Kuringal GuDDa and Onake Abbe falls

Another jobless weekend and we had to go somewhere this time also. After considering Amedikallu and Mukurthi, we zeroed in on one of the Kudremukh National Park trails. I dont understand what is the problem with the Mukurthi forest officials. The first time I call them they readily agree to give permission (upon arrival). Still skeptic, I ask Subbu to call them up and confirm and he gets the same response. I call them again after a few hours and they flatly refuse to give permissions! Anyways, Kudremukh permissions were easily available and we decided to go to Kuringal Gudda (or Kurinjal Gudda).

Our initial plan was to trek from Mullur gate to Kuringal Gudda and camp at Bhagavathi Nature camp. Mullur gate and Kuringal Gudda come under Karkal RFO and Bhagavathi Nature camp comes under Kudremukh RFO. Bookings were done accordingly and we (6 of us) started from Bangalore in a qualis.

Jump up in joy!

The team: Moch, Mithun, Subbu, Mahesha, Indranil and yours truly!

After a peaceful overnight drive to Karkala, we got the required permission (in writing) from the RFO and reached the Mullur post, which is on the way to Kudremukh. But to our dismay, the officials in Mullur refused to take us from Mullur from Kuringal Gudda. The reason given was naxal problem but I suspect it was more out of laziness than anything else. Instead they offered to take us to Kuringal Gudda from some other route which was supposedly not half as tough. All our efforts of convincing them fell on deaf ears and we were compelled to take the other route. So then, we drove towards Kudremukh and about 11 kms before the town, we started the trek.

Kuringal GuDDa peak

The trek to the top should not take more than 2 hours. The only matter of concern for us was the huge mosquitoes that use to swarm us wherever we went. Have never come across such a breed of mosquitoes and their bites were quite painful. Other than that it was an enjoyable trek to the top. On our way back it started raining and oh boy, I really enjoyed the rains that day :-).

Upon reaching the Kudremukh forest office for permissions to Bhagavathi nature camp, we realized the accomodation is way beyond our budget! Two man tents for 400 bucks and two man guest houses for 600 bucks! (yes, we consider them ridiculously expensive). Since we were planning to go to Onake Abbe falls the next day, we decided to go to Karkala, where we got a three-star like accomodation for a total of 700 bucks (for the six of us). Great deal. The non-veggies had a customary Tandoori-chicken (you need to bring your two hands, fists clenched, closer to your face and crouch a little when saying this) for dinner.

The next day we set off towards Someshwara to go to Onake Abbe falls. Someshwara is on the foot of Agumbe Ghats and is about 60 kms from Karkala. We got hold of a guide (easily available) to take us to the falls since the route is a little confusing and the place is amidst thick forests. After about two hours of non-stop trek uphill, we reached the falls which had decent amount of water, thanks to rains for the past few days. The place is nice and I can only imagine its splendour in the monsoons! The fact that you need to swim to get to the falls makes it a very attractive place.

Water sports at Onake Abbe!

The high point of the day was when we ordered 20 plates of Neer Dosas and fish fries at Sridevi hotel for the five of us! (Mithun had decided to check out some other veggie hotel). Had a quick stop at the Agumbe view point just before sunset as we headed back to Bangalore, stopping for dinner and doodh-peDhas at Chickmagalur.

The trek is listed here. But the contact details are incorrect.

The contact details are as follows:
Kudremukh RFO: 9448789998 (M)
Karkala RFO: 08258 231183 (O)

The route taken:
Bangalore - Hassan - Sakleshpur - Gundya - Belthangady - Karkala.

Return journey:
Agumbe - Chickmagalur - Belur - Hassan - Bangalore.

Photos are here, here and here!

Thus continues the quest...

Pondicherry

After a month-long taxing ride in the North-East, i wanted to go to some place to put my feet up and relax. And what better place to do that than Pondicherry? Never mind the heat though.

So when Moch called me for this trip, without a second thought (as always), I signed up. Leave on Friday evening and come back on Monday morning with the transportation taken care of. Sounds fairy-tale eh? The catch is in the number of people who had signed up. A full dozen and a three-quarter! Yeah, 21 people.

