Let me start with a confession: I almost didn’t go.
We had planned a trip to Madikeri — me, my friend Shashank, his wife, and their daughter. A cozy weekend in the hills. Relaxation, mist, good food. The whole deal. But by Friday, the plan had quietly collapsed. I cancelled. Shashank probably sighed. And I assume everyone made peace with the idea of a lazy Saturday at home.
Then, at almost 7 in the evening on Friday, Shashank’s wife sent a message. Suyana — an organised trekking group — was running a trek the very next morning. Bidarakatte. Early sunrise start. Breakfast included. Four spots available.
She was asking if I was in.
I looked at the message. I had no strong opinions either way. I typed back something along the lines of “Okay, lets go.” That was apparently enough. Four bookings were made — for me, Shashank, his wife, and their daughter.
Just like that, I had plans for 5:30 AM on a Saturday.
2:30 AM — The Hour Even I Don’t Normally Visit
The alarm went off at 2:30 in the morning.
Here’s something you should know about me first: I normally wake up by 5:00 or 5:30 AM, and I usually turn the alarm off before it even gets a chance to ring. I run a fairly structured life — systematic routines, fixed rhythms, the sort of schedule that would make Sheldon Cooper nod approvingly. I don’t drink coffee. Never have. My mornings run on routine, not caffeine.
So 2:30 AM was unusual, but not catastrophic. I took a long, unhurried shower — the real kind, not the five-minute survival version. Worshiped god, did pooja at home, which settled something in me that no beverage ever could. By 4 AM, I had cleaned the car and was completely ready to leave.
I waited until 4:30, because Shashank’s wife had specifically asked me not to start too early. So I sat with the silence for a bit. Then left.
I picked Shashank up on the way, and we drove through an unusually silent Bengaluru — that rare, golden version of the city where the roads are empty and the streetlights have the whole road to themselves. There’s something oddly peaceful about the city at that hour. It feels like it’s holding its breath before the chaos of the day begins.
I should mention — I have a thing about driving. I don’t wear shoes or sandals while behind the wheel. So when I reached Bidarakatte, the very first thing I did was pull over, step out, and swap my driving feet into my trekking shoes. Priorities.
Bidarakatte — The Name You Haven’t Heard Yet, But Should
Bidarakatte is around 60 kilometres from Bengaluru city — a deceptively easy distance that gets you out of the concrete maze and into something entirely different. The drive takes you through the Nelamangala stretch on NH 48, past Magadi Road, and into the quieter corridors of the Ramanagara district, where the landscape starts to breathe differently.
The Bidarakatte viewpoint sits in the midst of rocky hillscape that defines this part of Karnataka — the same ancient Deccan geological territory that gave the world Savandurga, Ramanagara, and Anthargange. The trail here is short, accessible, and yet genuinely rewarding. It’s the kind of place that doesn’t ask you to prove anything. You don’t need to have trained for months or own expensive gear. You just need to show up.
Which is exactly what we did — at 5:45 AM, thinking we were late.
We were not late. We were, in fact, the first people there.
The meeting time was 6:30.
Shashank and I exchanged that very specific look that says: Of course we rushed here for nothing.
Suyana & Sowmya — the Most Enthusiastic Morning Person
The name Suyana comes from Kannada — Sukamaya Yaana, meaning Happy Journey. That tells you something about who they are before you even meet them. These are people who wake up early on weekends and genuinely mean it when they say they love it. They name the trek as “Betta and Breakfast” & “Bettadadmele Breakfast”.
Our trek coordinator was Sowmya.
Sowmya introduced herself as someone who, and I’m quoting approximately, “prefers sleeping on weekends” — which immediately made me trust her, because that’s the correct attitude to have. And yet she was here, absolutely full of energy at dawn, coordinating not one but two trekking groups simultaneously. The second group was four people from LinkedIn’s Bengaluru office. One of them was Riddhi Ramesh — a footballer who had acted in Bigil, the Tamil film about women’s football.
