Chennai Trekking Club
The Chennai Trekking Club (CTC) based in Chennai, India was established on February 22, 2008 by a small group of trekking enthusiasts. What started as a dozen member club grew into a big non-profit organization that strives to encourage trekking as an organized sport. CTC organizes treks mainly in and around South India. It also organizes other activities like photography tours, one day hikes, workshops on navigation using GPS, treks for a social cause and walks for charity. CTC has organized more than 100 treks. It has more than 3500 members and more than 10 people joining every day.
CTC organizes member-led treks during weekends, and travels through mountains and wilderness areas in the Eastern Ghats and the Western Ghats. Occasionally, long treks are organized in the Himalayas. CTC's growth is attributed to an enormous fan base, mainly in South India, and to the volunteers who spend many hours researching on and organizing the treks. It also has members from outside India, mainly expatriates who live or lived in Chennai and Bangalore and became part of CTC. Apart from Providing a nice break, activities organized by CTC also CREATES awareness on environmental issues and encourages physical fitness among members.
References
The Chennai Trekking Club (CTC) was started by a few trekking enthusiasts from CISCO Chennai, Thoraipakkam a few years ago. In February 2008, after completing around 10 treks throughout South India this small group published their adventures and photos online in the blog http://www.ChennaiTrekkers.org and allowed new people to join their group. From this time onward many people out there found us through Google and joined the club. Now, ~2 years later we have 5000+ members in the club, 10-15 new people are joining every single day. CTC has completed 170 treks throughout India and has published more than 25.000+ photos. Our web site receives around 200 unique visitors each day from all over the world and got 80.000+ hits since it was put up.
The volunteers of CTC organize treks every single weekend, sometimes even 3-4 parallel treks on any given weekend. Treks are planned to beautiful NATURAL locations both nearby Chennai as well as further away in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra, Kerala and North India. We organize easy 1 day treks as well as more challenging multi-day treks with overnight camping. The number of participants for a trek varies typically between 10 to 40. Sometimes we take out larger groups of 50-100. Each trek has a mix of existing and new members. All participants volunteer during the trek as a team on various activities like cooking, setting up camp, creating a campfire, giving a helping hand to those in trouble, etc. During each trek you will make new like-minded friends for a lifetime.
CTC is a non-profit organization - several core members volunteer selfless to plan and organize treks and costs are shared amongst all participants. Food and camping gear is arranged by CTC. The participants just need to bring along a pair of shoes and backpack. Transportation is either done with own cars and bikes for nearby location or public transportation is arranged for further away destinations. Levels of treks goes from easy to intermediate to difficult.
CTC-ians are known as "pathfinders" - they do not follow existing trails but trek through unexplored jungles and mountains creating their own trail using topographic maps, compass and GPS (satellite guided navigation). The organizers have good experience on identifying new trails and navigation through unknown locations. During our treks we discover new streams, hidden waterfalls, beautiful rock formations and other scenic natural spots.
CTC has a large number of professional photographers who - equipped with SLRs - capture the beautiful nature and wildlife discovered during the treks. Photos are geo-tagged and published/shared on our blog.
In addition to the regular treks, CTC organizes a variety of other events. Periodically they organize social outings for the less privileged groups in our society - orphans, street children lost or ran away from home, destitute women, and other groups. CTC also periodically organizes educational workshops like first aid training, trainings on maps and navigation, photography workshops, climbing events, snake workshops, and more. We also organize ladies treks, senior treks and family treks. We also periodically organize long distance multi-day bike rides through scenic locations.
CTC cares for the environment and gets actively involved to keep our forests clean and green. In addition to their own strict no-pollution guidelines, periodic cleanup events are organized to clean up polluted natural locations. On Nov 1, 2009, 200+ members of CTC organizes a mega cleanup trek to Tada which has become very polluted and abused over the past several years. Recently we cleaned up garbage from the beaches along ECR.
CTC's has an extensive online presence on the Internet mostly built using Google tools. Treks and photos are published using blogger on our blog. Invitations for new upcoming treks, photo links and experiences on completed treks are shared and discussed in our Google Group. CTC also has online communities on Facebookand Orkut. Lots of useful information regarding the group and its treks are published in the Google Pages. The group maintains an active photography blog anddiscussion forum. Past and future treks are published on our Google Calendar and Google Maps. New treks are also announced on Twitter.
Happy Trekking! Peter