The beautiful Bala Kondarayana Durgam trek

Sarathy PB January 25, 2021

Bala kondarayana durgam is such a lovely hardcore trek and relatively unknown one but whats beautiful is most of them would have seen this but would have never recognised the same as it can be seen in Bangalore to Chennai highway very close to Krishnagiri and yes its the same hugeeeee hillock with a hill temple..

I have done this trek once before but I wanted to plan this trek once again with kids and from Law of Nature group 9 friends joined with their kids and we started early morning 6am from Bangalore and had a stop in our regular hotel, the Modern Muniyandi Vilas near Hosur..

This place and the trek can be considered a medium to tough one range as its quite steep and I will suggest to do this in very early morning 6am to 9am or in monsoon months as it gets quite hot during the day time of summer..

We reached the base at 7.30am ( the last 1/2 km is a drivable mud road to the base) and it has good car parking space and a small temple at the base… With the kids and few adults who havent done a trek in few years we started slow and steady and my concentration was on encouraging them and carrying kids when parents were tired..

It took us multiple breaks but in 1 to 1.15 hrs we were able to reach the 90% of the trek where there is another small temple and then after some break we then almost reached the peak where to the right there is a beautiful pond with some lovely lotus…We spent some time in the pond where the kids enjoyed spotting frogs, hydrospiders and other insects…Once before in the same place I saw 4 water snakes together sungasping…

Then the last strech of 10 mins trek go us to the peak where there is this temple and along with that the speciality is the Akka Thangachi ponds which is a twin ponds but never there are in same colors… Guess something has to do with the base of the ponds which gives distinguished colors for them…

Everyone felt so happy to reach the peak as its not a easy trek, also there are some creeks to view and always take attention of kids as in excitement they can venture alone on the top…We spent some quality 30 mins in the temple and the Hosur - Chennai highway from the temple peak is so so nice and even the big lorries looks so miniature from the top… Easily the peak is 1300 to 1500 mtrs from sea level…

We started to hike down and with energy and happiness in 45 mins we reached the car park and happily started to hunt for lunch….We had our lunch in the Vijay Dhaba and then planned to visit my friends organic farm near by and he is also a forest officer…While coming he informed that there is a nice Jallikattu sport happening in a near by village as its the local Maatu Pongal ( Cow festival) day… We witnessed amazing scenes as huge bulls participated in a race which dint have any cruelty and the winning ox gets a nice gesture and gifts.. Kids enjoyed the Village festival scenes to the core..

Then we went to my friends organic farm of 3 acres where he grows multiple vegetables and paddy with cows, chickens, dogs etc… There was a new born milky white calf and the kids enjoyed playing with it.. Thanks to Ramesh sir as he hosted us with farm made honey and also great ginger tea….

After spending 1 hr in the farm about 4.30pm we left the farm and drove back to Bangalore and on the way visited a beautiful dam waterfalls near Thorapalli where on the Thenpennai river a check dam is built and this place is so secluded and beautiful for amazing sunset screens…The way to the farm has lovely vegetable fields surrounded by small hills…

We hit back to Bangalore by 7pm and enjoyed the day to the core.. Kids had a great field day and its one more great day for the Law of Nature group…