Monday, June 10, 2013

Dabbe Falls

       The post-surgery trek was inaugurated on June 1st. We decide to go to Dabbe falls, near shivamogga,  Yogi , Reddy and Murali were ready and I tried but exhausted all my options to get some girl company for the trek. Raghav randomly kept asking people if there were interested to trek,and three of his friends from HUL decided to join in ,at the last moment. We had set aside the rations, planned on the route and yogi was our designated guide, a place that seem to have been very special to him .
      The friday, June 1st saw Bangalore drenched in the pre-monsoon heavy rains and crawling traffic. Everyone stuck at different parts of the city, the probability of the trek happening seemed to be dwindling, but none of  us wanted to give up.Although, vetri's sense of direction,of having been the third to reach majestic but lost for about an hour trying to get to where we were, was hilarious. Tired from the inter-city terrible travel,slightly beaten by the city's infrastructure but greatly spirited, we boarded a bus to Sagara(past shimoga) at 12am . Reached  Sagara by 7 am, had a good breakfast ,but wasted quite a lot of time searching for buses to hosagadde. After asking around for the buses and futile attempts to hitchhike our way to hosagadde,we took a bus to kargal and an omni to the start of our trek. Quite a lethargic start at 11 am finally, made our way to gowdarre mane with help by the villagers along the way. Reached gowdarre mane to meet Manjaiaah , left our bags there and carried only the bag with our lunch (packed form sagara) . It was an exciting descend  to the falls, some tricky corners and yogi was carrying a rope on standby. We were lucky it hadn't rained heavily , so the mud wasn't very loose. Reached the bottom of dabbe falls. Magnificent ! It may not look as awe-inspiring as jog falls which is in shimoga, but it had a enticing unexplained charm  to it. Relaxing on the rocks and eating our rice bath, we watched the powerful stream of water from a visibly dangerous height pound the rocks beneath  with great force. Relished our lunch and a quick photo session , some of the guys decided to getting pounded  by the water and they did , pretty hard ! The ascent was surprisingly quick and we were at gowdarre mane by 5pm. We contemplated a lot in staying there for the night or to continue trekking towards kanoor kote and halt at doctor mane. Short of time, we decided to pay manjaiaah (500 ! ) to show us the route to kanoor village and started off. Following him was rather simple, it saved us the trouble of having to find the routes on our own. We reached Kanoor shaalae by 7:30 pm and a nearby house/cottage were generous enough to let us use their water and we did take a few vessels to use from them as well. Moderately tired but very hungry, we started cooking,Raghav and his HUL boys did an impressive job of perfectly boiling the eggs , murali and I did the vegetable cutting and some lemonade and lemony onions ! Yogi , well..did everything. Our head chef Yogi cooked us a delicious meal of egg masala (probably the first on a trek and the eggs did survive two falls and possible breaks,one in the bus journey bearing the weight of my legs and the other,raghav's brave fall) and biryani with pappad as well. The school was a luxury actually,as compared to the camping treks. We rolled out our sleeping bags and fell asleep within minutes.
     Woke up quiet lazily at about 8am , but waking up to nature and seeing vast greenery the first thing in the morning is the best morning anyone can ask for. Apart from a local bus parked near the school, the view was perfect ! Quick to make delicious lemon tea, mix puliyogare with extra roasted peanuts (YUMM), pack our sacks,  wash the vessels(raghav murali and harsh taking over an hour to scrub it ), we left kanoor school by 1030am. Rather late, but we maintained a good pace with yogi in the lead. We did lose our way a couple of times, but successfully found the right way out. It was drizzling, and the intransigent leeches started bothering us. We found the perfect place to halt, exactly seven benches for us,where we could rest our sacks ,sit and pick out our leeches and finally stand on the bench to prevent further leeches to get on. Small Joys! But it had to be bothered by the first monsoon showers that poured exactly around lunch, when we had just removed all the leeches and were munching bread slices with delicious jam on our marked benches. Went up the wrong way, and I think we missed kanoor kote. Raghav went back to the benches to pick up a stem of a plant I wanted in my garden and luckily happened to have noticed another path ,we changed track and continued on the path that ultimately led us to the village gerusoppa . After a long hike of about 6 hours , and stole three delicious mangoes from the locals, we reached gerusoppa. Took the ferry across Sharavthi river, the river was fairly abundant and a beautiful sight. Lazed around the lake a bit, freshened up(i.e., changed clothes in an auto due to lack of covered places),we continued hiking to the town to find a good hotel and get a bus back to Bangalore. With the clock ticking, we finished out dinner by about 8pm and patiently waited for buses to Bangalore. Contrary to what everyone in the hotel and about mentioned about bangalore buses, not many showed up and the ones that went by gerusoppa didn't bother stopping as they were full. With not another option left, we hired an omni at 10:30 to take us to sagara. Poor yogi had to snugly fit his 6'' 3' self in the omni, all of us were crammed for the 3 hour journey.  With a dinner pitstop(for the drivers) in between , we were at Shivamogga at 3am,completely deprived of sleep. Took the next available private bus heading to Bangalore and rather comfortable seats. Slept till we could and reached Majestic at around 9am .
   May not have been the most economical or successful trek(in terms of reaching the intermediate land marks on time) , but definitely one of the best experiences through a charming route. Thanks guys :D

Photo credits : Murali , Vetri .