The team (start counting, you may need ur fingers as well as toes): Moch, Jitha, Subbu, Sirish, Anjali, Flavia, Pari, Babitha, Hasan, Harsha, Akhila, Aparna, Naveen, Praveen, Badri, Gautham, Murali, Ritvik, Sushmitha, Holla and yours truly!

Anyways... to keep ourselves entertained during the trip, me and J decided to go speaker-shopping and bought a set of portable speakers for 150 bucks. The speakers entertained/irritated all of us for a good part of the journey.

A few pre-trip calls that JJJ got were quite interesting and worth writing:

X: Hey JJJ, I have a pair of floaters, do I need to wear sneakers??
JJJ: First tell me what are floaters and what are sneakers!

Y: Hey JJJ, do I need to carry change of clothes??
JJJ: I don't care man!

As it always happens with such a large group, we left Bangalore pretty late (around 1 in the morning i guess), which left Aparna quite fuming i hear. After a tea break near Hosur which was almost as long as an elephant's gestation period, we set off to Pondicherry, via Tiruvannamalai (did I spell it right?). The driver of the other cab decided to keep his passengers awake by driving like a drunkard on steroids. The passengers apparently went "Ooooooo", "Aaaaaaaa" and "Ohhhhh" every now and then. The next morning when I got up at 7ish, we were still 60 kms from Pondi and we could see a small hillock in front of us with a fort on its top. So then, trekking instincts took over and we decided to give it a shot. Unfortunately, we took a wrong route and had to abandon our climb mid-way.

Who slapped these people?

After a stop at a bakery for a doodh-peDha session (its paal-khova in Tamil Nadu), we finally reached Pondi at 1 in the afternoon. The chappars that we are, decided to go for budget accomodation, and headed towards Cuddalore where rooms were booked in Youth Hostel. Good accomodation at a mere 100 bucks for a night!

Youth Hostel Dormitory

After cooling our heels for some time, we decided to check out the silver beach very close by. The place is a little crowded (no no, not by the 21 of us) but we managed to find a good place for our frisbee game.

Frisbee Time!

For dinner, the non-veggies decided to get some sea-food and ended up at an uptown place (dont remember the name). The food was decent but the waiter made us wait for too long. Never mind. The Fish-65 was good.

The "no-nonsense" people. Me, Jitha, Subbu and Holla.

Next morning, most of us wanted to go to Mahabalipuram, but Moch, for reasons unknown, was adamant on not going. Pari almost fell at his feet but the bugger didnt budge. But Moch did manage to get everyone ready to go to Auroville. And what exactly did we do in Auroville? Play Frisbee!! Lazing around for most of the day, we went to another beach in the evening for another frisbee session, while some girls and Subbu decided to go shopping (poor Subbu). In the beach, Mochi managed to get his ankles damaged, Harsha managed to do a cool somersault at break-neck speed, Akhila managed to lose her goggles and her cool, me got an inch long cut on the sole of my right foot.

Though in no mood to get back to Bangalore, "Monday-morning" beckoned us. Also, we decided we got tanned enough and headed back, stopping for a quick dinner on the way. Reached Bangalore at 5:30 in the next morning.

A few pics are here, here and here!

Thus continues the quest...

The North-East expedition.

Have you ever had throngs of people wave at you, from a remote village, as you roar by? Have you ever felt like a celebrity, atleast for a month, with people surrounding you and your bike, staring at you in disbelief? Have you ever had policemen stop you, only to have a cup of tea with you? Have you ever hugged your bike while crossing a stream on a cramped boat, all raining and completely drenched? Have you ever whispered words of encouragement to your bike, egging it on to cross a high pass at temperatures way below freezing point? Have you ever felt one with nature and your bike, that holy union of three entities?

I have...


Watch this space for updates. Too much to write. Trying to keep it short and hence taking time.
In the meanwhile, if you are as jobless as me, go through the pics here

Kabbaladurga

Lazy Sunday? Take your bike out and head to one of the many 'bettas' or 'durgas' outside of Bangalore. That is exactly what we did last Sunday. A few calls here and there and we were already 10 of us! Talk of jobless S/E engineers. We decided to go to Kabbaladurga, about 70 odd kms from Bangalore.

