We trekkers are restless minds, forever conjuring up ways to get back into wilderness. Perhaps its the mundane life of urban landscape with its melancholic Job schedules, lifestyles ,traffic and pollution Or maybe its the bewitching charm of the Jungle and mother nature which compels us.
It is precisely 500 years after the coronation of Krishna deva raya , a great and famous king, to the throne of Vijayanagara kingdom. Marking this event, the govt of karnataka held grand celebrations in Hampi on january 27 and each leader derived political mileage of this great event.
BUT why is vijaynagara so important to us?
BECAUSE it was a testimony to how great we, the south indians, particularly the kannadigas and the andhras , can be. The north, for all its bravado and culture, was bascially under foreign moslem rule for more than 900 years. First it was teh turks, then the afgans, and finally the turkoo mongol MUGHALS. It was intermitently ravaged by plunderers cum dacoits of all sorts, from ghori muhammed to ahmed shah abdali.
Its temples were razed to ground, its innocent populus massacred,and its women raped.
Amidst all this chaos and mayhem up north, when foreigners ruled entire nation, a STRONG indigenous kingdom stood out for more than 350 years! THIS was the beacon of hope, the icon of liberty , the symbol of strength and the epitomization of culture.
This was vijayanagara.
Founded by two kuruba brothers, harihara and bukka, there was never to be any thing like this in the entire history of india ever again. The banks of tungabhadra and the imperial city of Hampi defined the glory of vijayanagara, and its empire stretched from the present border of maharastra to entire south.
Its famed wealth was a sourceo of pride to its inhabitants and jealousy, greed to its enemies.
Krishnadeva raya was born onto this line of kings, and the culture of vijayanagara reached its climax under him. An aggressive yet kind king, his patronage of art and culture has been spoken about by numerous travellers, cheifly the portugese francoo nunez.
He was called "andhra bhoja" for his patronage of telugu litreture and he is teh symbol of kannada-andhra unity even today.
Constantly trying to bring down this hindu kingdom were the 5 deccan sultanates of bidar, berar, golconda, ahmednagar and bijapur. Krishnadeva raya was so powerful that each of these ran for cover when he announced a campagin, but his sucessors proved weaker.
So it was in 1565, at battle of TALIKOT, also called as battel of raksa tangadi, that the combined armies of moslem sultanates defeated aliya rama raya,a sucessor of Krishna deva raya.
Hampi was then overrun by the advancing moslem army and in a single day was razed to the ground. Such wanton destruction was perhaps unheard anywhere else in the world.
Aliya rama raya, knowing what would befall him, escaped from hampi and took with him vast treasures on the back of 355 elephants. He was headed towards PENUKONDA, a small town alongside a moutain in the modern state of andhra pradehsh. Penukonda was to serve as a capital of vastly de militerized and emaciated vijayanagara for some time before the empire itself faded out.
So in order to mark this event in our own manner, I decided to conquer Penukonda's huge mountain adjoining it!
Now penukonda was famed more for its frequent factionist squabbles, violence and horrid temperatures then for trekking. The mountain, whose GPS coordinates read 14.072999° lat, 77.585783° longitude (key these into Google earth) , consists of 2 peaks separated by a huge lake. It was not even a trekking trail but i was fairly convinced that it could be scaled by us "experienced" mountainers with little effort. We were to reach the peaks and then watch the sunset accompanied by refreshments and snacks. In what turned out to be a major error of judgement for me, i totally underestimated the planned climb-down part of it.
With a certain plan in place, the enlisting turned up 6 enthusiasts.
Ajith and toyota mahesh were the usual ones. Raghunand nagraj, a gowda, was known more for this skills with girls rather than in a jungle. Vijay, my cousin, was an HR with oracle, and this was his first time on a serious trekking trail. Babu, a teenager, desperately wanted to accompany us, so i had him in as well.
Without my most trusted and experienced campaigners, ie, sunil aka circuit and Mahesh aka Babu, it would certainly have been a risky trip. And it was.
We took the local indian train , one of the cheapest modes of transport on earth, to reach the place.
