The historical fort-town of Chitradurga is a place I stumbled upon in the course of my professional wanderings. This is a place where you get to see a rare review of the achievements of a special breed of Homo sapiens, a fascinating glimpse into the years gone by.
The Chitradurga fort is in the form of seven concentric circles surrounding the hillock, and the view at the very top, I was told, was worth selling your soul for. So I found myself braving one of nature’s largest single-rock formations, massive in its unbroken smoothness. When I began my ascent; I was sufficiently warned that climbing the smooth rocks was no joke.
Half way through the climb, I made a mistake : I looked down and froze. The smooth expanse of rock had just traversed, with hardly a foothold, stretched far below, and the summit seemed an equal distance up, both uninviting in their forbidding smoothness. The best solution seemed to be to stick like glue to the make-shift ledge. My friends had pleaded with me to come down to terra firma, but nothing would persuade me to budge from the safety of the little foothold that my tired and trembling feet had found.
An hour went by, and I was still firmly lodged in my dwelling. Finally, my rescuer came in the form of a local photographer, a man who made his living photographing visitors. Calling himself Thippeswamy, he convinced me that going up, without looking down, was far simpler than descending. From the top, he said, there was a far less treacherous route down on the other side of the mountain.
I decided in favour of going up, accepting the proffered hand to which I hung on. Never once did I look down, but kept going up and up with a single minded goal to reach the top before my courage, or the lack of it, ran out. And soon enough, I found myself standing on the peak; feeling more elated than Edmund Hillary after his conquest of the Everest. The heady view, as promised, took my breath away. How could I thank this photographer for lending me that helping hand that pulled me out of my stupor and persuaded my unwilling legs to make it to the top?
