Experiencing the mystery of nature.....Truly nature is divine!!!!

"Experience is gained by traveling around 'n' by reading  books". But traveling is better option and riskier than the latter one....

               Being students it's obvious to go for a trip... But we wanted to try something different,something which only few would prefer to do.... So we opted to trek... And thats how it began...."THE TREK ON WESTERN GHATS"  . . . .

BRIDGE

              This is one of the most famous trekking spots in the Western Ghats through an abandoned railway track which connects Bangalore and Mangalore.The track has been repaired now and  train runs twice a day along with some goods train.So be careful if you are planning to trek.

              Sakleshpur is around 220kms from Bengaluru (Bangalore) and Donigal is 7kms further up in NH48. The railway track connects Hassan to Mangaluru (Mangalore) and passes through the western ghats past Sakleshpur. It runs around NH48 near Donigal, but gradually moves to the south of highway. The track passes through the stations Yedakumari and Shiribagilu and then crosses the Subramanya road.

             Our plan was to take a saturday night KSRTC bus in Tumkur to Sakleshpur,get down there,take a bus to donigal and start trekking there by morning 7 and reach yedkumari before sunset.Catch "kannur express" train to subramanya road next morning at 4.


           On the trek day, 13 people turned up.Abhishek, Amogh, Ashwin, pavan bandoji,Nithish,Harshith, Abhinandan, Mohan(filter), Vikas, Sukanth, Vinayraj, Adiga, Varun.Everything went as per the plan.We made Bus wait for nearly half an hour as Amogh was late.Finally our journey started. The road route from tiptur to hassan was horrible, hardly anyone slept in bus. We reached saklespur bus stand at 2 am took a night walk in streets of sakleshpur. Some guys slept in bus stand in first floor which was pretty decent place to sleep a vacant space with no one around.We rested there till sunrise and took an Auto to Donigal at 7 am.We got down past donigal railway station. Donigal station is marked as KM49 (guess, its the distance from Hassan), and subsequent markings are available in the track, which made it quite easy to keep track of the distance.

          Finally, at around 7.30 we started off along the track, towards Yedakumari. For more than an hour,we trekked along the railway track and it turned out to be just a simple track to follow.It seemed trek was going to turn out boring until we encountered our first bridge at KM52. It was a small bridge, less than 50m long, but was enough to give us a feel of the bridges on the way.We all had the feeling of fear about the getting stuck in between bridge and suddenly train would arrive luckily nothing such thing happened since very few train come in this track . This trek is famous for the bridges and tunnels and the lush green environment around you.Next near KM55, we reached the 2nd bridge, followed by the 1st two tunnels. Tunnels actually increased our enthusiasm of trekking. The first two tunnels were small - only around 100m long and were almost continuous.
     

Tram coming out of tunnel

        when we were in between the first tunnel we heard engine sound, all of us started to panic wondering what to do? some guys(varun, Abinandan) fell in hurry....next moment everyone stood stuck up to the wall of tunnel .We heard the sound approaching us and next what we saw was a 'tram' which normally goes for checking/inspection of tracks and carrying labours. All of us were releived.There was a small opening on midway right of the first tunnel, through which we took to reach a view point overlooking the ghats and a water fall. We stayed there for a while, took some snaps and continued further.

        Then on, the tunnels and bridges became frequent, longer, darker and higher. But, the scare was gone after crossing couple of bridges and tunnels.The most important thing to carry while trekking is a good,powerful torch... normal torch won't be much useful in pitch black tunnels. Before KM58, we encountered  Tunnel 5 which is 254m long. We had bread jam,apples in between while resting and also had photo session and all. Before KM59, we enquired a 150m long scary bridge. A km further up, it was a 383m long dark tunnel (Tunnel 6), so far the longest we encountered .Just before this tunnel we had lunch(chapatis,roti's) got ourselves ready for our journey.

PITCH DARK TUNNELS

      Latter we continued our journey we met many other troops who had come to trek like us.Also there were workers doing some repair works and suggested us about the'Kempuhole'
waterfalls at mile stone 62/800 as we reached this milestone there was a bridge next to which was a tunnel indicating 575m long just before the tunnel to the left there was a small pathway leading to the falls.The waterfall was good, with cold, refreshingly clean water. This is one of the best falls we had seen since the water wasn't much deep and had good space to have fun in water. we got ourselves  fresh here

KEMPUHOLE FALLS

      We picked up ourselves by around 2.45 and continued for Yedakumeri. With the information available from various places, Donigal to Yedakumeri is 18kms and we should be there by KM67, which would mean that we are less than 5kms away from our day's target. That gave us some energy :)Past some more tunnels and bridges, at KM64, we encountered one more big tunnel (410m). Soon after 4.00 we had crossed our last tunnel before Yedakumeri (Tunnel #18) and soon we saw the tracks diverging and the track started going around a hill, giving a view of the western ghats on your right. We walked around this hill and exactly at KM67, there was a platform on the right side, and a board saying 'Yedakumeri'!!!

RAILWAY STATION

       As we reached there most of us laid flat on platform fully exhausted some of guys who had not slept the day before trek(esp. Bandoji) fell asleep....we enquired for way back and got to know that there will be  kannur express train giving stop exactly for 1 min the next morning at 4 going towards subramanya road. Also  there were 2 to 3 goods train going that way which would give stop but one would have to go to the last boogie to catch up train which we were not able to  since all of us were exhausted and were not in proper position to run.Thus we decided to go in morning train.

      The yedakumari station master didn't allow us to stay there for long  as trekking was prohibited in that area. An old man suggested us about the abandoned quarters a few meters ahead as we got to that place we realized that we all would be dead by next morning if we stayed there. it was a typical Bhooth bungalow of hindi movies with lots of mosquitoes and others creatures. we decided to get back to station and after asking permission from station master all decided to halt at station that night

     We got up next morning at 3.30 caught up train at 4 .The passenger compartment was full and we hardly had space to stand and we couldn't even breath as all the windows and doors of compartment was closed. We found trekking 18km was much easier than traveling in conjusted  train. We reached subramanya road at 6am.went to kukke subramanya 14km from there, took bath went to temple and returned back to tumkur in KSRTC bus.

   Thus our trekking was full of fun,with filter dialogues from Mohan, demo by Abhinandan, timely comments by Amogh, Adiga, Varun etc and lot more other stuff's all of which couldn't be included in Blog