Antaragange trek

Its been almost an year since the plan to trek Antaragange started. It used to get postponed multiple times due to one or the other reasons. Finally, it saw the light of the day on 17th July 2016.

Team: Mahesh, Nanthan, Naveen, RajeshNag, Senthil, Shajin and Vijay.
Difficulty level: Moderate
Transport: 4 of us by bike and the rest 3 by KSRTC (Terminal 3, PF 8) bus.

We all started our journey towards Kolar at around 8 in the morning. It took us around 1 hour 30 minutes to reach Kolar through a decent NH75 highway. We all got together around 10 AM in Kolar bus stand and had breakfast in an hotel before beginning our trek.

Antaragange is around 4 kms from bus stand. The three of us took an auto while the rest reached by bike. 

Antara Gange literally means "Ganges from deep" in Kannada. 
The Milestone!
Temple arch
Staircase leading to temple
There is a pond in the temple which gets a continuous flow of underground water from the mouth of a stone bull (basava). The Kasi Vishweshwara temple is the main attraction of this place. This place is also referred to as Dakshin Kashi or Kashi of the South. The mountain contains a number of volcanic rocks of various sizes and naturally carved caves around it. 
Basava
Temple

Small temple inside the pond
Millipede
We were expecting monkey menace after reading many blogs. Interestingly, they were relatively sober and hardly mischievous towards the visitors. 

Monkey Family
Initial trek was through rocky hills with defined trails. It took us 30 mins to reach the place where the actual cave exploration begins. Our expectation of a cloudy weather turned vain. It was quite sunny which made most of us sweat.



As we reached the cave entrance, we were equally excited and anxious at the same time as we felt it to be quite risky to explore the caves without a guide. There were another group of 7 people, who were in a similar situation like us. Fortunately, a little boy of 10, who has made his weekend job as a guide came to the rescue :P We agreed to pay him 250 bucks to help us explore the caves.
Guide


We thoroughly enjoyed squeezing ourselves through narrow openings and negotiating with the rocks for a safer climbing and landing. It definitely was worth an experience though a little risky.




After reaching the top, we all had photo sessions meant for DPs:P 

        

We started trekking back to the cave entrance after spending about half an hour, through the same route we had come. 

It was around 2 PM when we were back to the temple.

We reached Kolar bus stand and had lunch in an hotel before heading towards Bengaluru. We reached Bengaluru by 5:30 PM.

This trekking was one of its kind because of the curiosity associated with the caves. We had a memorable experience beyond our expectation and it did refresh us along with inspiring us to explore many other trekking spots in future! We were already discussing about our next plan for trekking!!

As always, looking out for the next trek....!

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