She gave us a warm, no-nonsense briefing. Trail info. Safety basics. And then — and this is the part that stuck with me — she talked about the steel plates.
Suyana has a policy: trekkers are encouraged to bring their own steel plates and tumblers from home. No disposables. No plastic cups.
It sounds like a small thing. But think about it. Most of these trekkers are driving to the base, coming from home, so there is genuinely no practical reason not to carry your own utensils. The result? No litter. No plastic left behind in the rocks. Mother Earth, as Sowmya put it, remains unspoiled.
In a country where you’ll find empty chips packets on the trail of almost every popular trek, this felt quietly radical. I liked it.
“Would Everyone Like to Introduce Themselves?”
Then came the icebreaker.
Sowmya suggested everyone greet each other and get introduced before we started. A very reasonable idea. Shashank said a quick “Hi” to the group and then, with the easy confidence of someone who has never once been shy in his life, announced that we’d all get to know each other better on the way up — and that we should just start. And so we did.
I stood there.
Not because I didn’t want to be there — I did. But if you’re an introvert, a circle of strangers at 6 AM asking for names and cheerful facts about yourself is roughly equivalent to being asked to perform on stage while still half-asleep. My preference, always, is to observe first. Listen. Understand the room. Talk when there’s actually something worth saying. The problem is, most people interpret this as aloofness. It isn’t. I was paying attention to everything. I just wasn’t announcing it.
Sowmya, being sharp as she clearly is, noticed immediately. She started dropping my name into sentences the way a teacher says a quiet student’s name — gently, pointedly, with the specific intention of drawing them out.
It didn’t work. I smiled. I nodded. I was present, just not… audible.
And that, in hindsight, was just the opening act.
The Trail — Rocky, Real, and Just the Right Difficulty
We started climbing just as the morning sky was beginning to lighten — that beautiful uncertain hour when it’s neither dark nor bright, and the world is deciding which direction to go.
The trail at Bidarakatte is rocky. Not treacherously so, not the kind that makes you question your life choices, but substantively rocky — the kind that makes your ankles work and your eyes stay on the ground. There were a couple of small ponds along the way, quiet little reflections of the lightening sky. No waterfalls, no dense forest, but a certain raw openness to the landscape that felt honest.
And here’s the thing about this trek: it’s genuinely beginner-friendly. For most people, it’s a 30-45 minute climb. For those taking it easy, pausing to breathe or take pictures, it stretches to about an hour.
Shashank’s daughter — a kid — trekked the entire thing like it was a Sunday morning stroll. No complaints. No drama. She was just… delighted. There’s something about watching a child navigate a rocky trail with pure joy and zero self-consciousness that puts the entire adult experience of “is this safe, am I fit enough, what if I slip” firmly in perspective.
The Sowmya Offensive — A Study in Saying “No”
During the trek, Sowmya made it her personal mission to crack me open.
I respect the effort. I genuinely do. Here’s what people often don’t understand about introverts though — saying no to social nudges isn’t stubbornness. It isn’t coldness. It’s that socialising costs energy, the same way running costs energy. And at 6 AM, on a rocky trail, with the sun barely up and my legs still figuring out the terrain, that energy budget was already committed to other things. Small talk would have to wait.
She tried everything on the way up.
Would I like to introduce myself? No. Would I like to join the other group for part of the climb? No.
The Part Where She Called Me Cute
She later told me, and I’m going to just put this down exactly as it happened, that I was cute and good looking. She said it matter-of-factly, the way someone might comment on the weather — except it is significantly more unexpected than weather commentary, especially early in the morning on a hillside.
At the peak, somewhere between the view and the cool breeze, she asked me about staying fit, about jogging, and looking young.
Before I could deflect, Shashank, who has known me long enough to have weaponised that knowledge, stepped in smoothly: “No marriage — you have time and decisions for yourself.”
He said it like it explained everything. The fitness, the apparent youth, less tension / responsibilities, all of it.
