Makalidurga

Our Cab to office is known for its unique initiatives. One of which has been trekking; after two exhilarating treks this was the third and I must say the group has grown. The destination this time was - Makalidurga, near Doddaballapura (12 Kms from Ghati Subramanya temple).

On a nice Wednesday morning of 26th January, ten of us left Bangalore in two cars at around 6:45 AM. We met the third car at Yelahanka were our colleague V was waiting for us. We drove to Makalidurga which is a left deviation on main road that goes via village of Makalli. About two kilometers gone on the mud road, you find a parking spot on the right. We packed our breakfast and started the trek right away.

The trek is easy and there are some directions painted in red and yellow that if gets unnoticed (which is quite possible during the beginning of the trek as the paint has faded away) you may end up viewing the summit from every possible direction around it. :-)

Our climb was very relaxed, with light topics that created laughs. We stopped at a right place to have our breakfast to have packed chapathi’s and Saagu. We reached the summit after almost 2 hours of climb with that speed and I am sure it can be completed in 1.5 hours otherwise.

View on top – A fort in ruins, but most of the stones look polished as reasonably of the recent times that the era of kings, a small temple with Shiva idol with dry flowers representing the sign of being unattended for a few days now, with Nandi rejecting the view of a hill top and devoted towards his lord, some broken idols lying here and there carelessly.

On the summit we picked a best spot to view the trains wind and twist through the hills, several lakes with lorry’s being washed, a National highway with tiny little four wheelers speeding to some destination unknown to us. After a good time with more light talks at the summit, we walked back to the base which took about 1.5 Hours or may be less.

Our next stop was Ghati Subramanya, which is a left deviation the way back to Bangalore from Makali. Being a holiday, the temple was extremely crowded. We had to follow a long queue that twisted and turned around the temple for 1.5 hours before we got in to the main shrine to witness a beautiful idol of Subramanya and Narasimha in the backdrop. During our wait, we witnessed several interesting characters – several wanting to break into the queue, several protesting, several giving up , many monkeys relaxing on the roof, some trying to grab the offerings and one man who thought waiting at a temple was no queue when people stocked in front of malls in city.


A television set with live telecast of the main shrine; show an advanced technology influence to the old beliefs. Many worshipped the image on the television. We drove back to Doddaballapura where we had evening snacks in a hotel and then stopped by V’s house for coffee and good conversation with his mother on her travels around India and religious importance of some places around Bangalore. She stressed upon the point that whenever we visit some place we must learn the historical importance of the place and should read books on them before visiting them and then the whole visit becomes more meaningful. True.

Ghati Subramanya has an interesting story. The hill was filled with several snakes and hence they were under the threat of attack by the kites, in their fear they received shelter in Narasimha who offered to establish his’ powers to prevent the attack. The Narashimha behind the Subramanya idol represents this belief.

It was a very nice day with interesting short lived moments that many a times emerge out of nowhere and disappear again to nowhere after being enhanced with a laugh creating a fun moment.