Kodachadri and St. Mary's island...

My christmas vacation were about to start and I was supposed to go home for those 11 days. But when Moch called me for a 'walk' to Kodachadri and a trip to St. Mary's island I couldn't resist the temptation.. mmmmm.... It didnt take much of a task for my brain to chalk out a plan to accomodate both. I would go with these fellas to Kodachadri and St. Mary's and then head home! Simple! I am sure your brain also didn't have much of a problem in figuring this out. So we started from Bangalore on the 21st of December. Since I had to spend more than a week at home, I decided to 'take off' on my bike.

The team: Moch, Jitha, Badri, Naveen-1, Naveen-2, Navya, Pratima, Akshata, Praveen, Murali, Maddy and yours truly.

I was asked to meet these people, who were all cosy in the TT, at 9 near Nelamangala. But the bloody %$^#&^#&s made me wait for more than an hour! Finally when they did arrive, I realized they all had had their dinners too, which I hadn't! Again...... #^%$#%&^s. (Please notice that this swear word is different from the previous one). But with someone like Jitha around, dinner plans are never out, never mind the time and place. Also, when I was riding the whole night, these #$%$#%$$#s (another swear word) were happily dozing off in the TT. None of them even offered to give me company. Grrrr. We reached Akshu's place in Shimoga at 5 the next morning, and I rested my eyes for about 2 hours. It took the aroma of Masala Dosas and the sounds of Jithu munching them next to me to wake me up from my sleep! The MDs were lip-smacking yum.

After a customary group photo with Uncle and Aunt, we started off towards Kodachadri, this time Moch giving me company. On our way, we stopped for sometime at Nagara fort, which has a decent view to offer from its top. A lake at some distance, a river nearby and a few hills scattered here and there... u get the picture. We were soon reminded that the MDs are being digested and we started hurrying towards our destination. There are a number of routes to Kodachadri, the most prominent two being through Hidlumane falls and the one that starts from exactly 11 kms before Kollur. We took the second one. I parked my bike at a check post about 2 kms before the left turn we had to take and started walking. The first part of the trek is a casual walk for about 4 kms on a level jeep track after which we reached Kaka's angaDi (Hotel Santoshi) which served Mallu delicacies (don't have too much expectations though :) ). Loads of puTTus and iDlis and butter-milks later me, Moch and Jitha decided to give others a head start and took a brief nap for about 20 mins. Another two hours of lazy walk uphill and even Murali was at the top!

Just before the top there is a temple and an Inspection Bungalow where we camped. The IB chap charges around 200 per person which includes a dinner and a breakfast, which is pretty reasonable and he offers non-veg food at extra cost, for which you have to order in advance. After a good dinner, we got down to playing DumbC. Badri enacting "The chronicles of Narnia" is worth mentioning. After letting us know that the movie in question was an English one, he expected us to guess the name, without doing anything!!

Next morning got up at 5:45 and, anxious not to miss the famous "Kodachadri sunrise", we sprinted to the top, only for the sun to turn up 30 minutes after we reached the top. Damn the late comer. After breakfast, heavy as usual, we hired a jeep to come back to the main road. The jeep cost was 125 per head. Me and Moch reached Kollur much earlier than others, courtesy my bike. Happy, we walked more than a km just to get some chicken! As we were pushed for time, others who came late made do with some biscuits and we skipped Maravanthe and headed straight to St. Mary's island. Reached St. Mary's island just in time for the last ferry. The ferry made us poorer by 70 bucks. The last ferry to the island is at about 1530 (although depending on the crowd, they sometimes have a ferry at 1600 also).

The island is small and beautiful but gets crowded on weekends. After finding a suitable spot, we got into the water where Jitha and Badri managed to get pricked by a weird looking thingy and Jitha ended up limping for another week. Took the last ferry back and it was already dark when we reached the mainland and as is customary, we decided to get some "tandoori chicken" (you need to bring your two hands, fists clenched, closer to your face and crouch a little when saying this), at Dollops in Manipal. But on the way, we stopped at Akshu's cousin's place to munch on something before the dinner. But even before that, me and Badri squeezed in some time to get some sea food at some arbit restaurant (Anjal Masal fry was good!).

