This is a trip made in December 2009. I know its late. I've been trying to get back to updating my blog on a regular basis from last 3 weeks or so. To say that the last few weeks have been crazy hectic would be some sort of an understatement! Anyway, not digressing further...
December is the time the people in the IT industry herd like cattle and embark upon the great migration across the country-side. ( Okay, so that was me desperately trying to make up for the understatement earlier! Its just to show you the degree of "underness" in the earlier statement! :D ). In simple words, I had a 2 week vacation time pending, so I took it! Finding a time when a subset of my friends would be free led to me finding 3 others along with me being free to go somewhere on Dec 19 and Dec 20. By that time then, I had made up my mind to drag everyone to Kemmangundi. And for good reason - the weather at that time of the year is sublime! Perfect postcard landscapes, blue skies dotted with fluffy little white clouds - ah, just divine!
So, we started on Dec 19th morning at 6am in my car. The other participants being Sac, VV and SP. I took control of the wheels for the first part of the journey - made some amazing time, reaching CR Patna (Kamat hotel) for breakfast by 8:30am! We had a heavy breakfast, topped with some average tasting coffee and resumed the drive. This time, SP took over from me. Now, don't get me wrong here - SP is a very good driver... its just that he becomes a totally different person when behind a steering wheel - a person who thinks he's flying a plane or is driving a F1 car! Usual mid-range hatchbacks' engines, in India tend to dislike working at RPMs greater than 5000! Anyway - it was a breezy drive till Chikmagalur, after which things started to get more interesting!
Outlook traveller's magazine describes the Chikmagalur - Kemmangundi drive in an interesting sentence - "The exotic and scenic drive from Chikmagalur to Kemmangundi is like viewing beautiful panaromas on a violent shaky television" :D - well, that sums it up. Horrible pathetic roads! My poor car bore the brunt of both the roads and SP's driving... and to top it all, we forgot to fuel up in Chikmagalur! We were going to Kemmangundi in quarter tank of fuel. This really got me anxious! Let me leave out my anxiousness from this post - in the end, we made it alright with no problems :)
The drive itself was rocky, but very scenic - every now and then, we would see something that makes us stop, get down and click away! One such picture taken during one such stop is seen along with this post. We reached Kemmangundi by 12:30pm. We were somewhat travel-weary and hungry by then. Sac managed to get us accommodation in the horticulture guest house where we set aside our bags and had lunch. Then we rested for a while, before taking a jeep to Hebbe falls.
Hebbe falls is about 8KMs by walk, 12KMs by "road" from the place we were. We decided to take a jeep to the falls. It was a half hour or so, extremely rocky ride to the place where jeep could park and from there it was a 10 minute walk through small puddles of water, average length streams of water, etc. I could say I "got my feet wet" (hint: lookup military usage of the phrase :D). At the falls I tried some slow shutter photos from a distance. Could not get as near as I had hoped I could, because of the water droplets splashing out - did not want to risk taking out the camera there! We spent some half hour there before walking back to the jeep and headed back to our room. It got dark by the time we reached back. Just had some dinner and slept early. For, we had plans to get up at 5 and walk to Z-point to catch the sunrise! Sac was feeling feverish by that time and he took a crocin and slept off early. Me, SP and VV chatted for a while and then went to sleep. All of us set alarms for 5am!
A couple of things made this Z-point walk, at 5:30am somewhat interesting! The previous evening, when we came back from Hebbe falls, I told SP that we should ask about the route to Z-point. We got rough directions - drive about 2KMs in car and from there another 45 minutes walk to the summit. I was of the opinion that we should ask for a guide. SP rubbished my opinion saying there'll be lot of people going towards Z-point in the morning for the very same reason we would be! Come 5:30am, we started by car in pitch darkness - we could only see about 10 feet ahead of us at any point in time, thanks to the headlights. The only indication of where we had to park the car was when the 4 wheeler track abruptly ended! We parked the car to a side and stepped out - bitter cold, howling winds... trembling we all step out. VV switches on the torch... a powerful LED torch. I ask him to turn it off for a moment. We all look up - gosh! what a sight :) Millions of stars - all appearing so bright. That's the kind of sight that makes you forget your location, the time of the day, the bitter cold... everything. We started walking now... still pitch darkness, that was only disturbed by our bright torch. After walking some 2 minutes, we realize that we have hit a dead end. Up till there it was a plain land walk. Now, it was a steep ascent suddenly. As we ascended the cold got even more colder, the winds picked up speed! I initially started out with a jacket. As time went during the ascent, I had to put on the jacket hood to protect my ears, then use the hand kerchief to wrap around my mouth and nose! Huffing and puffing, climbing for some 40 minutes... still pretty dark, we had reached the summit. We just picked a plain, grassy spot, and sat down. I setup my tripod and camera. Waited for sunrise... In the bleak pre-dawn light, one can only see the outlines of the hills around... and that was all we could see any direction we looked. We were surrounded by hills in all directions! The powerful winds trying to knock us out is something to be experienced! Sunrise was a slight disappointment due to cloudy skies but the whole experience of getting up at 5, driving/walking/climbing in pitch darkness in a very chilly weather was memorable enough!
We returned back to our rooms by 8am, had bath and ate breakfast. The first thing we had to do was fuel up. Lingadahalli - nearest fuel station, 20KM away. On the way, we stopped at Kalhatti falls. I do not know why this is so famous - it just a 50 ft or so high water fall and people using the surroundings as their personal bathrooms makes it even more un-inviting! We did not spend much time there. We fueled up and then chose to return to Bangalore from there. We had plans to visit Mullayanagiri - but since that meant we had to go back the same way we had come till Lingadahalli and imagining the road conditions, we thought its prudent to just return back - we could get back to Bangalore before dark.
The return journey was mostly uneventful - tired people choosing to sleep in patches of the drive. Bringing back memories and some nice pictures too. A 2 day trip to that place is not justice enough! Cannot wait to get back there sometime soon!
