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...