Sakleshpur

Trekking with strangers can be a lot of fun. Discovered that on my trek to Sakleshpur this weekend. The western ghats were overwhelmingly beautiful after the more than adequate monsoon rains this year.
The group that had come was interesting too. Made the trek a nice experience. For comic relief,there was this DJ from one of the famous clubs in bangalore. He looked the part too, with the hip-hop clothes and the american accent. He spoke the 'pulp-fiction' dialect. You know, the kind where the letters 'f', 'u', 'c' and 'k' are used more often than the letter 'e'. He was obsessed with his knife and utilised all his free time sharpening it. He narrated a lot of self-glorifying anecdotes about his nocturnal ways. He had us beleive that he has a lot of clout in the underworld too. His tough-boy image would really have been believable if he hadn't asked the trek guide to hold his hand while crossing the bridges ! After that he was just a joker. Talking about jokers, there was a genuinely humourous Bihari among us, who had us in splits with his wisecracks and witty stories and theories.There were a bunch of newbies who really didn'tknow what to expect from a trek. It was amusing watching them react when they realised they had to crap in the wild.
The trek also provided a lot of fodder for my photographic experiments. I was really proud of one of the panorama shots that I managed from the top of the hill. The trail from Edakumeri to Kaginahare was really fantastic. The forest was full of bamboos. There is some weird kind of harmony in south indian bamboo forests. The sweeping lines of the stalks and the verdant richness of the foliage. The spooky sound that the stalks make when they rub against each other. It's like being in a dream.
After a good trek, to be back amidst the traffic and the buzz of a city is always upsetting. The journey itself was scary. The driver was in a hurry to get back home and he scared the hell out of us. The music that he played was hardly uplifting either. Just glad that I made it back sane and in one piece!