Savandurga Trek - Ultimate Monolith

My first Trek with Chennai Trekking Club (CTC) started here with this huge Monolith Rock. This trek turned out to be a mind-boggling experience for me. 20 of us started with this trek. After 6 hours comfortable overnight train journey we reached bangalore early morning. We refreshed ourselves with a light breakfast and started our journey towards the largest monolith hills in the world. It took us about 2 hours by bus to reach the base of Savandurga from Bangalore. Looking at the beast now, we understood why it was tagged one of the largest monoliths in the world in wikipedia, definitely the largest in India.


It was just one huge piece of solid rock without any trace of even grass. It was about 1200 metres high from sea level. After seeing such a marvelous creation by nature, no one couldn't resist climbing the shortest way up. But only after climbing about 50 feet, we all realized that it was not as easy as it looks. It was bit easy to climb up but looking back down was a heart-throbbing moment, It was dead steep!














So we started coming down n took a easier route to climb up. Well there isn't actually any path in particular just a less steep access route to the top. It took us about 2 to 3 hours to reach the top. We actually took quite steep way up and only after reaching did we realized that there was an easier route too which we took to come back. We all found it bit difficult to climb as we were losing our energy exponentially, hard to take even a step further up. We all got exhausted completely in d mid way itself.

The only thing we had remaining was our hope to reach the hill top. We took some rest and continued our climb. The climate was undoubtedly fantastic with some cold breeze flying out. So this made our climb bit easier.

The top was somewhat flat and due to presence of soil had some plants and trees. There were some ruins of some old fort or building of some kind where we spent quite some time taking photos. There was a small temple on top which was also the highest point of the mountain. We relaxed and simply enjoyed the beautiful weather.The weather gods couldn't be more favorable to us. the hide and seek game between clouds and sun continued all day long. From the top we could see the dense forest all around us and a beautiful river.

We decided to find a way to the river through the dense vegetation as soon as we reached the bottom. After we had relaxed enough in the strong winds that kept blowing continuously on top and took group photos.Then we decided to start so that we will have enough time to find the river and play in it. It took us nearly an hour to come to the base point. We had some theplas for our lunch brought by the CTC organiser from bangalore.

With no more time to waste after lunch, we started heading in the direction of the river which was visible from top. We followed a path through the forest but were soon confused after traveling few hundred meters about direction to go to. Some kids who were followed us decided to become our guides and told us that they knew the path to the river and so we followed them, and after about 4 to 5 kilometers through the forest, we finally found the beautiful river. As always with trekkers seeing the beautiful water no one could resist jumping in and almost all of us jumped in it. We played in it for another hour and then started heading back to the base of the hill where our van was waiting for us. We reached the van in perfect time just before sunset and before the rain started pouring down.

With a combination of rock climbing, walking through forest for few kilometers and swimming in a beautiful river and not to forget the great weather we had all day long it was definitely a very enjoyable experience for all the trekkers. The trek turned out to be just perfect for first timers and all of them had a great time.