Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Monsoon climbers....

Every season has its own way of wooing nature and nature has its own way of reciprocating and monsoon is one where everything in nature is soaked clean fresh and gives a soothing feeling, seeing rain in a city or a village on a sea shore or forest is different at each of these places but on top of a mountain its ultimate heavenly feeling, it's only the mountains and rain and the person on top of it, a complete blend.
Though it's completely insane and not at all advisable to climb a mountain during rains it's a different kind of madness when we started towards Ambaragudda, all the mountains hills completely covered with a green blanket so very fresh and inviting which nature enthusiast would ignore or not be tempted to climb those hills.
YHA Mangalore finalized ambaragudda trek and we started, i had visited this place many other times but not in monsoon, we parked our van and leading the team started our climb in heavy rain, there was cool breeze very thick fog and raining continuously.
Few years back this place also faced the threat of depletion of forest and other natural resources owing to mining operations but now this place is safe & also Karnataka Bio-Divercify board recently announced as Heritage Site, in order to prevent the landscape from soil erosion, protects the Shola forest and the corridor for wild animals and watershed value of the region. Few places affected by mining still we can see few places affected by big mass of Manganese mining.
After a few minutes climb we reached the top but we could not get a clear view due to thick fog, normally we can see 2 sharps humps in the top of the ‘Ambaragudda’ so we stepped towards to the next hump in chilly breeze. We can’t spend much time on the top of the mountain because of heavy rain & strong winds. On return we saw some local estates slowly acquiring the land of Ambaragudda step by step. Whatever happens hope the beauty of the Ambaragudda would remain the same. Though completely soaked in the end it was worth all the strain and attack of the leeches a wonderful monsoon climb made us feel light and fresh.....