Mondays... weekends... life
Mondays bore me.
This is unsurprising but I feel compelled to state for the record that a Monday seems to bring with it all the pointlessness of the routine, and a reminder that the work you lugged home for the weekend never got done anyway.
Anyway, one more hike this weekend - to Rangaswamy Hills, part of BR Hills, and therefore a part of the Kaveri wildlife sanctuary, about an hour and a half down from Art of Living on Kanakpura Road.
It’s a small hill, 4 kms up and not particularly steep or rocky. It’s covered with a sort of scrub forest though so there were thorns aplenty. We climbed up in about two and a half hour, after pulling ourselves of the main trail. The main trail was occupied by a group of schoolkids and their three instructors who will probably never want to have kids of their own after dealing with this bunch.
The top of the hill affords a nice view naturally and is also very windy. There is a nice large slab of rock at the edge. You can stand on it and pretend the wind will blow you off any minute or sit on it and dangle your feet into nothingness. We had lunch on a larger rock some distance away - lemon rice, curd rice and pickle. Plus rainwater as the clouds that hovered decided to stop hovering.
The rain didn’t last long though so we parked ourselves on another rock face while the sun stayed out, and discussed the way down.
The return was through a different route. We took a trail down the other side of the hill, in search of an elephant watering hole. As it turned out the watering hole was dry so we climbed up a smaller neighbouring hill, and then down again. Wildlife spotting happened in the form of an elephant footmark and later, a small rustle in the forests above, which may have been a bison or a wild boar apparently.
We encountered more thorns, more scrub, and thicker forest cover but had an easy way down. There was one more drenching too. The nicest high point towards the end was ripe tamarind off a tree.
And then it was back to Sunday evening Bangalore traffic.
Edit: Also saw what was apparently a bear trail - the bushes had been manipulated into a sort of archway, at about waist height. Imagine bear on all fours ambling through the foliage. They apparently have a few regularly used trails which they use to go to the watering holes or to the villages at night, and hence the bushes remained shaped that way. There were no paw marks though.