Nagala Trek with CTC

Life in Chennai was becoming horrible day by day. The Traffic, the mad drivers (who the hell gave these idiots license to drive???) All are in a hurry... everyone wants to be first! "Patience-aa??? appadeenaa...???" (patience??? whats that...???) The horns, the curses. The Banners, the cutouts (yaar... can someone please tell me which of them are movie waalas and which are political) and the loud speakers. I was going mad too.

As soon as I came to Chennai, one of the first things I did was search for 'places-to-visit--before-I-run-away' from this mad city. While googling for trekking trails and other stuff I came across CTC - Chennai Trekking Club. I registered and waited patiently for my first encounter with these guys. Work, classes and home visits clashed with many earlier treks / social activities conducted by CTC. In the meanwhile, I managed to convince 7 of my colleagues and we went on a Trek to Tada after gathering all the information we needed from CTC web site. Now that my classes are over and weekends are relatively free, I felt its time to have a taste of CTC life.

I saw the invitation mail from Rakesh Chandrasekaran for a social Trek (a kids' trek to be exact) with 16 kids from Child Home Orphanage. The location was Nagalapuram approx some 100+ km from Chennai in the TN-AP border. I registered and hoped Mr. Rakesh Chandrasekaran (some 35+ gentleman, strict, no-nonsense-guy with a fool proof Algorithm that rejects all late registrations, especially mine!)

Friday was hectic in the office and I never got a chance to check my mail. In the evening I saw a final list of the members and I was not among them. Sad and dejected I was ready to leave for home when I saw my friend Kishore seeing another CTC news letter. He was saying "yu need to be in koyambedu at 5:15... expense will be 500, blah blah blah..." I went to his PC and checked. I was there in the list! In a hurry I was checking some other trek's final list! Hmmm... I guess the Algorithm was not 'fool' proof as I had feared!

The Organisers were doing a great job sending reminders about time, meeting points, last min confirmation, things to carry etc. (Hmmm... so there are other serious, strict, no-nonsense-guys with perfect mails for every occasions!)

I didn't want to be late or miss this trek at any cost. Kept the Alarm at 3:00 AM, 3:30 AM, 3:45 AM and 4:00 AM. Guess what... I woke up at 2:57 and decided to get ready.

I reached the Koyambedu pick up point (Nathan's cafe) at 4:45 AM. I looked around, there was no placard or sign boards saying 'Praveen Antony Felix'. But noticed someone who was looking at me with the same expression. Both of us knew immediately that we belonged to CTC and we introduced ourselves. He was Saravana Kumar and he was also a first timer in CTC like me. He offered to keep my backpack in his car. Both of us were very excited about this trek and eagerly waiting for the other to arrive. 2 more people joined us. Mr and Mrs Jayendran again first timers with CTC. More and more people stared coming and we were busy getting acquainted.

The organisers Aravind and Subbu were on time and started taking the count and making other arrangements. I could see a lot of enthusiasm and cheer in everyone and I was happy to be a part of this group.

2 more friends Nagul and Ranjith joined us and we started from Koyambedu and planned to meet other members near Panimalar college in Tiruvallur.

Rakesh, Peter and others joined us there with the Kids and we started towards Nagalapuram or Nagala!

Checkout a few snaps of this exciting trek...

(Oh... one more thing... I was totally wrong abt the organisers - all of us were of the same age, some even younger with lots of enthu and energy) I sincerely thanks each and every organisers and volunteers and of course Peter for their tremendous job in taking care of everything and making this a great trek.

Finally I started feeling home in Chennai!