The train arrived 1.5 hours late into the town on account of a fault on the railway line.
We headed then to the Baba fakruddin's dargah, a regular stop for me, and paid our respects to him. Raghu was not convinced about dargah and its islamic overtones and took exceptino to our presence there. But others were fairly causal about it.
We then headed out to swaghat hotel and indulged in spcicy biryani and rotis for lunch. The meal , though not exceptional, was good enough to allow us some respite from the sun.
we were then dropped to the ground zero by an autorickshaw, and the time then read 3 PM.
Inital climb started out rather unceremoniously as we swerved and wavered to avoid lumps of human excreta lygin on the foothills. Apparently, these locals had discovered the pleasures of toilet with a view .
We eventually arrived at what seemed to be a small temple on the foothills. I was certainly in no mood to stop and admire the view, but as usual, the less disciplined ones in the gang started the photo ups and poses.
The mid afternoon sun was beginning to get to us, and we started to feel the heat.
I thanked my stars for having bought a Hat, but others were not so lucky. As we climbed up couple of more meters, we seemed to have started what seemed to me , a string of errors.
We lost the trail completely, and again, I underestimated the climb and decided to follow the BRUTE force approach. This approach meant we would have to BARGE through any available path, come what may , stones, boulders or thorns. It turned out, initially,easy to experienced trekkers lke us, with only ocassional thorny bushes causing any problem.
But as climb started becoming steeper, we had to make some serious rappelling moves, without the actual gear itself, and the slippery grass above made the entire ordeal very dangerous. We also made another crucial error of not recording our tracks, and this would prove us very costly.
we reached a small rampart of a historic outer fort and we took some pictures and gathered our breathes. Since we were on teh leeward side of the moutain, we were spared the excruciating SUN and the exterme tan accompanying it.
After a couple of minutes more, we reached this interesting complex made of granitic blocks , obviously a vijaynagara era creation. But it had more to it then what immediately met the eyes for inside it were huge excavatinos in what seemed to be a well organized search for treasure.
We were aroused by the prospect of being in such n interesting location and were compelled to admire the foolhardyness of these treasurehunters.
A further climb up led us to inner and stronger fort and a engraving of hanuman, the monkey lord of strenght, looked down reassuringly upon us.
By now the sun was almost below the moutain top, so were in shade for now.
As we conquered a small hillock , we were overwhelmed by the sight of a bigger peak hidden behind it. I was determined to scale this and the bigger one adjoining it.
We caught the sight of a trail from now on , but in a critical error of sorts, decided to continue ont eh brute force approach. This led us through huge boulders and huge thorny plants and some of us, includign me, were injured in this ordeal.
Shaken, we arrived at what seemed like a huge lake on the moutain resembling a crater of a volcano.
We had to pass around it to reach the final destination of our climb, but time was quickly running out. We cut though thorny creepers reaching the edge of the lake, but there was no visible path around it. Luckily we spotted our abandoned trail and decided to take it for now. This led us to a huge Gopura which was embellished with 2 rather voluptuous statues of women. A snake and a crocodile were also seen on the side porches.
As we continued on teh trail, we arrived at a small valley where the sight of what we saw over whelmed us. It was a massive temple complex consisting of abonded temple, courtyards, and even a Kalyani( a sort of water pool with diety at its middle).
Excited, gowda and ajith started incessant chants of how good the cmplex was and how lucky we are to see it.
Me and ajith climbed up the stone pavement terraces of the complex much to the chagrin of incapable Co-trekkers. We made down towards the central complex which seemed like the sanctum sanctorum of the place. The view was mind boggling.
