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!!
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 :)
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.
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 :)
It was a fun-filled overall which was organized and executed perfectly!! Rads, Jegan, Nidhi, Santhosh, Bhagath and the team...Kudos to you folks!!
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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.

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 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.
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...
Radha
Written by: Naresh, Radha
Organized by: Radha
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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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