to start the climb down, none of us wanted to brave the Gadaparai in the night, and we missed the sun rise and set L. The climb started with some hysteria from my friend, there were quite a few funny dialogues like why did I listen to you, why did I meet you and not once did he look anywhere other than his hands and foot and he was climbing down with his front body facing the rock and making life more miserable for himself. We were looking at him and silently laughing as we found the downward climb pretty interesting. Sadly not many photo shoots happened because we wanted to be the first to reach the ground. Soon we made it past the Gadaparai and look back and promise ourselves that the next time we come here we are scaling the Gadaparai twice. Then stared the downward decent we were all pretty fast here we soon reach our prize for the feet, Goli soda. Nothing tasted better and it was so darned cheap on the top, just 8 bucks!! We decided to do the decent non stop with very short breaks, by this time our legs started shaking and we moved on with more GluconD, water, chocolates, fruits and peanuts. We went on and on and met our guy who we had left behind, over took him and went on at a nice pace. After 2.5 hours of the downward climb we see flat ground and some of us started running and a call was taken to go for a group photo shot. We waited for the rest of the lot and posed for the camera and go to the van and loo it starts raining heavily and all of us had a nice bath. Soon we changed had some piping hot tea and started. By 6:45 pm we were moving back towards Chennai, Chennai here we come!
Thanks to the comfort of having a driver we could get a lot of sleep and watch movies in the Tempo, boy it was luxurious and fun to travel together! We never felt like we traveled 10 hours the movies and talks were great fun, we watched parts of so many movies and the driver was nice enough to change all the dvds comments would flow every now and then. We have dinner on the way and reach Guindy our destination by 11 30 pm and go home ready to sleep and share our experience with the rest of us.
Radha
Written by: Naresh, Radha
Organized by: Radha
Image Galleries:
1 comments:
Nice Briefing..
We friends ,group of 10 planned to make parvathai malai trek next month.. Can we stay at the top on all days ? Got Info from few , that u can stay only on Full Moon Day !! Is that so ? Can u plz give in ur Inputs.
Thanks
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