Honestly, I think he might be right. I told Sowmya what I genuinely believe — that there’s nothing wrong with staying single until it actually feels right, or even entirely. In the current world, with the current pace of life, enjoying life on your own terms is not just acceptable but perhaps the smarter design. She listened. She nodded. I don’t know if she agreed.
The Summit — Sunrise, Games, and a Group Photo Standoff
We reached the top.
Now, I’ve seen sunrises before. I’ve seen them from balconies from the windows of early morning flights. But a sunrise seen from a rocky hilltop, with cool air on your face and the smell of open earth around you, after a 45-minute climb you weren’t expecting to do — that’s a different category of sunrise.
The villages below caught the light first. Then the nearby mountains — layered, purple-blue, hazy at the edges. The sky went from dark grey to pale gold to something almost embarrassingly beautiful. We stood there and let it happen.
Games at the Top
After a few minutes of simply taking it all in, Sowmya said: “Okay, let’s play a game.”
The game was the classic counting circle — you might know it as Seven-Up, or Seven Switch, or Uno by some regional stretch of the rules. The idea is simple: numbers go around the circle, hands indicate the direction, and when you hit seven, you do a special action — say “Uno” with a hand on your head — and the count resets back to one. Miss the cue, slip up on the reset, and you’re out.
It sounds mild. It is not mild when a group of strangers is huddled together at a hilltop at 7 AM and everyone has suddenly decided to take this very seriously. Shashank’s daughter sat this one out — understandably, because a circle of adults she’d just met is not exactly inviting territory for a kid. She watched us with the quiet judgment only children can pull off. The rest of us played. Errors were made. Protests were lodged. Nobody fully agreed on whose fault anything was.
Then came Fire in the Mountain — the running, catching game that you played in school and forgot about for twenty years until someone brings it back in exactly the right setting.
Good game. Good people. Great altitude.
The Group Photo Standoff
Eventually, Sowmya said it was time for a group photo.
She suggested I stand next to one of the girls from the LinkedIn team.
I said no.
Sowmya looked at me. I looked at her. The moment passed. I stood where I stood. The photo was taken. I count this as another clean no, and I’m at peace with it.
The Descent, the Breakfast, and the Masala Dosa Prophecy
Before the trek had even begun, one of the LinkedIn girls — Nanditha — had established her priorities very clearly. She had apparently announced, somewhere near the very start of the morning: “It’s not really about the trek. It’s about the masala dosa.”
A woman of clarity and conviction. Respect.
The breakfast spread that Suyana had arranged at the base was: masala dosa, plain dosa, set dosa, lemon rice, chutney, boiled vegetables, cut fruits, rasayana, and — yes — buttermilk. Served properly, warmly, with actual plates (steel, naturally, because that’s how Suyana rolls).
The masala dosa delivered. Nanditha had not been wrong.
And then came the buttermilk moment.
Sowmya offered me some. I said no. She looked at me. I held the line.
Then Shashank, from somewhere behind me, shouted: “Have it!”
I had the buttermilk.
Sowmya’s face lit up like she’d been waiting for this exact moment. “You said no to me,” she said, with the quiet satisfaction of someone who has just won a bet she didn’t even know she had placed. She was right. I had said no to her. Many, many times. Possibly a number no guy in recorded history has ever said to anyone, on a trek or otherwise. And yet here I was, buttermilk in hand, defeated by Shashank’s one-word intervention.
The Goodbye — Or, How I Said “Bye” Three Times and Turned Crimson
I should establish something first: I am an introvert. And I don’t mean that in the casual, trendy way people sometimes throw the word around. I mean it in the very specific sense that socialising with strangers doesn’t come naturally to me. It’s not anxiety. It’s not rudeness. It’s that I warm up slowly — very slowly — and until I do, the version of me that shows up is quiet, observant, and genuinely comfortable in the background. I don’t need to fill silences. I don’t reach for conversation to pass the time. I watch. I notice. And I’m perfectly okay.
Most people, after a while, get this. Some people, however, find it a personal challenge.
Riddhi, as it turned out, was the second kind.
As breakfast was winding down, Sowmya wandered over to me with the energy of someone who has one last move to play.
