Skandagiri was doing the rounds among the trekkers in BLR. I just had received an invitation to view the pictures in the picasa web albums belonging to my friend Raju. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the pics. They were standing on the edge of a cliff with a sea of never ending clouds below them. I decided then and there to make it to skandagiri. It is also known as kalavara betta. I spoke to my co-trekkers, Anirudh and Narayan to decide upon the dates. The next question was when to leave. There was no shelter on top of the hill to spend the night and none of us owned a tent. Anirudh and Narayan wanted to leave BLR in the middle of the night so that we could climb the hill in the night and reach the hilltop just before sunrise. Plan was sounding good. Only issue was I had never driven that early in the morning. We started at 3 in the morning on a Saturday/Sunday night. It just took an hour for us to reach Chikkaballapur. We saw a cop standing near a junction on the National Highway. We checked the route with him. We were exactly at the junction near the temple where we were supposed to take a left to head to the village. He gave us directions informing that when we hit a dead end, that would mean we are at the village. We headed in that direction on narrow roads. We travelled a few kilometers and saw a person directing us to the parking area. We were there. A forest guard was ready to collect entry fees and informed that we could utilize the guide services which we weren't keen of. Narayan checked for the start of the trail with him. He promptly gave us directions and asked us to go behind the temple where we will be able to spot the trail easily.
We started our walk, it was 4:30 AM in the morning. I looked up and to my surprise I saw a full moon. We thought it was a good co-incidence; a night trek and a full moon make a good combination. A while later we were behind the temple. The three of us started looking around for the trail. We were looking and looking but couldn't find the trail. Our torches didn't help us much. Every point we tried to move ahead we were at a dead end. Thick shrubs blocked our entry. Time was running out and we were nowhere near the track. We decided to make our own way. Locating a trail in the dead of the night is indeed a difficult task. We sneaked our way through the shrubs for a while and slowly climbed the hill inch by inch. Narayan who was leading the team finally found the path to the hilltop. We felt relieved. From there it was a cakewalk. We hardly made use of the torch. The full moon lit the surrounding enough for us to walk easily. The sky started turning red, which kept me in the doubt if we would make it before the sunrise. We still had a lot of distance to cover. We increased our pace gradually so was the sky, turning red gradually. It looked like we and the sun were competing against each other; who would appear first. The sky lit up completely, and I lost all hopes but maintained the pace. I saw a few people yelling on the top. I could hear their voices loud and clear; then I realized that we were almost there. Yes, we were on top and I looked at the East to find that the sun was yet to come out. We did beat him in the race. The sky was painted red, it made a good opportunity to take beautiful pictures. We weren't expecting company at all, but were unhappy when we found so many people on the hilltop, most of them who had camped in the night. I was expecting a silent sunrise, but we weren't that lucky.
As we got the first glimpse of the sun, I readied the camera to take the pictures. The sunrise was something very different, not found anywhere. As the sun started climbing, the reflection of it started appearing on the ground, mind you there was no water source anywhere in that direction. It was entirely fascinating, marvelous, spectacular and fabulous. Well too many adjectives I believe. But they aren't enough to describe the beauty of the sunrise. All of us enjoyed watching the sun climb up until its full size was visible. A few snaps were taken. Then we saw the moon on the other side still glowing in the clear sky. It wasn't an eclipse season to have them on the same side as the sun in the east; had it been on the same side of the sun, I would bet you that would have been the best sunrise witnessed by me in my entire life. It was time for the moon to pose with us. We took a couple of pics and suddenly found Narayan missing. We looked around and no where was he to be found. I saw him sitting on a boulder looking at the sunrise. Typical Narayan I thought. He was enjoying the sunrise in a spot where it was free of all the noise the other teams were making. We spent some more time on the hilltop and then started our descent from the East side which appears to be shorter than the North trail. We were back in our car and then headed towards BLR. It got over in less than 11 hours, but the sunrise would remain in memory for long.