It was only three months back when I packed my backpack for summer vacation to visit God’s own Country with my friends. Being an avid traveler, I try finding getaways around me to escape from hectic 24*7 support. Monsoon had started and the aggressive sun showed some mercy on us: hence we decided to pack our backpacks again, but this time we had decided to go trekking but we also wanted to make sure it doesn’t burn a hole in our wallet .While we were discussing about choosing the right place for trekking around Chennai, my WhatsApp chirped. Surprisingly, I got a message from a colleague about Nagala trekking. We were excited and interested while we signed up for the trek which matched our requirements. We were very excited and were counting the days to get into our first trek.
June 18: The day we were waiting for dawned beautifully and the climate was awesome .We reached our pick up point at Sholinganallur by 5:00. We waited at our pick up point for a few minutes and there came our ride. Finally,we were heading to Nagala by two Scorpios and a hatchback. We introduced ourselves to the others in the course of the ride and the ride itself was a pleasurable one as the climate was very pleasant and the effect was enhanced by evergreen Ilayaraja songs. Thanks to technology, we found the shortest route to reach nagala.
Oothukottai – A small village before Nagalapuram where we had our breakfast. We also captured its scenic beauty in our cameras. We sat for lunch and shared everything we had. The lunch was followed by a small photoshoot after which we started to climb down by 16:00.The downhill trek was difficult and very risky at some points. We managed to reach our cars by 18:00 and we were in Oothukottai by 19:00. On our way back while we were talking about the trekking experience we realized that a great camaraderie had developed within the group. The streak of luck didn’t last long as we lost our way and thus had to take a long route to reach OMR.
When we finally reached home, we were amazed at how an extraordinarily good trek proved to be an amazingly wallet friendly one!! The total cost was less than Rs 600/head. As they say, we realized that travel isn’t about the destination but about the journey!