Ride to Skandagiri Hills

Ride to Skandagiri Hills

About Skandagiri Hills: 

Skandagiri, also known as Kalavara Durga, is an ancient mountain fortress, it is a hill with the ruins of a fort which dates back to the 18th century. The fort is in a dilapidated condition, and so is the temple situated close to it, but that takes nothing away from the trek to the top of the mountain.

Best time to visit : 

The best time to visit SKandagiri would be November to February it will be very cold during these month, avoid during rainy season as the trekking would become difficult. 

How far from Bangalore :

Skandagiri is located at about 60 km from Bangalore, and a perfect destination for one day outing.

There are two routes to Skandagiri:

From NH 7, turn towards Nandi Hills. At the base of Nandi Hills turn right and proceed to Kalawara village via Muddenahalli (birthplace of Bharath Rathna Sir M Visvesvarayya).

From Chikballapur proceed directly to Kalawara village

Directions:

Follow the Bangalore International Airport, better known as Bellary Road (NH 7). After crossing BIA take the diversion to Chikballapur. You can see the board for Chikballapur on NH 7 easily. Follow the same road for about 7–8 km until you find a Visvesvarayya statue to your Left. Note that this is a small bust and is easy to miss. There is also a small Ganesha temple right next to that left turn.

Take a left at this place and a right turn at the City Municipal Council a little further down. Later this shall directly lead to Papagni Mutt, which is the base of Hill (Source wikipedia)

How it went : 

This was my first bike ride and I was not the person who was riding the bike, it's my college buddy whom I met after a long time. 

We decided two days before that We will make to Skandagiri on Saturday night. Skandagiri is famous for its night trekking, but we heard that because of recent death at Skandagiri because of a snake bite, the trekking might have been closed. We crossed the finger and hoped for good luck. As agreed I came near Hebbal flyover to meet vijay, This guy is a very negligent person when comes to time pickup after 30min later he arrived at the point. It was almost 10.30 pm by then, the fuel gauge of his unicorn was not working, and he told we might need to fill petrol on the way. I agreed and sat behind him. Within 200m we ran out of fuel,  I started yelling at him because for his sense and we were looking for petrol bunk,  I knew that the next bunk would be almost 1km away, we pushed the vehicle to the bunk and filled up the tank it was almost 11 pm, we thought it would be quite early to go to the hill as normally everyone starts the ascend by 2 am, so we thought of going to see BIAL, we slowly paced towards devanahalli and reached airport it was a good view of airport and seeing flights taking off and landing and the loud noise of engines. 

We spent considerable amount  of time at the airport took few snaps here and there. Finally by 12 or so we left the place still it was early to leave,  but didn't had another option, so we slowly paced on the nice four Lane road and reached the highway,  we moved towards the dodbbalapur from where vijay know the route to reach Skandagiri, he got quite confused after reaching dodbalapur and for our luck there was one police guy who was having his night duty, we wanted to ask him, but he only stopped us and asked our identity, then we told we wanted to go to Skandagiri, after a bit discussing with him finally he gave us the direction. 

we reached the bottom of the hill and I guess we the first to arrive for the day at around 1.30am, there was a guy who claimed to be a person who looks after the parking, he took 20rs for vehicle parking and guided to the parking spot, and then asked us to go through the pitch dark route. 

I had no idea what Skandagiri is about, vijay had been to this place four times so he had an idea. I thought that this place would be well lighted with route direction and others. To my surprise there was not even a single Street lamp for the road. We didnt even carry any water bottle nor the torch, thanks for this idiotic buddy who is so senseless.Anyways we have come here now we have reach the top,  he told me that the route which we are going to take would be a 8k long, I was quite ok with it, it was half moon day and the was slight lighting which showed the path, we reached the starting point of the hill,  we stared ascending,  after few minutes I was totally drained, and asked him how far, he said we haven't even covered 5%,i was dizzied and sat for few minutes and stared again after taking enough breaks here and there we reached a point from were we could see the small town of chikaballapur, it was glowing with lights and looked magnificent. 

We rested for a while and as we were ascending it was getting colder, luckily I had bought the jacket along with me, the route through the hill was very much confusing and many routes would lead to dead end vijay had better knowledge about the route and I was following him, by 3am both of us were drained after climbing for almost 1.5hr, we thought we will take rest for a while and layer down on the boulder, we didn't knee when we went to sleep, but suddenly I woke up and looked at the time it was 4am we slept for almost 1hr, I worked up vijay and we started again,  from nowhere we started talking about ghost stories now, both were scared we were alone in a remote place and there is no one around even a slight breeze of wind was scary for us by then, somehow the topic changed and we were discussing about college days and we were almost reaching the top.

It was by 5.30 am in the morning we reached the top, it was very much windy and it was too cold, it could be around 7 to 8 degree Celsius, I was totally drained and wanted water, vijay had told me that one every Saturday and Sunday a guy would be at the top with his tent selling water, tea, omlet and Maggie, once reached the tent I asked for water and drank the full bottle of water later came to know that he charged more than the double of mrp, but I thought it fare enough because of the difficulty the guy would have faced to get so many load to the top,  we ordered maggi and shared it. Then after resting was 15min at the tent we moved toward the kind of Fort which was made, by this time another team of around 5 to 6 guys has also made to the top, it was the right time for us the sun has just started raising and view was beautiful but it was not the same later as the loud blocked us to see the sunrise, we were depressed and we moved towards the other sport on the top of Hill. 

Vijay the dare devil started doing some stupid stuff by sitting at the edge of Hill and asked me to take pics, i warned yelled at him and finally started taking pics, by then even I was fascinated being daredevil a d sat tha same spot and asked him to take pics, to look below it was too depth. By this time it was bitty sunny and we were able to see nandi Hill too which was located at the other end, then we went near the temple which was not taken care by any one and many people used to drink at this temple,  we couldn't do anything took few snaps and we decided to leave after a while,

while returning we saw few many people coming and there were girls too, was impressed by there courage and strength as they made to the top, we started descending and we saw many people were ascending the hill by then and few people asked us for the route, when we reached half way the clod was scattered and the view was like we were in heaven above the clouds, 

we spent considerable amount of time taking pics, and the we stated toward the bottom.Vijay was moving very fast I couldn't make to his speed, but we descended much quicker,  we reached the bottom by 7am and took the bike and started towards the home, in between we came across the town of muddenahalli, this is place where Vishweshwaraya was born we stopped there for a while took few pic of the road walls givning the information had a cup of tea at the corner stall and started to home again we were distracted by the route signs there was a route map which showed all the nearby archaeological spots we were tempted to go to Kaivara and koti lingeshwara which was around  70km from the current place we moved in that direction for 5km then we realized we are too much tired of trekking and made a U turn and headed toward Bangalore, reached home in another 1.5hrs had a good nap, woke up by evening.