💬”Riddhi says you didn’t even say hi to her the entire trek,” she announced.
True. I hadn’t. But in my defence — four hours is not enough time for me to warm up to a group of strangers. I was still in observation mode. I had noticed things. I had formed quiet opinions. I just hadn’t shared any of them out loud, which, for an introvert, is perfectly normal behaviour and not a social crime.
I thought about this. We were nearly done. What was the point of a hello when a goodbye was the more honest option?
💬”I’ll say bye in some time,” I said.
Riddhi had been listening. She turned toward me immediately.
💬”Look at me. Look into my eyes. And say it.”
Now — for someone who defaults to the background, who is most comfortable as the observer rather than the observed, being asked to make sustained eye contact with a near-stranger and say something on command is exactly as disorienting as it sounds. Introverts don’t struggle with words. We struggle with being suddenly, unexpectedly in the spotlight when we haven’t prepared for it. My face, in that exact moment, disagreed with everything I thought I knew about myself. It went warm. Then red. Then a shade that I can only describe as committed.
I did not say bye right then. I needed a moment. Or five to ten minutes, as it happened.
People drifted. Plates were cleared. Meanwhile, the morning began its slow, reluctant closure. I was still standing near the breakfast area — not going anywhere, not doing anything particularly purposeful, just existing — when the LinkedIn group started saying their goodbyes to Sowmya.
And then, mid-farewell, Riddhi turned to me.
💬”Bye,” she said.
I said bye.
💬”Say it again,” she said. “Look at me and say bye.”
My face, which had barely recovered from the first exchange, immediately had other ideas.
So I said bye again. With a smile this time, because what else do you do when you are an introvert who has been very thoroughly found out.
💬”Again.”
A third bye. My face was approximately the colour of a ripe tomato by this point. You would expect someone with a resume like hers to be intimidating. Instead, she chose to make me say “bye” three times. Sowmya stood nearby wearing the expression of someone who has just watched a plan come together perfectly. Shashank had somehow developed a very pressing need to look in a completely different direction.
Riddhi left. I stood there. Shashank was definitely smiling.
Manchanabele Dam — Because Why Go Straight Home?
On the way back, we added a small detour to Manchanabele Dam, which sits nearby and is exactly the kind of place you visit because you’re already close and the day feels unfinished. It’s a dam. A nice dam. Water, reservoir, some quiet. It complemented the morning in the way a calm epilogue complements a lively story — letting you decompress before you re-enter the city.
We drove home through a Bengaluru that had woken up by then, full of traffic and noise and the general busyness of a Saturday that everyone else had spent sleeping in.
What I Took Home
Here’s the honest truth: I almost didn’t go. I had cancelled one trip already that week. My default Saturday would have been perfectly fine — some movies, maybe a few hours on a hobby project, the kind of quiet day I genuinely enjoy and never feel the need to justify. And then a WhatsApp message arrived at 7 PM on Friday, and someone made four bookings, and I woke up at 2:30 in the morning and cleaned my car.
And it turned out to be one of those mornings you don’t forget easily.
Not because of the sunrise, though the sunrise was genuinely beautiful. Not because of the food, though the masala dosa was everything Nanditha promised it would be. But because of the strange, warm, effortless quality of a few hours spent with people you didn’t know at the start of the day — a coordinator who called you cute on a hillside, a child who trekked without fear, a group of LinkedIn strangers who made you say bye three times until your face gave up all pretence of composure.
Would I do this again? Without a second thought. I’d do it again and again.
If you’re in Bengaluru and you’ve been putting off a trek because you think you’re not fit enough, or you don’t have the right gear, or you don’t know the right people to go with — Bidarakatte with Suyana is your answer. It’s 60 kilometres out of the city. It’s beginner-friendly. It takes about an hour if you’re taking it easy. It ends with masala dosa. And if you’re very lucky, someone named Sowmya will spend the entire morning calling you cute and refusing to accept your no.
Totally worth the 2:30 AM alarm.
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