When at Dollops, I suggest you order curds... Amazing quantity you get. Me, a curdaholic, after a heavy dinner, ordered two cups and was quite taken aback when I saw the size of the cups! Post dinner, we saw off Prathima, cooled our eyes (kaNNu thampu, translated from Kannada) at the Manipal junction and hit the road again. Me on my bike, Badri for company, and others getting horizontal (not literally) in the TT, reached Mangalore and I headed home. Others, with plans for the next day, continued and spent some time in Coorg the next day before heading back to Bangalore...

Starting from Badri (with the towel), clockwise: Badri, Naveen, Murali, Kid, Jitha, Naveen, Maddy, Mochi and me

The route: Bangalore - Tumkur - Arsikere - Bhadravati - Shimoga - Kollur - Udupi - Mangalore.

The contact numbers of the IB chap (Rajendra) in Kodachadri:
Mobile: 9480205657,
Residence: 08185-290368.

Thus continues the quest...

Bandaje to Ballarayanadurga

I had been to Bandaje before... twice. I had been to Ballarayanadurga... only once :-(. But I hadn't done Bandaje to Ballarayanadurga! So when Moch and his colleagues planned to do the trek, I, without a second thought, tagged along. But none of us in the group was sure of the path, so Subbu, who had done the trail a few months back, was to be pulled for the trek :-D. And pull we did. Apart from being the guide, Subbu was needed for the camera services! (He takes close to 600 snaps a day. The slide show can be made into a movie. What a man!). So we set off from Bangalore, 11 of us, in a TT.

How to get there? Bangalore - Hassan - Belur - Mudigere - Kottigehara - CharmaDi ghat - MunDaje - BanDaje.

MunDaje is just after CharmaDi ghats and about 5-10 kms before Ujire. Take a right turn at MunDaje and go on for about 8 kms and there is a sign board pointing to the right saying "BanDaje Arbi". Needless to say, take that road :D. Continue on that road till a place where the vehicles can be parked and start the trek. Be warned that the road from Mudigere to Kottigehara is horrible.

The team: Moch, Subbu, Jitha, PC, Mithun, Vinay, Vijeth, Deepak, Holla, Nagu and yours truly.

The initial path was a little confusing because of the many trails around, although it was my third time there. Figuring our way out somehow, we continued on the correct trail which is quite clear. After about an hour or two of trek, we reached a stream which is from the falls itself. The stream is quite wide, with nice big rocks to cool our heals, and we found the place suitable for our breakfast break :).

The breakfast point

From here, to get to the top of the falls, we had to cross the stream and continue on the other side. But we decided to go to the bottom of the falls, come back to the stream and then go to the top! Talk of exploration. So we continued on an obscure looking path on the left side of the stream, without crossing it. The two odd hours of walk is quite strenuous on a non-existent path and requires some basic sense of direction. The final part is quite rocky, uphill and is quite tiring. But reaching the bottom of the falls is quite worth it :-).

The base of the falls

Mission-1 accomplished. Now we had to get to the top of the falls, which was only a few hundred feet above us. But it was quite frustrating to know that to reach the top, we had to get back to the stream (about 1 to 1.5 hours), cross the stream and then trek up for close to another 2 hours! All this when we could see the top of the falls right above us!! How I wished I had wings. So then, back to the stream, crossed it and began the ascent, which is reasonably steep. Just before we hit the open grassland before the falls, an argument broke out. I said we had to go to our right as soon as we hit the grasslands. Subbu, who had also come there more than once, said we needed to go left! Confused, we headed straight, and we later realized straight indeed we had to go to reach the falls! How we both of us managed to reach the falls on our previous attempts escapes me :D. When we hit the grasslands, it was already 6:30 and getting darker by the minute. Not sure of the right direction to go, Mithun, Subbu and me decided to go ahead and find the right path. Climbing a small peak, we got this view of the falls from a distance.

The falls from a distance

Our water resources nearly empty and already late into the evening, we reached the falls in semi-darkness. PC and Mithun, God bless them, always come prepared for a trek, with sufficient food items, vessels to cook and sometimes a mini-stove too! After a heavy dinner and a good night's sleep in tents, we set off for Ballarayanadurga the next morning. Bandaje to Ballarayanadurga is a lazy two hour walk with good landscapes all around. Happened to spot a herd of bisons on an adjacent hill.

