Once upon a time there was a place Far Far Away where a Beautiful Princess was locked in a tower waiting to be rescued by Prince Charming ... I, much vaunted prince of this beautiful karunadu was touted to be the only man who could rescue the pricess. I felt this was the right time to rescue my Princess and marched on with great fervour and gusto towards the tower which is in a far far away place which is gaurded by several insidious animal species. I struggled to keep up, but my will to rescue my love was impregnable. Then all of a sudden there was a thundering in my ears ... some cruel noise made me awake and gone was my dream.
I was resting on a easy chair, phone behind me on the table had begun to vibrate after a beep. This was strangely an expected call from sudhi. Dazed I picked up my mobile and started arguing where to pick me up on Rajkumar Road, finally sudhi agreed to stop at HSBC ATM. We(sudhi and myself) earlier in the week had planned to visit Hyderabad, but due to unexpected twists and turns we decided Chikkamagalur as our destination. As usual sudhi had once again managed to keep the weekend plans close to his chest.
Swift but effective was when I managed to pack some useful stuff like print out of chikkamagalur wikipedia, sudhis plan mail printouts. I had promised to sudhi that I would in HSBC ATM in 5 mins, had to hurry up after I took leave from my home. I was wearing a blue tee shirt and an army trousers, When I reached the pick up point the scene was no different from a sincere army officer(me) reporting to a tough General (Sudhi).
I hopped onto qualis which was cosy and resembled the carriage I took to resuce my princess. I met my adventuristic friends Bhanu, Suman, Venkatesh (nicknamed later as venks, yenka, vey) & sweet general Sudhi. We had planned to reach chikkamagalur first and then later decide where to go and what to do. The qualis driver Guru is charater not to be ignored, who for the most part of the trip displayed shades of good and bad. Guru was in karaab mood when he started cursing the call center cab drivers left and right, indeed they deserved it. The first part of the travel was spent on asking about each others kushalopari (well-being-ness). Guru stopped the car at a dhaba near nelamangala for dinner(he has a strange habbit of having dinner at 12:00 am), we were hoping that he doesnt drink panaka(alcohol) atleast not on very first day of the trip. He finished his dinner and we left that remote dhaba and proceeded towards chikkamagalur. It was very difficult not to sleep in such a cosy environment, except sudhi every one had a good sleep :-). Sudhi was engrossed in chatting with driver who was narrating his experiences ... like eating frog for the first time, escapades with his NRI clients, chinese clients ... etc stuff.
It was 6:00 am when I woke up, we were closing in on chikkamagalur. 6:30 am when we reached chikkamagalur town. Sudhi requested him to stop the car, so that driver could rest and he could release. But guru stopped the car at a town circle where it was difficult for sudhi find the right spot for release, venky was sudhi's savior in finding a right spot. We had decided that we will rest for a few minutes here and later proceed towards baba-budan-giri or dattapeeta. We stopped at a tea stall and some of us had a tea. Our plan was to reach bababudangiri, visit nearby falls named manikyadhara(take bath) and trek from that place to mullaiyangiri (rest for night atop the highest peak of karnataka). As we were getting ready for trek, thoughts of dinner came to our mind and there we saw a bakery passby while going in car. We asked driver to stopby a bakery and hence we started planning for afternoon, dinner food. We went to buy 3 pounds of bread and ended up buying 6 pounds of bread, 5 creambuns, 5 piecakes, 2 mega biscuit packs, 7 litres of water, 3 maggie packets and lots of jam and sauce. Unfortunately we didnt get our boys favourite pickles. It had taken almost 30 mins buying these stuff and above all there was confusion on how much each of these costed us, had to clarify that with bakery-keeper.
From there it was non-stop travel to baba-budan-giri, as planned we proceeded towards manikyadhara falls. Wait baba-budan-giri resembles a medieval islamic metropolis. Our Guru/driver was very keen to have breakfast, so we had no option but head towards nearest restaurant. There was a collection of dabba hotels, we were able to find a hotel which was serving hot idlis. We settled for that hotel, guys had 2 idlis each. I ate idlis without chutney, just to avoid any kind of hiccups.We thought it was the best time to finish piecakes and here they saw moksha in our stomachs.
