Tadiyandamol, Chelavra falls, Mandalpatti Coorg

back from a great trip to coorg with BASC. I always have so many things going on in my mind after every trek, but never manage to pen them down. The max I have done is put a status update. This time I managed to create a blog and here goes my first blog entry.
The trip to Tadiyandamol with BASC was a completely new experience for me. I was always skeptical of going on a 2 day long tour with complete strangers. BASC keeps organizing such treks almost every weekend. Mostly I follow their mails seriously, and make a note of all the interesting places that they go, and try to arrange a trip to those places with my friends. But most of the times it becomes difficult to convince enough people to come with me on treks.
This time it was a long 3 day weekend, and I hate spending weekends at home. We tried to plan a trip to Goa with friends, but I backed out, as it would be a costly trip. That's when I thought my only option was to risk my weekend and go with BASC, on a two day trek. Tadiyandamol seemed quite interesting and challenging trek. After my last kumara parvata trek, where we were pushed to our limits, I was very confident of myself. I wanted to do some more difficult treks. So myself and afzal registered and were really happy to be selected for the trek.
All of us assembled at majestic on friday night. I noticed just 1 familiar face, deepak and afzal knew quite a few of them from his earlier treks. We boarded the bus, got introduced with each other. After a (long) sleepless night in the bus, reached our destination, the Nalknad Palace.

Day 1, Tadiyandamol Peak

I lust for the quietness of the hills, chirping of birds, wind rustling through the trees, a relief from our everyday city chaos. But it is not easy to be quiet and avoid chit chat when you are in a group of 22 enthusiastic trekkers. So I managed to be the last person in the group and was supposed to ensure no one was behind me. This gave me the opportunity to walk with a relaxed pace, and just be slowest in the group. 

on the way to peak

After some walking we reached our base camp, a small house, which would arrange for our lunch and dinner. We were welcomed with the most amazing Juice ever, which was made of some kind of fruit(orange) grown in their garden. We planned to go to the peak of tadiyandamol before lunch. So we left our heavy backpacks at the house and just carried some essential items, water and snacks.

The trek to the peak was relatively easy. We were almost entirely walking on flat surface, with some moderate ascends. To add some spice I went off the trail and climbed up a steeper route. We reached the peak, rested for some time and enjoyed some snacks. There were quite a few people on the peak, even  some kind of shooting was going on there with video cameras and large reflectors. After some time we started our descend. As the sun was at its peak, just above our head, it took quite some time for us to reach the base camp. Everyone was tired, and it was decided that we would be camping at the house for the rest of the day after our lunch. I was quite disappointed for having to stay back and not being able to explore. We had a much required, relaxing nap after lunch. After waking up we decided to go and explore nearby places.

Day 1, Eve

It was getting dark, all of us carried our torch. In the morning couple of tourists told us they went down and explored some trails there. Since we had already been to the peak in day, we decided to follow a trail down to the valley. Some of us started following a trail downhill. We crossed couple of settlements, and then reached a forest. It was pitch dark, most of others were advising against entering the jungles. Rahul first dared to enter the forest but after people started calling us he also went back. I was too excited to see the pitch-black, still jungle ahead to go back. I started walking slowly ahead, with the torch just barely illuminating the path. After some time it became really scary, I was afraid of getting lost. Then afzal called and joined me. That gave me some courage, and both of us started going further down. I simply enjoy this still dark silence. Without torch light, you can see nothing and hear only some birds and  insects chirping, awesome!! Since everyone else was waiting for us outside the forest, we decided to return back. The way back was not easy. If you miss the trail and take a wrong turn, you are screwed. Luckily afzal remembered the entire trail and we came out. Ram and others were waiting for us, we got scolded for not being with the group. We returned and joined our entire team.

campfire

Everyone was sitting in a circle on the volley ball court. First we started playing antakshari, then everyone gave a solo performance. We enjoyed a lot, with some rap dance, some moon dance style and some south and north style dances. Meanwhile the night sky was brilliant. Completely filled with stars. Last time I witnessed such an incredible star filled sky was at Kumara Parvata. The sky looks unbelievable, but I feel very irritated every time i see such a clear night sky because I never managed to learn star watching, even though I am hugely interested in it. I donot understand anything of stars and constellations. Some time back I even bought a book to learn star gazing and recognize constellations, but never got past the first few pages.
After sometime we set up camp fire to warm up, as the night was really getting colder and colder. Soon we were served a tasty dinner. After which everyone started getting ready for sleeping. People started booking their spot inside the hut. There were 3 rooms, and everyone was sleeping in their sleeping bags. Myself and afzal decided to sleep outside at the courtyard. No one else was ready to sleep outside and everyone suggested us not to, because of the mist and extremely cold weather. But I did not want to miss this opportunity. I always wanted to sleep under a clear night sky. This would be my first experience. After a lot of debating we finally camped outside. It was really an amazing experience. Staring at hundreds of stars, sleeping inside a sleeping bag. For the first time I actually noticed the movement of stars. It was not a very comfortable sleep, I was a bit afraid of the cold or the sleeping bag getting wet with mist. But still somehow I slept, and woke up early morning, was glad to find the inside of sleeping bag dry, inspite of outside being covered with mist.

