Oh and how the water fell!
Trip: Bangalore-Somvarpet-Madikeri-Kushalnagar-Bylakuppe-Shivasamudram-Kanakpura-Bangalore
Time: 7th Aug 10:45 PM - 9th Aug 3:00PM
We met up at the KSRTC bus stand at 10:15 PM, read as 11:00 by a few others. Had booked a Qualis and thanks to people backing off, we had a nice comfortable ride (not on the pockets at the end of journey though :( ) . The cab driver was friendly and we all chatted with him a little bit. The great software engineers from NITK that we were, in all the rush of application releases and 5 min packing routines, we forgot to get an MP3 CD along. End Result - listening to Kannada music all throughout the trip. There was this brief moment of random female making terribly ROFL material orgasmic music, which made us laugh our asses off, but that did not last. He did not even have Rajkumars' Tik-tik-tik-tik-tik-tik. Damn!
I was kinda drowsy as I always am in the 10-11 PM periods, so I sneaked in a quick nap, only to be woken up to go to a really sad so called highway dhaba to watch my friends eat left over egg biryani. Those HOMP episodes on NDTV Good Times may seem all wow wow, with the two guys savouring all kinds of stuff in highway eatouts, this was probably not a road they took, cause the food by the looks of it, sucked. Lucky me, I chose not to eat it. So basically, eat dinner and then leave froim Bangalore.
Then back in the cab again, stopped at some really nice bridge on a river, at around 5 AM, and there was noone around, so this was very peaceful. But we were running late, and did not want to miss our fog+mist+waterfall experence. So we left the bridge, and headed to Mallali falls.
Not many people know about this place, and I wish it were forever this way. The Qualis gave way 1.5-2 Km before the falls, so we got down and went on foot. It was around 6 in the morning. And the thing with this falls is, you do not see the falls until the last second, where you reach a cliff and then this majestic beauty is revealed, in all its splendour.
So we spent a lot of time here, and jus did not want to leave this place, cause there was noone around, and that just rocked. Being all alone in the midst of the Western Ghats.
(I am writing this blog much after the trip so do not seem to remember the exact sequence of events.)
After this we went to Madikeri town for our breakfast. Had some good coffee and dosas, and then we left for Abbey Falls. This place was so fucking crowded, and although this was expected, it still was a little dissapointing, pissing off even. So we did not spend much time here. The folks with SLR cams got few good shots since the falls is actually pretty good to look at, and we left.
We went to another Devarakolli or Devaragundi falls (both are different places, we went to one of them). But this too was not that great, and was just a stream flowing by the road. Dissapointed we skipped Irrupu falls too, after a lot of discusisons. I would say you can skip these D falls, but if time permits do go to Iruppu Falls.
We now got back to the city, had our lunch, when to a nice ice cream parlour )forgot the name, its actually a fancy restaurant in the main city itself), and had a 45 min late, but totally worth it Gud Bud ice cream :) This is a very famous ice cream originating in Ideal Mangalore, and should not be missed.comlpettely
Another few hours and we went to Harangi Reservoir and Dam. This place too was pretty awesome, as it was monsoon time and the gates had been opened, and water was gushing out like anything. At one point of time I looked down into the river that flowed and got completely dizzy, I'm not kidding!We went pretty close to the dam and climbed up almost till the gates. Then we went spent some quite time near the stream down the river. On the way back we thought we will go white water rafting in the Cauvery as the place n is supposed to have grade 2 or 3 rapids. I think the camps are from Jungle Lodges. The guy lied to us (or rather we guessed) saying the rive rater isn't enough for rafting, so we ditched it. But ths place as I have heard is a must visit for adventure sports.
Headed towards Kushalnagar to the Tibetian monastery now. We reached there by around 5:30 PM and got into the monastery. We sat/ meditated/ took a sneeky nap (a few) in the monastery till around 730, and then got out. The monastery was one of the best part sof the trip. Zen. Peace. Calm. Tranquil. I guess you know what I am talking about. This Tibetian monastry is a complete Tibetian settlement, in the city of Kushalnagar. A nice place again. There isn't much one can do here, so we fooled around in the market area for a while, and then had Tibetian Dinner. Something called Thupteng + Thum tak and Momos. The next few hours were hard as we decided to take a 4 hr nap in the car itself. #painful
Next morning we got up late, which is something we should not have done. And it was not just cause we wer running late, but that we missed the sun rise at Shivasamudra which is supposed to be a really nice. But still, Shivasamudra followed by the other two falls near it (I forget the name), were splendid. Stopped over for lunch in Kanakpurra, and then back home!
Good trip I say! The write up would have been more descriptive, if I had written it just after the trip. Stupid Laziness...
PS: The title by the way, is not so self explanatory, but the smarter ones should get the pun ;)