Manikyadhara, its supposed to be the waterfall which has medicinal effect. Sudhi and venky really enjoyed having a sprinkle of manikyadhara. I, bhanu and suman decided that the place was too filthy and water was too less for a decent shower, so skipped our bath :D. From there we left to baba-budan-giri to comeback again to the place of two towers where we started our trekking. When we went back to baba-budan-giri we had darshan of dattapeeta and came back to decide how to go about trekking. Basically we were a confused bunch of people with no directions or intentions, so our gang leader sudhi called up his friend harish asking for directions. So we had finally decided that we shall reach two towers and that will be our starting location.
Note: Its two towers and not double tower.
When we reached two towers we started to pack trekking essentials(note that we had gifted one pound of bread to guru, so we had 5 pounds of bread left to finish) into a our bags, we had a affaire d'honneur over carrying trousers, towels & jackets. Finally we obliged our commander sudhi. We then started off the trek with destination at end of horizon. It was 11:00 am and Venky was the only guy who had no experience whatsoever trekking alongside our spartan king sudhi. we were just into 30 minutes of trekking when the heat started to take its toll. We persisted inspite of difficult terrain and covered lot of ground by 12:00 pm. Great landscape beside our trek route made us take lot of pictures, with commander sudhi often getting shot at thinnest of cliffs to prove that he was our Alpha Male. By 12:30 pm we were at beginning of blade section, this is widely known as blade path or blade walk. The section is characterized by steep drop-offs on both sides of path and the path itself consists of numerous rocky obstacles & has a rough terrain. Venky struggled a bit, so did others but we managed to criss cross the blade path around 1:30 pm. We met a trekking party on our way, they said that it was 2 more hours of ordeal. Venky was fully "shed" as we say in our colloquial kannada. We decided to take rest a at forest outpost and move on.
It around 2 when decided to have lunch, we had yummy cream buns & 5 loafs of bread with saucy jam. Our planning was abosolutely superb, we had good supply of water and food to continue our trekking uninterrupted. From that point onwards the trek took an interested turn, we had infront of us 5 mountains each of them required trekking uphill and downhill. We got respite from the heat inform of gloomy clouds, which was threatening in form the of thunder storm (what a co-incidence, a thunderstrom is brewing outside while I am typing this :-)). I have this strange condition of thunderphobic, that is abnormally afraid of dark clouds and lightnings. Luckily for us there was no rain and lightnings at a far off place. That made me push towards our destination, we had our last pitstop at 4:00 pm and we decided to push on before it starts to rain. The mere grasp of destination made us go mad and we were directly headed towards destination with scant respect to path which criss-crossed atop the hill. This made us climb in near impossible conditions, trekking for a short while became mountaineering. Finally bhanu and myself reached the destination, waited for rest of the company to arrive.
Guys trickled in and we started to debate on how / where to camp for the night. Our initial reception at the top of mullaingiri can be best described as "cold" forget lukewarm. We thought that ttemple authorities might not let us put up tent on top of mountain, so we were thinking about possible alternatives. Luckily the priest gave a free hand to us, he gave us so many options that we couldnot resist camping at the top. He offered us place/food inside temple for the rest of the night. Now comes the fun part, there was this group of 30 odd piligrims to the temple who were preparing for some pooja(harake) and they had prepared a gala sorts of dinner for the night. Initially they ignored us then after some time they informed that we could join the dinner after pooja, we were happy as a team which had won world cup. Pooja vidhi vidanas took lot of time, we had become restless and hungry (again our favorite past time was watching sunset and snaping some pics).
Finally the pooja had ended and people had their sights set on dinner. Some of were waiting for just an invitation for dinner, when it finally came our way ... some people were shy and were about to refuse ... our savior for the day bhanu declared that hez hungry and started walking towards kitchen, I followed him silently and so were rest of us. We occupied vantage positions and made ourselves comfortable in dinning hall, the hall was empty and we thought we were the last guys to have dinner. One small kiddo came and told us to take eating plates, we volutarily took some steel plates ... later we saw and settled for leafey plates(yele). Then comes the surprise ... the 30 family arrives and none of them had started their dinner and we had volutarily done so many things(infact it they were 5 mins late we would have had dinner by ourselves). It was so emabarrassing for us but anyways we had no option. It was a stumptous dinner and we didnot cheat our stomach and taste buds ... ahh we had very nice dinner Indeed.