enjoying the early morning fog covered valley

Day 2, Chelavra Falls

We freshned up and started for the bus. Our next stop was chelavra falls. Oh I never expected it to be so good. I have been to quite a few falls. But this was the best. The falls was perfect, not too big to be dangerous, not too small, just perfect to swim. For the first time I could swim outside a swimming pool. It was simply awesome. But the water was chilling, oh very very cold. I was shivering for quite sometime after getting out of water. After the chilling bath, all of us had some breakfast with all the snacks we had brought. We had bread with cheese from a colgate like paste tube.

After a long bus journey we reached madikeri for lunch. We stopped at a pure veg restaurant, which as some people said was quite famous. We waited for quite some time as we had reached earlier and lunch was not yet ready. We had a tasty lunch on banana leaf.

Abbey falls

The next place was the famous abbey falls. But many people pointed out that it was very boring. You just stand at a distance and take photos. As after some accident getting down to the falls was prohibited. Furthermore it was a hot sunny afternoon. You have to walk some distance after getting down from bus to reach the falls. The walk is also horrible on pitch road filled with dust and no shade at all. On our way down, afzal spotted a path leading to some jungles. Instantly he ran towards that path. I was thinking of asking everyone else, if that path could lead to falls, but no one else was too sure of taking that offshoot. So instead of waiting for others afzal and myself ran into the path before someone else could stop us. I was really concerned, since niranjan had already warned me several times of not leaving the group. But we kept following an almost non existing trail. It was sure no one took this path through the jungles. We could hear the water stream somewhere down, which assured us we could reach the falls at some point. It was really interesting, we were not sure where this path would lead, and it was a dense forest, the trail was covered with dry leaves and bushes, indicating it was a rarely used trail.
But at last we could hear some human voices and we came out of the jungle into some stair cases leading to falls. We were really excited to have discovered this path. Then we ran to the abbey falls to join others and not to miss some group photos. But when we reached there no one was there. We thought, everyone went back, were we so late. We started going back, to search others. then we found them coming and were happy that we had actually discovered an interesting short cut. Afzal told niranjan about the path through the forest, and convinced him, to let everyone follow him. He was clearly very excited. So afzal led a group of people through the forest. I stayed back to make sure everyone was on track. While climbing up I was a bit worried, a couple of times there was no visible trail, only lots of thorny bushes. I was almost going to give up, when at last I recognized the trail and we reached our bus.

Day 2, Mandalpatti Sunset

Now we were supposed to go to a view point by Jeep. Niranjan and gang started negotiating with some jeep drivers and finally struck a great deal after lot of bargaining.
Oh this was another high point of the trip, 11 people in one jeep. I was inside but sitting on the back tire of the jeep, and what a jeep journey it was. The road was extremely steep. At a point we had to get down and push the jeep . It was quite a long journey to the peak. Only experienced jeep drivers could negotiate this route. The peak was much much much more than i expected. The view was completely awesome. I realized we have climbed quite a lot, since we could see so many ranges of western ghat in coorg. Even Kotebetta peak, 3rd highest peak in coord was visible from here . The pushpagiri sanctuary was also visible. Everything visible was a candidate trekking destinations for us. Our gang started enjoying at the peak. Taking all kinds of jumping, posing, silhouette photos. I always like to experience the serenity of nature, I sat away from our group and tried to enjoy the fabulous view. The sunset was mind blowing, we could see it setting behind the ranges. It brought back memories of my sunset experience while on a trip with GETHNAA to ramnagaram. On that occasion our guide asked everyone to sit alone and not to talk to anyone and feel and enjoy the sunset in a different, calm peaceful manner. From then on I try to enjoy the wilderness, nature in a similar fashion.

Oh and then the return journey by jeep, It was ride of a lifetime. I mean we could actually pay just for a ride like that. Afzal and myself were standing at the back of the jeep. Our heads outside and body inside, what an experience. Clear night sky, an amazing crescent moon with even the dark side visible clearly, and the downhill ride on the twisting and uneven rough road, with opaque forest on both sides, and sometimes view of far off valleys. An unforgettable journey it was.

Our trip ended with dinner at madikeri. Non vegetarians were not ready to settle with veg this time, so veggies and non-veggies went to different restaurant. After dinner we boarded the bus, celebrated Umesh's birthday with a cake and dozed off. This time I could sleep a little in bus, as I was really tired. We reached bangalore by 4am and everyone returned to their normal weekday life.
And that was quite a memorable weekend.