The temple was apparently diemboweled many times by treasure seekers and the central diety had been replaced by a customary photograph. personally i found traces of YAGA(a kind of religous ceremony ) and couldnt help but think of any Sacrifices associated with it. It was well known that treasure seekers usually sacrrificed humans as an ultimate act of appeasing teh terrible goddess DURGA/ Kali so as to get the whereabouts of teh treasure lying around. Though i was remotely aware of such occurances being reported on this hill, for strategic reasons i decided to conceal this from friends at that point.
we took some customary photographs and then started to head out towards the hillock we had set out to scale. It turned out to be abortive attempt, as the hill proved forbiddingly enclosed by thorny bushes and was declared by my already tired friends as unscalable. The time by now was already 6 and it was around 20 mins before the sun would set.
we made another critical mistake of friterring away precious pre dusk time eating snacks and froclicking whilst we moved out, rather unbeleiveably, to the other side of the fort. The plan to climb down from the other side of the fort was quickly discarded , as it revealed deep gorges and huge trushes of thorny bushes.
With lighting fading away, i made a decision to retreat from the same side we climbed up. It was a tough decision , but i had to make it.
THEN iT HAPPENED.
vijay and raghu, in what seemed to be a drunken stupor, walked ahead gayly and merrily without a slightest regard for our cries to stop.They were so confident they were on the right track that we lost them completely within a few minutes. Becos of thier audacity and tremendous foolhardiness, we ended up following them and lost the trail completely too.
Gowda , a fella with strong localtional sense, correctly kept pleading that we had lost the path and HOW right he was!
Within a few mins, darkenss befall us and we were starnded a long way in never land whilst the trail lay beyond rocks and bushes. We tried to Back track , but the lack of light hindered any movement and we were completely stranded!
This wanton act of indiscipline and foolishness was to turn this rather easy trek into CODE RED, or fight for survival.
We were not prepared for night trek through a jungle nor had we bought supplies for surving the night like a tent and food.
I had to make a decision and i , with some help from reasonable gowda, decided to retreat and stay up tonight rahter than risk life and limb trying to climb down the moutain with mobile light.
Vijay, who had still not sobered down, kept harping quixotically the need to "TRY" climbing down after scaling a nearby peak , but was luckily toned down by saner members of the team.
we tried , rather desperately , to atleast get back into the temple complex, but after a few falls and chipped bones, gave up the attempt.
I then decided that we would rest on a hot granatic rock exposed immediately below us.
Cursing and harping, all members quickly discarded any hopes of a cozy return to thier homes and vijay now wondered , more realistically , about the consequences to his JOB.
notwithstanding all the woeful cribbing, we had to immediately secure ourselves to a hard barren rock bed whilst a sea of darkness engulfed us. The stars, so beautiful and glittery , hardly inspired any admiration for us souls in danger.
We quickly captured places on the rock bed, and being strongly Huddled was our only hope against any wild animals, snakes or even spirits!
Some of us tried to immediately sleep , perhaps to avoid the harsh reality of the present time and space. But most of us looked out at the horizon and saw a shining knight rising up from the eastern horizon.
MOON, now only a yellow coloured backbencher, started its march towards the sky , and its everlasting glare grew ever so much briter by the moment.
As the moon reached a respectable posisition in the sky, its swept across the darkness as if a a bright sea of milk had been poured upon it. It was extremely beautiful, and i mused that shah jahan was perhaps inspired at some time and sought to contest its beauty by a terrestrial Taj mahal.
By around, 12 am in the night, only souls talking were ajith and raghu, whose jokes would have ideally made me cry, but perhaps was best suited to the irony of the situation.
By 12 30 AM, it became incredibly cold, and though huddled together, the mountainous winds made sure we shivered and sleep became a distant dream.
It was increasingly felt taht the present situation was untenable.
I decided that the team had to take its chances, and argued that the Moonlight on the full moon day had changed the equations. It was a risk worth taking , or else we would risk being frozen to death. So i prayed to baba Fakruddin, whose cave of retreat lay opposite to us on a much smaller hillock.
Surpisingly, most members agreed to this risky decision but gowda felt that this was not a good option. After assuaging gowda, we quickly buckled up, and decided to conquer the moon light washed forests of Penukonda!
First plan of action was to seek out the lost trail , and ajith was assigned to this task. Ajith, a particularly short guy with strong center of gravity , is our specialist for all kinds of perilous balancing acts. He had lived up to his yoga credentials in the past.
after a few fumbles and trippings , we finally stuck gold as we recovered the lost path.
