For the 75th Independence day we planned for a nice trip and I came up with an Itinerary to do 2 treks cleanup the place and then visit a 11th century Hoysala Temple and finally visit a dam waterfall and take a nice dip. The first part of the blog contains details about the Huliyur Durga trek and the Malleswara betta trek aka the Hemagiri betta.
Huliyurdurga is the 9th and final Navadurgas around Bangalore which I haven't trekked before and though I heard its a tough trek in monsoon planned for it. We started around 5.30 am in the morning and left to Huliyurdurga and right from my home to the base of the trek the roads were silky smooth and we reached in about 1.5 hrs including a 15 mins stop to breakfast where we had awesome Set dosas and sahu...
We were 5 in my car and waited 5 mins for Nikhil and Keerthana who came in another car and till the time they reached we were talking with the kids in the village and all told its quite difficult to reach the peak as its very slippery post a point and anyways we thought of giving a try and reconsidering our decisions and plan accordingly.
Keerthana came and we started our trek and initial 10 mins its an easy step path where there is a temple at the base and no one was around. We did a whole trek looking for the place to go up about 360* of the hill but couldn't gauge where is the way and finally we found a marking which pointed to climb vertically up and we were surprised and thrilled to move up..
The climb was difficult and for sure cannot be managed by Kids or Elders. We went half way up and realised we need to cross a boulder which was very very slippery and due to rains. We decided to give up and not to take any risk as same place will be very much accessible and easy to climb in winters and summers. When we came back the temple had a small pooja and the priest said the same to come and do this trek post December.. We weren't disappointed as we had another trek to be done and said to us its a good decision as safety is very important...
Post this we started to drive to Hemagiri betta aka Malleswara betta which is some 7-8kms from Huliyurdurga and parked the car on a base which has a temple and parking space. There were steps going to the hill but we planned to hike via the grasslands which gave more scenic views. We started to climb and wow thats such a beautiful grassland with lovely blue skies peaking out.
We took about 45 mins to reach the peak and at the peak there is a beautiful Malleswara temple and a pond with loads of plastics and waste. We spent some time enjoying the silence at the peak and then the group started to clean up all the plastics and within 20 mins removed almost 50 kgs of plastics and the place looked much cleaner and nice post this. We said to ourselves from Independence from Plastics is the best gift we can give to the biologically sensitive places like Lakes and Hills.
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