Bison herd on an adjacent hill

Mithun, way ahead of all of us all along, claims this very herd crossed his path only a few metres ahead of him! Well, he has a few photos here to validate his claim. Make sure you carry enough water while going from Bandaje to Ballarayanadurga.

The ballarayanadurga fort

From the top of Ballarayanadurga, it was a straight forward descent to some temple to where we had asked the TT to come at the specified time. After a customary "tandoori chicken" (you need to bring your two hands, fists clenched, closer to your face and crouch a little when saying this) dinner at some dhaba near Hassan, we headed back to Bangalore.

The route back: Sunkasale - Kottigehara - Moodigere - Belur - Hassan - Bangalore. If you are going from Bangalore to Sunkasale, take a right turn from Kottigehara (going towards Kalasa), after about 7 kms take a U-turn (easy to miss) and go on for another 8-9 kms. My set of photos of the trek are here.

Thus continues the quest...

Nilgiri trek - MasinaguDi

Its been some time since this trek happened. But still blogging it because the trek was quite good. A group from BMC had done this trek a coupla weeks before we did, and that is how we got to know about the trek. At Masinagudi, on the road towards Ooty, towards the right hand side is a steep looking cliff. Anyone who sees that from a distance will testify that the climb is impossible. And we went about climbing that cliff! Before you start thinking that me and fellow-climbers did something akin to Stallone (in Cliffhanger) let me tell you that the climb is not tough. You just need to find the right path. And we had a guide to help us find the path! :D.

The team: Moch, Subbu, Sirish, Sriram, Vinay, Vijeth and yours truly!

We set off from Bangalore in a qualis (as usual, what's new in that?) and reached Masinagudi early morning. Sirish started shuddering every now and then just by the thoughts of elephants that we might come across on the road. (He is paranoid about elephants after a trek to OmbattuguDDa and starts hallucinating at every opportunity). Luckily for him and unluckily for us, we didn't spot any pachyderms that day. At Masinagudi we were welcomed by our guide Swaminathan who is a decent chap. Finished our ablutions at a public toilet, had breakfast and started the trek from the foot the cliff. Sirish, age notwithstanding (he is 27 and is considered a senior citizen amongst us) did well for most part of the trek. But the gizmos he carried started weighing him down. He had got a DSLR camera with a huge lens, two binoculars and a GPS other than the usual sleeping bag, mat and tent. Its another story that he never took any of his gizmos out.

Too many things hanging around the old man?

After a few hours of routine climb we reached a small village which is about 20 kms from Ooty. Must have been around 3 in the afternoon when we reached the village and we hadn't had lunch. As soon as the packed food was opened, we jumped on them, which would have made even the smartest of the predators turn green with envy. Another lazy walk for about an hour and we reached a villager's hut who was supposed to provide us dinner.


The evening was spent hanging around the place and the usual bantering with Sirish and Subbu. The dinner was provided by the villager who was quite warm and friendly. He charged a nominal amount for the dinner.

Subbu with his 'Rajkumar' impersonation

Do the socks smell? Let me find out..

We decided to pitch our tents about a kilometer from the villager's place and we found a suitable run-down house for that. The place was supposedly very close to elephant habitat. Needless to say, Sirish spent a sleepless night. And oh yes, that day was the first time I practised what we call "community shitting". No prizes for guessing what it is, although you might be invited to be part of the exercise the next time :D.

Next morning we got up early to get on top of a cliff to watch sunrise. And the sunrise was worth it.




On our way back took a slightly different route which eventually joined the original path and we reached MasinaguDi for lunch.

Photos are here and here!

09486630968 is the contact number of Swaminathan who arranges for treks in and around Masinagudi.

Kalhatti falls

This trek happened some time back (a reliable source tells me it was on the 26th of August of 2007). Well, lets assume its true. Actually a night trek to Kalavarabetta was being planned for that weekend but for some forgotten reason, Kalavarabetta didn't happen. Everything happens for the good. Sriram wanted to do some 'serious' trek and we were off to Bababudangiri on the evening of 25th from Bangalore in a TT.The team: Sriram, Vachan, Subbu, yours truly, Flavia, Reshma, Hakim, Vinod, Ananth, Moch and Paddy (not in this pic).