We uninimously decided that this trail was never to be lost sihgt of if we had any chance of seeing our loved ones again.
Our spirits uplifted by what seemed now a reasonable excursion, we slowly followed one another as we sucessfully made it around the treachours lake. Though some of us weer expereienced, moon light trekking was new to us.
We were comfortably cruising when we lost sight of tracks again. We lost valuable 30 mins trying to seek out path when finally we back tracked and regained sight of it. Time was around 1 Am and we even werent sure that any trail existed!
At this point, we regained sight of penukonda town , and it was an assuring sight.
We stopped and posed for a few pictures with the fort standing majestically in moonlight.
After a few fumbles, we finally stuck with the trail whilst the moonlight illuminated the way ahead.Soometimes, we had to illuminate the way by our mobile torches, which though not efficeint , was a life saver.
except for some thorny bushes, the climb down from thereon was rather uneventful. Occasional trip ups and fall downs kept us on the hooks as we descended. With every meter descended our hopes lifted higher and we started nurturing thoughts of getting back to civilization. What was rahter distrubing to me was that we were descding right next to the PALACE oF what i would be referring to as THULsA doom(an evil cult leader from movie conan the barbarian). Obviously not referring to his real name, i acn only dwelve that this guy had a huge palace built down below the moutain of penukonda and was protected by 12 feet walls and armed-to-teeth gunmen. He was known for all kinds of evil, but kept reminding myself not to thinkn too much about it.
As we approached ground zero, we discovered the familiar human excerta thanks to rahgu.
On ground zerio, stray dogs, for good reasons, started barking on us. I ordered team to stay put and not take any evasive actino.
everywhere we loitered on the empty streets of the town, we were greeted by furious dogs.
At this point, i noticed a place which had humans talking and chatting. It turned out to be a police station. I calmly went up to a constable and asked him way to bus station.
What happened later would astonish us.
Then entire police station went on alert and gun totting constables came out and started aggresively enquiring about our business this time of the night.
I , taken aback, told the officers about our ill fated trip to the moutain and the desperate climb down.
Still not convinced, he demanded for our identity cards, upon whcih i produced my ID card.
Upon seeing this, the Constable had a sudden change of manners.
Clearly empatizing with us, he scolded us for our foolish odessay and reminded that more than 300 bodies were laying UNACCOUNTED on the hill. He also said that THhulsa doom were personally responisble for lots of missing people and was known to sacrifice people caught on this hill!
He also talked about spirits infesting the temple taking shape of shephards etc , wtih drastic consequences for people meeting them.
Clearly this was a HOT zone for treasure seekers, and only last week were 3 people from kerala went missing. He went on to show us actual pictures of missing people wherin most of our gang started shivering.
By the time he told us in his service he had never seen any one climb down moutain at these hours, we felt like fainting.
Agreeing with his advice and cursing our foolishness , we requested for some drinking water before we were bid adeau by the police officers.
we then made our way to a bus station, when a bus cmoing from hyd halted to take us to bangalore in about 3 hrs!. the Time then read 3 30 AM!
there were some invaluabele lessions from the trip.
1.Geography and mother nature should never be underestimated . Adequate prepartion and planning must accompany any trip.
2. we learnt to back track and find trails in worst of situations. This would be helpful for us in future.
3. Never trust drunkards to lead the way.
4. Discipline is a must.wayward and laiseez faire behaviour maybe good in a pub or in a beach, but can threten life and limb while trekking. I had held back using my Brute power to keep order in group, and this was a mistake. Strong leadership is a must in crisis situations.
5. Ajith impressed me , again, with his discipline and balancing skills. gowda turned to be really good with locational skills and reasoning. Raghu dissapointed me with his lack of discipline and orderliness, but his cool attitude compensates things to some extent. Vijay too showed lack of order , but being his first trek, can be forgiven for it.
6. Finally , the greatest learning has been that there is NO greater friend then MOON on a dark night. Having saved our lives, he quietly smiled down upon me as i knocked on my Home door at 6 30 AM!...
