Walking up the Elephants Hump and Sleeping on a Lemon Grass Bed

It has been over a decade since I thought I should go climb Savandurga - the kids call it the sleeping elephant. One can view it all along the Magadi road, after Tippugundanahalli - a giant monolithic rock crouched low, with a smaller head of the sleeping elephant. I have taken this route regularly, every couple of months or so, for this last over-a-decade.

Last Monday I went and climbed the rock.

My son and I decided to go and spend a night there, taking the lesser known and used route to the smaller hump. We carried some food, some water, and our sleeping bags up. It was a difficult but an extremely rewarding trek through dry raspy forests, along fort walls, climbing sheer rock faces with grooves - enough barely to hold with toes, on rock and wood bridges, crawling through caves and thorn thickets, mostly leaning low, sometimes on all fours...birds cooed and called through the still silence, seed pods burst with a snap, twirling silver seeds parachuted down in a gentle dance, golden leaves covered the forest floors. Sheer black rock face set off the neon greens while orchids of purple foliage clung to rocks, trees. Blue gray lichen abounded and ferns of many varieties peeked from under nooks and corners..begonias blossomed in startling profusion...I panted, soaking sweat and smiled.

We reached the top, explored tiny rock pools covered in green, sauntered through abandoned stone shelters and scavenged for wood. We carried stones to make a protected fire and rigged a flimsy grill to roast our potatoes. In the evening we lit a fire - roaring, crackling, snapping - and sat - staring. We wanted to sleep under the stars, but we got a flaming sky at sunset and an overcast night. We lay on sloped sides of the rock - no flat surfaces here - with a stiff breeze , that chilled us to the bone, even inside our sleeping bags. Finally at 3 am, we decided to try the stone shelter. It was protected, flat, and had a bed of lemon grass, ready for us in a corner. After checking the cracks and corners for snakes - we lay down a slept.