Maribetta
It’s been about six months since I last hit the trekking trail and I thought it was high time I got started again. Bangalore Mountaineering Club (BMC) was organizing a trek to a little known hill called Maribetta near Kanakpura, and I thought I’d join in. So last minute plans were made, bags dusted, camera charged and off I went at the crack of dawn.
I met up with the rest of my little group at the usual spot at Domlur. For a change we made fairly good progress and actually reached the start of the trail a good hour before time. There we hired a few locals to guide us to the top, made pals with the mandatory dog and set off to climb Maribetta.
My first thought on seeing the hill was – That’s not all that tall, shouldn’t take too long to climb. Little did I know how wrong I’d be.
We soon hit the trail that went over a small hill. It was all good until we crossed it and it was only after that did we realize why the organizer’s had asked people to wear full sleeves shirts. The rest of the trail weaved through forest, with thorny bushes on either side!!
The trail that we took, went kind of round the main hill and up a smaller one. From there the idea was to take the connecting ridge all the way to the top.
In spite of the thorns, we made good progress and were almost all the way to the top pretty soon. But that was almost because we soon hit a pretty steep section of rock. From then on for the next hundred odd meters it was climbing up on all fours to reach the top of the section. After that bit the going was easy and we soon reached the top of the hill.
View from the top
The view from the top of the hill was breathtaking, with clear views for miles around the hill.
We had a quick lunch and spent some time admiring the view from the top. While we had aimed at staying for a few hours at the summit, the sharp afternoon sun and lack of shelter forced us to begin the trip back much earlier than planned. Since we wanted to climb down the hill as soon as possible, our guides decided to take us down another route.
Initially the route seemed fine and went through some forest patches, but pretty soon it became quite steep. At one point we were actually climbing down a steep (60 degree ?) rock face, literally sliding down !!! The journey down took it’s toll on us – torn bags, scuffed/torn pants were the order of the day. Oh and somewhere along the way, we all ran out of water.
We eventually made it down and rushed to our transport and made a beeline for the nearest place where we could get some water. Our thirst satiated, we made our way back to Bangalore reaching back in the late evening. Overall, it was quite a decent trek and a great way to get back to trekking.
