Bagheshwari Hill

It was a weekend after 7 years (7 days that felt like it). I opened my suitcase and was digging up T shirts to wear for the day. Suddenly my eyes went on the Black T shirt with yellow text. The T shirt with mountains printed on it. The T shirt that led me to victory on top of Chembra, the last time I wore it. It was years back, when I was in peak of my fitness, me along with Vipin and Vishal, two fellow trekkers took part in a competition. It was the India Hikes peak bagging competition where the teams of 3 would have to run to the peak of a mountain called Chembra in Waynad and come down. The team with the shortest time would win. Generally, it takes about 4 hours for amateur climbers scale the Chembra peak. In the competition however, we scaled it in about 1 hour and got the second prize losing by just about a minute. We even got a free Himalayan trek from India Hikes as the prize! With so many memories, I wore it for work.

The indiahikes T shirt

One of the colleagues informed me that nobody would turn in for work today as everyone was out doing something or the other. I took this as an opportunity to explore. I quickly finished all pending tasks and moved over to Google maps to look for mountains. The Bagheshwari hill is a small hill located in the city of Bongaigaon and has a temple called Bagheshwari temple on top. I decided to pay the tower a visit and quickly found a route.

The route

Some lesser known trails

On my way, I finally had the chance to see orthodox temples with conical structures that are found all throughout India. Although I suspect this one to be a new one as the paint was fresh, something that you don’t expect to see with frequent rains.

The brand new temple

After walking around 4 kilometers, I finally found the entrance to the hill. It had steps paved on the hill and went pretty steep. In no time, I started running up as I had to do the India Hikes T shirt proud. But sadly, I was in no shape or fitness like before. I soon started running out of breath and started slowing down. I had to hurry because the sun was setting fast and I had little time for photography on top. I managed to run as fast as I could to the top. When I reached, the view was spectacular! I learned that there are not couple, but many other mountains that surround the Bongaigaon town. The sunset was brilliant and the whole town could be seen from top.

The way to the top

Green all through the route

After countless photos, I decided to start back as it was getting dark. As I went about 50m, I saw that there was another trail going to a mountain nearby. Since I had come this far, I decided to quickly go explore that trail as well. As I was running on this small trail, after a point it started going down. I was pretty tempted to take the trail as it would get me down to a completely opposite side of the town. But I was skeptical as the light was low and I could get stranded in darkness. Also, the trail could vanish or get closed due to intense overgrowth midway. Another con about the taking that trail was it could lead me into somebody’s private property and explaining what Im doing there without knowing Assamese in darkness could be a daunting task. So I decided to just go up the second hill and return the usual way. But sadly when I reached the second mountain top, it was covered with trees and I couldn’t get a nice view.

A kid on the way waiting for his mother

As I was climbing down with disappointment, I again reached the intersection where there was a trail going down. The trail was so tempting, that the quest for adventure overpowered all the cons I had thought of before and I started going down on it. It was a very minimally used trail as there were no footsteps. Also there was no plastics and dense growth of bushes around the trail. It was pretty steep at places to indicating that it was not used much. But to my relief as I got down, It ended down into a Piggery. Thankfully there were no dogs chasing me in a private property and I quickly said goodbye to the pigs. As I came back to the road, I realized it was the same road that I took while exploring the river nearby. And I touch that road just in time before the natural light faded away. With this small adventure and tiredness for the day, I got a good night’s sleep listening to the thunders and rain.