Trekking club of techies by techies
By Sree

Exactly a decade ago, a Belgian born software engineer, Peter Van Geit, landed in Chennai to technically guide a team of young Indian IT professionals. A travel freak and trekking enthusiast, he soon bought himself a Royal Enfield Bullet 500cc bike and toured most of South India in his free time, clocking over 40,000km in the first 2 years. 

A few years later in 2004, he along with Balaji, his co worker in Scientific Atlanta (a company later on acquired by CISCO), started an informal trekking club, the SA Trekkers Club, which has today metamorphosed into the Chennai Trekking Club (CTC), a 1300 member strong group of software professionals, who crack code on weekdays and hit the road on weekends.

The club’s first trek was at Tada waterfalls, about 100kms from Chennai for which there were only 10 participants. But at the very next trek in Kodaikanal, the numbers doubled and since then they have been just growing by leaps and bounds. The club which organizes frequent treks during weekends to various mountain and forest locations in South India has already 50 completed treks to their credit.

Joining the club is free and once a trek is planned, email invitations are sent out to all members in the group. Participation is on a first come, first serve basis with each group normally comprising of about 15-20 members.

Things are presently so hectic with the club that everyday Peter and his team, after spending eight hours at work, have to put in at least another three to attend to the trekking club logistics before they can log out for the day.

The CTC members are also ranked, with the best performer being awarded the title of Field Marshal, while the top 2% of those who have joined at least 2 treks are referred to as General. Then comes Brigadier, Colonel, Major, Captain, and so on and so forth.