Republic Day arrives every year with unflinching punctuality, however 2019 was the third year in a row, when the Super Gardenia 11 got together for their customary trek together. That was the special part of this day..

Master sergeant Rohan was in charge of the location and there wasn’t much planning involved (refer later !) in terms of getting to the place, as we expected it to be a short but sweet time together..

We started early enough at 5.45 am and we were at the forest entrance in 15 minutes. We walked past the gate with torches, that Shilpa and Rohan had thoughtfully packed and it took us about 20 minutes of walking to get to the top of the hillock. It was not really a trek, but rather a gentle climb, but the view was indeed rewarding.

The city lights at dawn were still twinkling and the sun had not yet risen. Also the day was quite cloudy, so we were not quite sure of being able to spot the sunrise. It was at this time that the “Mary Kondo” of our group provided all of us with hot masala tea and Khari/ glucose biscuits. As we sipped on hot tea, to our surprise, we could see the giant orange ball peeking out of the clouds and making a grand appearance.

The sunrise was really great and shortly afterwards, we indulged ourselves in a bit of kite flying and amongst the fun we had, we also realised that some of us are only suited for customer service duties, rather than flying duties !!!

We hung around a bit moving from one hillock to the other and taking in the view, wondering about the indiscriminate quarrying that was evident at many places, potential of making this into a Central Park of south bangalore and various such ruminations.

Finally we wrapped up, walked back to our vehicles, drove down to a local A2B breakfast place and after finishing breakfast headed back to our homes.

So in summary, we had a wonderful time, kept our tradition, discovered something beautiful that was hidden in plain sight and bonded together with lot of fun and laughter.. till next year... take care..