The Makalidurga Trek

Trek Location

Not many people know about this beautiful trek which is situated around 60 kms from Bangalore city and a perfect getaway for a one day trip.

You can get more information about it from this wiki link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makalidurga

Pre Planning

I and Sonal have been planning for a day out since few weeks and the idea of going for a trekking struck to our minds, so we started looking for places, and finally decided to go to Makalidurga for trekking. The next thing was to form a group which was not easy :) The only person who showed interest in our plan was Sandeep, so we decided that even if its just the 3 of us we will still go for it. 

Plan Execution

Early morning road view from car

Plan was to assemble at my house on Saturday (24-May-2014) and plan for next day. Three of us met at my place and then preparation started for the trek, first thing was to sleep early and wake up by 4:00 so that can start from home by 4:30, we all tried going to bed early, which didn't happen :) But we had Sonal who made sure that we wake up at 4:00 and start by 4:30. As planned we got ready and started from home at 4:30, outside it was still dark and drizzling...

We crossed the Bangalore International Airport and some how lost our way but we had HERE Maps (even though this app shucks) to locate the correct route :) Soon we crossed Doddaballapura and destination was just 10 kms from this place :) 

Bollywood Movie Set

Makalidurg Village

Setup of Makalidurga village was so like Old Bollywood Movies: Small village with handful of people, a namesake railway station, paddy fields, crops, pets, cow dug smell, greenery, small houses with hills around, good roads with very few vehicle running on it, and a big city (Bangalore) is like few kms away...

Parking Place

Railway Station

Now the next thing was to find the parking space. We roamed around here and there to find the parking, but there was no parking as such and there was hardly any people whom we can request for parking. So we decided to find the route to railway station and look for parking, after a while we found the railway station and asked the railway employees if we can park our vehicle near there office. Nice people, they allowed us :)

At the railway station we met an old uncle he asked us "Are you guys coming from Bangalore?", we said yes. He was like many people like you guys come here for trekking and he guided a bit is to from where we need to start and where we need to go and all. 

Starting Point

Way to starting point passes through the railway track

We started from railway station and passed through railway tracks. After walking for almost 2 kms on the railway track we found the start point of the trek.

After walking for few meters, we passed through a temple and once we crossed that we could see the muddy way. We started walking towards the mud way. 

Mud way

To my surprise this place was filled with greenery. The mix of green and brown was very soothing to eyes, we hardly get to see this kind of beauty in Bangalore.

While walking on the mud way we were trying to look for the marking stones. We had read in the internet that there are marking on the stone which will guide us to the destination but then there was only few stones we could see that to with no markings.

Goats

After walking for a while we saw a herd of goats grazing and soon a small boy appeared, he was the owner of these goats. 

The boy stared talking to us. He was asking us, if we need a guide for the trek, we told him we are fine, still he kept on insisting, I think he wanted to earn some pocket money for himself. Well, we had plenty of time so we wanted to explore the place ourselves. 

Stone Hopping  

Stone hopping ;)

As we were climbing up, the mud was getting replaced with more and more bigger stones and the only way to move forward is to hop from one rock stone to another. 

View from Top

While hopping from one stone to another we could finally able to find the marking stones for which we were looking at the start.

Well to be very frank you don't need to look for the marking stones while doing this trek, you could find your own ways like we did.

The Arrow Mark

As we were approaching the top point of the hill, the lake was getting smaller and smaller but then the view was covering more and more area. 

You should do this trek only to see this view of the village which changes as you climb up and up into the granite hill rock.

The Scenic View and Fort

The last Arrow mark

Even if it was mid day and sunny, there was a cool breeze on the way which made this trekking so wonderful.

Once you see this arrow mark that means you have almost reached at your destination. You can see the wall of the fort.

The Fort

After crossing the last stone you will reach this fort which has an old Shiva temple too. 

You can enjoy the 360 degree view of the village from the fort as it is on top of the hill.

The only door left in the Fort!

As we were just three of us in the whole trek and also there was no other group which was trekking, I had a feeling that I own this Fort and the surroundings of it ;)

The return walk from the Fort to down was equally nice.

Takeaways from the trek:

• 162 kms drive + walk on the railway track + walk on the granite rock hill = Ultimate Fun! 
• The trek is very very easy, anyone can do it!
• This place is worth visiting even though it's hard to locate the route in first place.
• Railway station is the safest place to park if someone wants to go for this trekking, as they hardly have any parking place or else you will be forced to park in open field and I am not sure how safe that would be :)
• People usually do the night trek here, but day trek is equally good at this place.
• I will give 5 out of 5 for this scenic trek.