The team: Moch, Jitha, Shashi, Harsha, Holla, BK, Pari, Ramya, Jo and yours truly.

We all decided to get together at Family Mart near Kanakapura road junction at 0730. By the time everyone turned up, it was around 0745. Remarkable! considering there were many late additions and last minute calls for co-ordination. Getting to Kanakapura road junction wasn't a problem. But the good ol' Family Mart, which was our reference point for many a trips, wasn't to be seen! Not a trace of it!! Apparently, someone had done a ctrl-x, ctrl-v of the location of the mart. Whatever! Had breakfast at some Adiga restaurant and I was made to pay the bill. The reason? It was supposed to be my 'wedding day' :D. Aah the price I had to pay for the prank...

Slow-paced ride for about 2 hours (with a break) on a not-so-bad-by-Indian-standards road, and we were at Kabbala village.

The route: Bangalore - Kanakapura - Satanur(right turn) - Kabbala.

Kabbaladurga is a fort on a monolith right next to the village. Parked our bikes at a villager's residence and started the climb. The climb is not tough, although at a couple of places, you may have to be on all fours. There are steps to the top. At some places, there are railings which you can hold on to. But you need to be a little acrobatic, considering the railings are about 3 feet away from the steps. Getting down, it began to rain, which made the descent slippery. Other than that, there is nothing much to the climb (and descent).

Once back to our bikes, we bade a tearful adieu(?!) to BK, who decided to part from us to go to his granny's place. Aah the pain of separation! :D. We decided to take another route on our way back. Chennapatna was a little more than 20 kms from Kabbala and the temptation of getting to Kamath for lunch was too good to resist. At Chennapatna, had a tough time explaining to Ramya what Chennapatna toys are. Poor Ramya didn't know what Chennapatna toys are (toys-deprived childhood she had, probably) :D. Had a grand lunch and a customary doodh-peDha session at Kamath and got back to Bangalore.

Question for the day: What are the odds of 10 people coming on a trip and not one of them having a camera, not even a phone-camera?

Thus continues the quest...

OmbattuguDDa

Warning: Newbie trekkers donot try this trek. Experienced trekkers donot go to this place without a map and a GPS and loads of water! And get ready to get lost! Brace yourself for one of the toughest treks in the south.

A few of us had planned to do this trek three weeks back wonly (the last weekend of Jan). But somehow, didn't happen. This weekend 'Mohmad' was around and I had decided to go to the place no matter how many ppl drop out. I knew Mohmad wouldn't ditch. So no way OmbattuguDDa was going to be cancelled, for any stupid reasons. So finally, it was eight of us. Mohmad, Jitha, Mahesha, Adithya, Madhu, Kantha, Vatsha and yours truly. Equipped with a GPS and a topo map, we set off from Bangalore in a qualis, with latest Kannada movie songs blaring from the stereo. Weren't me and Jitha excited!?? I have no clue how others managed to get sleep, but for me, it was a sleepless night as we reached Gundya at around 5 in the morning. Kantha and Vathsa, who seemed like eternal sleepers, finally woke up!

The starting place for the trek is about a km from the Gundya gate. Immediately after crossing a bridge, there is a mud road on the right side, from where you set off. After about 2.5 hours of brisk walk along a flat terrain, we reached a river intersection, which was our first destination. Well, we could see only one river, but the intersection wasn't very far away from us, according to the topo map. Finished our breakfast and many of us were tempted to get into the river. Adithya got adamant that we leave soon, but managed to 'accidentally' fall into the river! Nice trick. We continued straight on a well defined path, along the Kabbinale river for another two hours, when finally, the urge to get into the water got to us and all of us took the plunge. I suggested we have lunch there itself, but others refused and were to find out what happens when they dont listen to yours truly...

