For a long time I was wondering when would I start blogging!! Maybe I didn't find something worthwhile to talk about or was quite lazy to start one.....I guess the second one sounds more realistic :P Finally, the trek to Parvathamalai broke this jinx and spurred me to post about my experience.
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| The vertical part in this photo is the one we had scaled |
I was bitten by the trekking bug, courtesy my Manager who took me along to our previous trek atop Mt. Annamalai at
Thiruvannamalai. During our previous trek he was describing about Parvathamalai and how arduous and challenging it would be to scale this mountain. We almost forgot about this place in our daily rigmarole until the trekking bug came calling along. We decided to climb Parvathamalai sometime in the last week of November.
An enthusiastic group of 4 people, we boarded the bus at Perungalathur to Tiruvannamalai on a gloomy Saturday afternoon, hoping that the rain gods would relent and stop the battering South Tamilnadu was receiving for the past few days. Some of us were worried if the hill would be slippery owing to the incessant rains.
We reached Tiruvannamalai at 6 pm after a tiresome journey, as soon as we alighted from the bus we witnessed a sight which I hadn't seen since my childhood. The
Karthigai Deepam was alight atop Mt.Annamalai. What a beautiful sight to behold, all our fatigue vanished on witnessing this auspicious moment. We checked into a hotel and refreshed ourselves and visited the
Annamalaiyar Temple and offered our prayers. We had a quick dinner and hit the sack early with the excitement about our ensuing trek lingering in our minds.
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| The way up the hill. |
One of the difficult things about this trip was waking up at 4 am and that too on a Sunday morning! My first instinct was to break my cell, but then I realised that this wasn't home. We started at 5 am from the hotel and left for kadaladi village which is on the foothills of Parvathamalai.
Parvathamalai is about 30 kms from Thiruvannamalai and is 4560 ft above sea level. It has a 2000 year old temple atop and the presiding deity is Lord Mallikarjunaswamy. We reached Kadaladi village by 5:30 am and began our trek. Just as in a typical South Indian rural village, people were already up and going about their chores unmindful of our presence.
The trek starts from an Ashram which is at the end of Kadaladi village. With daybreak, we had sufficient light to see our path. One of the valuable lessons from my previous trek was not to rush ahead, but go ahead slowly. The muddy roads slowly gave way to a rugged path. Due to the rains, lots of grass and shrubs had grown along the path. There was a nice smell in the air from the medicinal herbs which are a part of this hill. Maybe that justified the story I read about the formation of this hill. The origin of Parvathamalai is that it was formed when a part of the Sanjeevini mountain that Lord Hanuman carried to Lanka, fell down to form this existing hill. Anyways this was a welcome change from the petrol fumes we inhale daily in chennai.
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| Start of Gadaparai padhai |
As we went uphill, the flora and fauna seemed to grow thicker. We also had to be careful to avoid slipping since the rocks were wet. After about half an hour we took a break to recharge ourselves with some biscuits and water. We inched our way up the hill, with each and every step my lungs had to work overtime. Even with the cold weather, I was sweating profusely. To keep ourselves engaged each of us narrated various stories about the places we had seen and encountered. No wonder, my Manager is a past master at trekking, he barely broke a sweat since he had climbed quite a few and his experiences enthralled us and egged us to climb. It was 7 am and we reached a shop!!(yes, a shop half way up the hill) which was serving fresh lemon soda. With the position I was in, I downed a bottle in no time. A really refreshing a much needed drink!
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| The Shiva temple atop the mountain |
While on our way up, we saw quite a few people coming downhill, who had stayed overnight at the temple and were coming back. Most of them warned us to remove our shoes since it was slippery near the top. I later realized how correct they were! Anyways ignoring their advice, we went ahead and reached the Gadaparai padi. Gadaparai in tamil means boulders or big stones and padi means steps. Even though my manager had briefed us about the steep climb, my heart sank a bit on seeing this monster rock. We only had rods driven into the boulder and some dents to place our foot. 3 steps/dents up the hill, I realised I should have left my shoe behind since it was slippery. Half way up the rock, I made a classical mistake of seeing the height I had scaled, that sight sent shivers down my spine, what a sheer drop it was!!!. With 2 rods for support, for a moment I felt I was dangling from the rock. With some help from my manager, I scaled the rock. Then we reached a rift between 2 hills and some rail track kind of thing was put between them, this was even scarier than the boulder, since there was a 50 ft drop just below us. Slowly we reached the last phase of our trek.
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| Looks scary, aint it? |
The view from this place was amazing, the landscape looked like a quilt of different colours with a river running across it like a silver lining. The breeze had picked up and slowly we were surrounded by clouds. We finally reached the top of the mountain atop which rested a small shiva temple. The feeling of having reached the top coupled with even more breathtaking views made it worth every strain I had faced.
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| The Landscape from above!! |
Many would agree with me if I would say the tougher part of a trek is the descent downhill. Somehow I emerged unscathed but the descent down the rock was really really scary! On the way downhill we stopped by the same shop and had fresh hot kuzhi paniyaram that literally tasted like manna. Tired but really satisfied we came reached the ashram by 11:30 am and left for Tiruvannamalai
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| Between two hillocks |
Some of the beautiful shots from atop the hill. Thanks to cloud cover around us, the photos all look a bit hazy!!
