Prashanth Ellina

I went to another short trek yesterday. This time we went to a hill in Guduvancheri near the “Pentecostal mission”. This one was around two kilometers from the main bus-stop of Guduvancheri.

We chose this hill for several reasons

1) It is bigger than the one we went to last time

2) It is close as before to my place (in Maraimalai nagar)

3) We wanted to try out a hill with ample vegetation (although we were to have a particularly painful surprise later in the evening)

Aditya (my friend from Computer science department) and I went for a recon mission to check out a viable route to the location along with a place to leave the bikes and bags that we wouldn’t need on the hill. This was at 2:00 P.M.

After having found a comfortable route, we memorized the landmarks and the route and headed back to home-base (fancy! Well I like to dramatize) i.e to my place. We packed in all the stuff we would need like water bottles, matches, a frying-pan, spatula, egg-box, a pruning knife to make way for us on the hill, a digital camera to take snaps of us conquering the peak, kerosene, newspapers, piece of old cloth etc. Having done with the packing we started off on bike to meet the rest of the people (Vikraman, Sridhar, Sudheer, Jatin) at Guduvancheri bus-stop. We bought some eggs there and checked our torch-lights and then set off on two bikes to the location. You might be wondering how two bikes and six people went together, well, I should say, just like last time!

We parked the bikes in a house near to the foot of the hill (which reminds me of Vikraman who was quite eager to have a snap taken with the lady over there and would have gone on to do so had not her husband come out then). Then we started walking towards the hill. After a kilometer’s walk we got there.

We found a used track and decided to follow that instead of cutting right across the vegetation. We later thanked our past selves for having taken that decision because we found that the vegetation on the hill was not very friendly. In fact, at any attempt at friendly contact, they pricked us to hell . Most plants there were thorny and we found it increasingly hard to keep going and I would not blame Sudheer for being especially whiny and for constantly reminding us that we were out of our minds and for dragging him into hell’s drawing room! (Of course he was the happiest of the lot after the trek got over. He kept saying “Man, that was wonderful”. Although I suspect he was happy for other obvious reasons).

We labored hard for the next hour up the slope. Along the way we made many more friendly “contacts” with our vegetarian friends. We stopped only to take snaps and to check on the painful rewards that had been proffered us by them. I remember Vikraman exacting particularly venomous vengeance on one Cactus plant that dared prick him. He used the pruning knife liberally and did away with it.

Half-way up the hill we dropped the plan of reaching the hill top for various reasons like failing light, fear of vile reptiles and of course because we found no track.

We made a stone stove and collected dry twigs and started a fire to heat the pan. As soon as the pan got heated we started making omelets. That was real good fun. After eating them and getting various parts of our bodies singed we started the descent.

It was tough initially due to the steepness of the slope but after some time we got used to that and descended faster. Mid-way down the slope it grew dark and we switched on our torch lights but realized that the light they were producing would not do and until that realization came about we ran into some more of our vegetarian friends. Then we stopped and made a kerosene cloth torch with a stick that we cut out of a plant and wrapping the old cloth around it. We wetted the cloth with kerosene and put a burning match to it and Viola! – Light.

Feeling very much like primitive cave men, we got to the foot of the hill and found that we could not figure out the way out to the road. After a fifteen-minute period of utter confusion we happened upon one dirt track and following which we reached a spot we had been to before and instantly tracked it down to the house where we left our bikes.

The amused residents looked at us and the kerosene torch and I heard quite a few snickers around us. We said goodbye to them and biked it to the bus stop where out trek ended.

I almost forgot to mention that we found treasure on the hill. Well not gold nuggets and all but seeds! (Well, should not have said treasure – something interesting then). These were colored red and black and shaped like eggs. I have seen them being used as eyes in idols of Lord Vinayaka.