Getting pampered at Sharavathi backwaters..

For quite some time, I had been thinking of going to Honnemaradu which is famous for its backwaters. Well, nothing could stop me from going there but the only problem is that the place is generally booked for the next few months! I seriously have no idea what am I going to do next weekend. How the hell am I supposed to foresee my plans for atleast a couple of months?! Also, the place has restrictions on the number of people to be involved (12 is the minimum number I guess).

So when Subbu informed me about Sampath who offers something very similar in the Sharavathi backwaters itself, I had no hesitation in agreeing. And the booking was done only 4 days in advance. Also, from what I know, Honnemaradu people charge 2000 for 2 days. Sampath charges 1200 only.

Catching a bus from Majestic on 14th evening, we reached Sagar early next morning. Freshening up at the Sagar bus stop (the graffiti in the toilets is really interesting!), we caught a private bus to Gubbagodu, which is 18 kms from Sagar. The backwaters is just a few minutes walk from this place.

Lets go on a visual tour of the backwaters and the activities involved...

Getting used to the coracles. Coracles are used to move from one island to another..

The island where we camped. The island in the background is the 'shit island'. Yes, you need to take a coracle and row (or swim) to that island. If you cant contain yourself for that long, God help you!.

The backwaters..

Pirates on board the raft!

Abandon ship!

Getting used to the kayak. Do you see him tensed? :)

The team: (L to R) Subbu, Mahesha, Veeru, Jitha, Shalini, Flavia, yours truly and Sirish.

One memorable thing about this place was the food offered to us. Instead of the stale food which we regularly have during our treks, we were pampered with delicious fresh food. The akki rotis especially were yummmyyy...

Once we were back to the mainland, we decided to trek(?) up Deveragudda to get a good view of the backwaters and the islands where we had camped.

Catching a bus, we were back in Sagar at 1900 hours. Since we had about 3 hours to kill, we decided to pamper ourselves more with some sea-food and a couple of pegs to help us sleep better in the bus! It definitely helped, as the bus-seats were infested with bed-bugs which I realized the next day wonly :-).

Contact number of Sampath: 9845397386.

More photos are here, here and here!

Thus continues the quest...