Sugan Krishnan

Went up with Logesh Paul, starting at 9 AM. The eastern climb was already at 34°C by the time we hit the steps. A couple of black kites were circling above the western section as the trail turned away from the highway. Spent a few hours on the plateau — it was quiet and empty the whole time.

Started with the first batch at 8 am. The forest section is on a broad jeep track with several small stream crossings. Leeches were everywhere in this stretch — the guide had us stop and wet our footwear with diluted Dettol, which kept them off. Spotted Malabar giant squirrels and Nilgiri Langur in the canopy here. Tiger pugmarks and scat visible on the trail; the guide pointed them out without drama. The watch tower is worth the stop — tall enough to get a full view back over Thirunelli village and forward to the summit ridge. Above it the forest stops abruptly, the leeches disappear, and the grassland opens up. The grassland section has a few false summits that can catch you off guard. From the top the fire line marking the Karnataka-Kerala border is clearly visible running across the hillside. The guide named several neighbouring peaks from the summit, none of which seem to be documented anywhere online. We spotted a herd of elephants on the open slopes, along with spotted deer and sambar. Wildlife sightings were frequent — the first batch has the best chance before the animals move deeper into cover.

Trail is in good monsoon-season shape. The recent rains have thickened the scrub cover noticeably and the slopes look greener than the dry season. Footing is straightforward throughout: the climb is short and manageable for a child. Saturdays bring a heavy local crowd to the Perumal temple at the top. Plan an early start or a weekday visit if you want quieter time at the top.

The Narasimha Swamy temple was receiving devotees on a Saturday. The stone-cut steps were in active use, so we followed the route alongside them rather than on them. We did not explore the rock paintings marked on Google Maps today. The summit delivers more than the hill's profile suggests. What looked like a short, exposed monolith turned out to be a broad plateau with a wide viewshed and enough terrain to explore at the top.

This was my fifth visit to the trail. It was considerably busier than my previous visits because it was a Saturday, with a steady inflow of devotees from around 10:30 am until about 4 pm. I spent some time in the small cave, where there was unusually strong airflow during this visit. I stayed there for quite a while before exploring the other sections of the trail. The eastern trail was still covered in dense vegetation and remained bushy.

Bangalore traffic pushed our arrival past sunset, so we started the climb in the dark with headlamps. The sounds of loudspeakers and passing vehicles from nearby villages drifted up through most of the ascent. We were the only people on the trail. There is no water source at the summit, so we carried everything up. The extra weight tells. I made the mistake of hand-carrying a 5-litre bottle rather than packing it, and the handle cut into my palm badly enough to draw blood before we reached the top. We found a flat patch near the summit and pitched the tent by torchlight. By the time we finished our packed dinner, the village lights had mostly gone dark. Then a lightning storm started somewhere to the southwest, playing out silently across the horizon for the better part of an hour. The winds picked up steadily through the night, loud against the tent. At some point a recurring sound, somewhere between a large bird and wind pulling through the rocks, kept breaking the quiet. The morning settled everything. We caught the full sunrise from the summit, had coffee and Maggi on the peak, and stayed until the heat off the granite made sitting uncomfortable. Third time on this trail, first time camping. It changes the place considerably.

We visited this trail a few days after a festival. The section around the temple was littered with festival waste, making the area noticeably dirty during our visit. This temporary condition detracted from the otherwise natural surroundings, although the rest of the trail was not similarly affected.

Late March, and the trail was empty from start to finish. That is typical for peaks in this part of Tamil Nadu. At the summit, a bird we didn't recognise at first moved fast enough that we almost missed it. Not the wide, soaring circles of a black kite or brahminy kite. This one cut and changed direction at a speed those birds don't have. We ran it through Merlin: a falcon. The drone footage from the ridge put the scale of the climb in perspective. On the screen, we looked like two dots on a rock face. The visibility was good enough to pick out Bolumalai and the Krishnagiri dam, and several other peaks in the surrounding range that are now on the list.