Important information : Drive to Chikballapur (max. 2 hours) from Bangalore. After entering the town ask someone the location of Papagni Math. If you are going from Bangalore, you have to take left turn from Chikballapur. If you are planning day time trek, then Nandi Hills and Skandagiri will be clearly visible from Chikballapur. So it should not be a problem reaching there. The trek starts from Papagni math. Reaching there you can hire local guide. The rest of the paragraph is for those who plan to venture themselves. One way starts right form the place of parking, but this would not take you all the way to the top. There is another road just left to the Papagni math. Take a left turn and walk towards the basement of the hill. This road is smooth and goes along the plane and you may wonder that you are going in the wrong direction. Keep walking for around 15 minutes upto a point where the road gets divided, one of them continuing along the plane and another starts climbing. Take a left turn and start climbing. Walk for 20-30 minutes before you reach the final bifurcation. The road going straight is going to take you towards jungle and the road climbing left will take you towards you destination (presumably Skandagiri peak). If you are planning to trek at night, I would strongly suggest to hire a local guide.
Our adventure : Ever since I saw the picture of a man standing on the top of the clouds, I wanted to trek to the Skandagiri peak. We planned to start late at night from Bangalore, so that we can climb to the top in the early morning. Our deperture got delayed due to torrential rain right from the evening (I abandoned all hopes at one point of time). We started at 2 am from Bangalore and reached near Papagni math in two hours.
Our first blunder : It was very dark. A few local people surrounded us. After little bit of haggling we decided to be brave (rather foolhardy) and trek without the help of a local guide. We took the very first road, adjacent to the car parking and started walking at frantic pace, desperate to be at the top before sunrise. After trekking to some height I looked back and Bangalore city was glowing far away, a spectacular sight indeed. But the road ahead was becoming steeper, road side bushes denser and climbing (literally so) tougher with each passing moment. Upward movement was becoming slower and slower and after ninety minutes or so it came to a halt. The slope was too steep, very difficult to climb up and vice versa (I mean very easy to slide down). By that time the dawn was setting in. Very soon we realized that we can not be at the top before sunrise and worse, we have to trek down. The retreat took another hour. Back to the plain, with plenty of pain and hardly any gain - but still high on spirit, we started again, this time apparently on the right track.
Oh no .. not again!! : Very soon we were back on the right track. By now we met people returning after the triumph and were very confident of achieving the feat ourselves in another hour or so. But Murphy's law (which states that "everything that can go wrong will go wrong") was rarely violated during the whole trip, right from the beginning !!! There exist one bifurcation, one road takes you to the peak and another towards the jungle. We missed (messed again !) the right track (left turn rather) completely, went straight ahead and very soon the grass along the road side started growing taller as we headed straight towards the jungle. (moral of the story : if you always walk straight in your life, you will never reach your goal). It took us another half an hour to realise the mistake and turn back.
Third time lucky : By the time we were on the right track, we were "dead exhausted". After endeavoring for some more time, we decided (and wisely so) to call it a day. Taking some rest, we began the final climb down with a broken heart and a vow to conquer next time.
Thanks to Pratap, Titas, Bota, Sukrit, Anirban, Soupi, Supratim and Ankur for making the trip memorable.
Part II