The route: Bangalore-Hassan-Chickmagalur-Bababudangiri.The journey from Bangalore to BBGiri was quite uneventful. Few slept and for the other nocturnals, "KurigaLu Saar KurigaLu" (a really funny kannada movie) was being played.

Reached BBGiri at around 6 in the morning and even our asses were shivering there. Finishing morning rituals, we went to the only "restaurant" there which served good Bread Omlette. Be warned that the pure veggies dont have many options in BBGiri. Subbu, the eternal waste fellow, didn't happen to recharge his camera batteries, and to top it, took 100+ snaps inside the dingy looking place alone! Duh.

We had two trekking options: go to KemmanugunDi with a guide, or go to Kalhatti falls without a guide. Since some of us had done the BBGiri to KGundi route, we decided to go to Kalhatti falls. So what if no guide accompanied us? We had a GPS with all the points marked! Relying on the GPS, we first reached Galikere (lake of wind, wind lake, whatever), which is an awesome camping place (have camped there twice before). That was the third time I had been to the lake, and not once I could see the entire lake! Look at the foto and you'll know why. Even to go to KemmangunDi, you need to come to this place. From there on, we set off in another route towards Kalhatti falls. Light drizzle, awesome weather, beautiful landscapes, innumerable leeches... It was western ghats at it's best! Although we had a GPS and we knew which direction to head in, we could hardly see beyond 50 feet and we ended up using "brute-force" method to reach the destination. There might have been a clear-cut path but we ended up heading straight, into all the valleys and all the small peaks, unnecessarily! It came as no surprise to us when Subbu's batteries got exhausted within an hour into the trek. Bloody fellow! And although Moch did have a camera, he didn't even bother taking it out. No comments on that. It was around 5:30 in the evening when we finally reached the top of Kalhatti falls. Owing to good monsoons, the falls made for a good view from the top. It is a vertical drop of about 150 feet (or more, not sure). Since we were already late, we decided not to spend much time there and decided to get to the bottom where we had asked the TT to come to a village (kalhattigiri?).

Now began the fun. We could see a clear trail in front us to get down. But the GPS, the points to which were fed by PC, showed the next point to be somewhere above us, in a completely different direction. Confused, we saw where the point next to that was, and that happened to be in another different direction! More confused, we saw where the third point was.. and it showed to be in the direction we intended to go! But our committed man, Moch, decided to put all his faith on the GPS and went in the direction of the first point and then to second point, in that order. After about an hour and a half of climbing up and down, we realized we had come back to the same spot! Already dark (around 7 in the evening), wet to our undies, shivering, leeches having a feast on us, two torches for 11 people... I couldn't control myself and broke into a guffaw, all the while feeling sorry for our own foolishness! The next stretch of the trek was truly memorable. Steeep descent (real steep, I should say), loose mud, no real path in front of us, totally drenched... we weren't walking or crawling, we were sliding almost uncontrollably (lucky none of us got injured). I wasn't helped by the fact that the floaters I was wearing had absolutely flat soles :) Any part of my body I touched, I could pull out atleast a couple of leeches, blindly! After an hour of such descent, we reached a jeep track in a coffee estate, where we were not sure which direction of the track to go in. It was already past 8. So we decided to give our driver a call. Luckily he was reachable and we asked him to send some villagers for help :-). The villagers, to our dismay, told us over the phone that it would cost us 500 bucks! The ensuing conversation was quite funny:

We: Yenri Idu? Naavu kaLdu hogidivi illi. Help keLtha idivi. Neevu noDidre 500 rupai keLtha idiralla?
Villager: Illa ri, ashT agutte. Ee hothnalli naavu huDkonD barodu beDva?
We: Ree, 300 rupai thagoLLi hogli
Villager: Illa, 400 rupai
We: 350
Villager: 351...

Hehehe... After haggling for about 15 minutes, we settled for some amount (dont remember the exact amount) and within another 15 minutes, they reached us and helped us get back to civilization. After purging ourselves of all the leeches in all the unwanted places and changing to comfy, dry clothes, we headed back to Bangalore, stopping once for dinner at some arbit place.

Moral of the story:
1) Never trust a GPS (or technology, for that matter) fully. Sometimes have some common sense also!

2) (For Subbu) Recharge your batteries, waste fellow. We don't have a single snap of the waterfalls!

More 'misty' photos are here

Thus continues the quest...