End of the picnic. Now begins the fun. There was absolutely no path from thereon. But looking at the GPS and the topo, we headed straight in the direction of the peak (we probably should have taken a round-about route). Steep climb, loose mud, thorns all around and not a hint of a drop of water anywhere. Getting to the grasslands itself is tough but we managed to do it in good time thanks to the GPS and fit trekkers (all of us). Water reserves nearly got over and all of us were extremely thirsty by the time we hit open grasslands at around 4:30 and yeah, we could see the peak right in front of us. Another two hours of arduous climb and we reached the peak... Phew, first attempt, first day, considering the place is famous for people getting lost and all (haven't come across anyone who has completed the trek in one day). But all of us were too dehydrated to celebrate. Parched throats, dry tongues, burning lips, salts coming out of every pore in the body... Amidst all these, our dear committed man Mohmad managed to pee!!!! Jitha pointed out that he might have wrung his thing to get the pee out, but hey, he had that much water reserve nevertheless! We were all hungry too (remember we hadn't had lunch), but nobody was willing to eat because that would make all of us thirstier.

Our next task was to get to a jeep track which was less than a km away. But we had to cross a jungle to get there and it was already dark. We didn't find any path but got into the jungle intending to go in the north-west direction. But it ain't no easy finding your way in the jungle in the dark. Within a few minutes we got lost and the GPS stopped working in the forest cover. We kept walking for about 20 minutes until we got an eerie feeling that we were lost. Already dark, no path anywhere and all the directions looked the same! We had no clue which direction we were going in! So then, we tried getting out of the forest in any direction for the GPS to start working. We couldn't even retrace our path. We were left clueless in thick jungle and in the dark. Mea-culpa, since I was leading. But thankfully no one complained (nobody had the energy to talk!). After apparently going round in circles for more than an hour in what is supposedly a small strip of thick forest, we decided to rest for some time, think and start again. It was here that ppl started getting ideas of camping where we were (definitely not happening, i thought, we didn't have water, damn it!). Most of us considered spending the night in the forest itself. We started wondering whether the trek was really worth it. But then there's something called necessity and hope which can drive a person to his absolute limits. We started noticing the direction in which the moon was moving. Although others weren't aware of the fact that the moon moves from the east to the west, me and Adithya knew for sure. Then eventually, gathering all the energy and determination we had, we headed in the north-west direction and managed to come out of the forest. As if getting lost once wasn't enough, we had to cross another strip of forest to get to the jeep track! But luckily, after me and Mohmad scouted around a little, we found a clear trail and after another half an hour of walk, we hit the jeep track.

We were relieved beyond any forms of expression. We could now easily get to the estate where we could get those two molecules of hydrogen and a molecule of oxygen, which people lovingly call 'water'. Water... Aaahh.. that colourless, odourless and tasteless liquid to which you have an easy access when at work or at home... that which quenches your thirst... that which was the only thing in our mind then... But we were to suffer for some more time. The jeep track was frustratingly long and winding and ascending. After every corner, I would flash my torch to see any traces of water on the roadside. The jeep track was where the exhaustion and frustration really got to us. Till then, (even in the forest when we were lost), I could see the funny side of everything. But the never ending jeep track got to me. Never before was I so exhausted. Dragging my legs for what seemed to be an eternity, we finally reached the estate at 11pm. We all broke down with emotions when we saw a hose pipe with water trickling at the end of it... Well, we didn't actually cry (we are all men u see), but the mood was something similar. The estate workers provided us a room where we crashed for the night.

The next day, abandoning plans of dipadakallu trek, we put a touristy trip to Mulliangiri, going all the way up in our qualis! Every water source, a lake or a small falls or even a simple tap, would remind us of the previous day's experience and would make us happy and bring an ironic smile on our faces. 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) lunch at some dhaba near Hassan, we headed back to Bangalore.

Ombattu guDDa has to be the toughest trek i've been to (i've done quite some trekking in the past and consider myself reasonably fit). OmbattuguDDa is an endurance test. Think twice before heading off to the place. Going there without a GPS would be pure madness. The dryness of the place apart, it's very easy to get lost there and the place is supposedly infested with elephants, though we were lucky not to find any. Iam not even imagining being chased by elephants when all of us are parched dry.

The aftermath: I am now looking at water in a different light altogether. Everytime I drink water and I see water, I remember that evening. Everytime there's a slight hint of me getting thirsty, I run to the nearest water source...

Thus continues the quest...