We had a warm and staid sleep, morning sun greeted with us assuring warmth(it was not chilly at all). We tried franatically to call up our driver guru, whose mobile seemed to be switched off. Sucess he came to the base of mullaingiri at around 7:30 am. We had a light tea, thanked temple authorities for their hospitality and continued with our journey. We met our driver guru and left the place without any plans, chikkamagalur was not far( our breakfast plans ). We went to some famous canteen hotel in chikkamagalur, our guys gorged on some good doses, idlis & bisibelebath (which is nothing but rice/sambar according to our guru). Plan for the day was ready by then ... Goto Hornadu------>Sringeri (halt:guru's plans, but people had other plans for him ... poor guru).
We had guru in good spirits and journey was smooth, we had a good bath at hole(river sort of thing). There was also some jalsa or jala kreede (water sports) ..... due to which all of us had sore legs, the river bed was full of rocks and stones. After a decent bath, we proceeded towards hornadu temple, had a good lunch before having darshan of annapurneshwari (indeed we tried to see her in our food). I have to mention about my lunch, I had this wonderfull opportunity to taste all rasas of life (sweet, sour, salt, bitter) in one meal at annapurneshwari's abode. After lunch we had darshan of goddess annapurneshwari and left hornadu with a satisfied feeling.
Now starts the best part of the ride, we had an awesome weather and an awesome ride while nature was at its best. Sudhi told about his "Prakruthi", with whom he is in love so much so that he was willing to go any lenghts to get her. We had some beautiful photos taken at a green tea plantation. On way while enjoying the drive, we played mungaaru male songs and holy god ... it started to rain ... Mungaaru male. We had so much luck that a huge tree fell in front us ... blocking road, then it was time for our towel-man Sudhi, power-man Venky & chatri-man guru to remove the tree from the road. They were indeed sucessfull and we continued our journey towards sringeri via kudremukh. Now we truly understood why sudhi loves prakruthi so much ... we had an oppurtunity to see her beauty and get inspired. Forgot to mention that Venky had tentatively agreed for a days extension and we got just 24 hours more.
It was about 8:00 when we had reached Sringeri, we had darshan and had a good dinner. We had a great time and temples are such good places to relax. Our driver guru was very angry when he heard about our plans ... we had planned to travel all night to murudeshwar and from there to udupi, marvanthe ... so on and so else. But guru was furious, he wanted to booze in sringeri and call off the day. He argued that coastal regions will be very humid and more over he needed some rest. But thought otherwise and we had to pay a price(hot and humidity) for that later ... luckily we were not penalized more than that by gods grace.
Guru did indeed booze with meenu oota in sringeri. He was pissed off with our plans, so he started using his swear words on every one and everything. We started off towards agumbe and then from there towards ... murudeshwar !!! I was awake till agumbe ghat and some place after that ... there was some misunderstanding between us and guru ... and that was enough for guru to start off on Srirampura rowdy chakravarthy / Politicians / aatas he played ... like his love life, youthfull days ... etc. I pretended as asleep and bhanu had to listen to all his ramblings. Supposedly he showed bhanu a mohini in red dress with clean shaven head. Hmm I hate to believe this because ... bhanu is the guy who always sleeps & guru was drunk !
We finally reached murudeshwar at 3:30 am. All I could remember was that sudhi asking me to acompany him ... he was planning to go towards beach. I said NO ... meanwhile guru wanted to sleep badly. We made good use of tent on footpath, created a space for sleeping. Life mein bahut kuch first time experience hota hai mamu ... yes, first time in life I slept on footpath. It was an amazing experience, Sky was our bedsheet, wind was our AC, twinkling stars & lightning was like a dim lamp and melody of waves was laali for us. Its just an experience to lie around and watch thousands of stars andlightning strike at an alarming regularity. I was only cautious when some dogs were running here and there. Finally sun ame out piercing the viel of darkness.
[ Man, my patience has weared out writing this epic travel blog ... I might miss out on some details from on ... coz I badly want to finish this as soon as possible :-) .... holy shit therez a virus in my machine :-( ]
We had a beautiful crash .... and hence I am closing the post here.
