An Expedition to Narasimha Parvatha ...

About The Place: Agumbe, Karnataka's Cherrapunji of the South is a village located in the Shimoga district in the state of Karnataka, India. Located in Thirthahalli taluk and the Malnad region, Agumbe is among the places in India that receive very heavy rainfall.
Narasimha Parvatha, as the name says is a hill situated in Agumbe. This is a hill where five small rivers originate : Sita, Malathi,Malapahari, Tunga and Bhadra are the rivers originate from here.  
The hill top is reachable from two sides. From Malandur(around 14KM) and from Kigga(around 6KM).
Planning and Preparation:
It was almost 1 year since we went for a trekking!! blame it on our busy work schedule :( .. Myself and Rama decided to trek Narasimha Parvatha.
I surfed blogs to find out information about the place and guide. We decided about the placed and booked tickets for 5 ppl. Myself, Rama, Siddu, Mahantesh(Maha) and Shreyas. I bought the necessary food items(Chapattis, dry fruits, jam etc ... ). Rama booked the tickets two days prior to trekking date. We could only manage to get last seats... so had to be ready for a bumpy ride :)
Maha, myself and Siddu met at Majestic at around 9:45 PM on Friday, 15th Feb. Shreyas dropped out last minute due to his work commitments... Ram joined us near the Govardhar Theatre. During journey, I narrated the story of 'Orphan' to Siddu as I was impressed with the movie which I watched Friday afternoon :) ...
Maha went too much technical in explaining how we can change the Android OS related settings :) .. showing us his techy skills :D ..

Day One - Saturday 16th Feb
We reached Agumbe at around 6:00 AM. I could manage very less sleep due to the bumpy ride .. thanks to Rajahimse (a popular name for RajaHamsa bus :D)
We went to 'Dodda Mane', to freshen up and get ready by 8:00 AM as was planned. Timmappa (the guide) was to arrive by 8:00 AM.
Dodda Mane: As the name says is a Big old house situated very close to the Agumbe bus stand. After getting out of the Agumbe, follow the state highway and Dodda Mane is situated just around 80 meters from bus stand.

Dodda Mane - Agumbe

Ajji, in the Dodda Mane is a lively character. She is always smiling. She served us Agumbe special 'Kadabu', made out of unpolished rice and a healthy drink 'Kashaya', taste was too good.
Timmappa arrived by 8:00 AM. We provided our name and address to police. Had to wait for inspector for some time. There were two more trekkers who joined us.
We headed to Malandur in a auto arranged by Timmappa. Malandur is about 8KM from Agumbe. We waited in Timmappa's house for other two trekker's to join us. 
Malandur to Narasimha Parvatha Peak Trek:

We started trekking at 10:15 AM from Timmappa's house. Plan was to reach Forest guest house, which is at the peak of the Narasimha parvatha, halt there, and then trek down to Kigga the next day. Timmappa would accompany us only for the first day trek.

Guest in Timmappa's home ...

From Malandur, forest guest house is about 14-15KM away. We can say that we have completed 50% of the trek when we reach the Barkana Falls. Majority of the distance till Barkana Falls is easy. Not too steep. We reached falls by 12:40 PM after a good 2:30 hrs of trekking.

Colorful Spider ... 

Fellow trekkers ...

Trekking route inside forest

Barkana Falls is among the ten highest waterfalls in India. The Barkana falls are formed by the Sita river. Currently Barkana falls are the prime source of one of the hydro electric projects in Karnataka.
We had 1 hour break, enjoyed the falls by taking bath, had our lunch and started the trek by 1:45 PM.
Plan was to reach the guest house by 4:00PM, and Timmappa would leave us there and return back to Malandur.

Barkana Falls

As we started the trek from falls, it started drizzling. Soon, small drizzle started into heavy rain ... this was totally unexpected for us as we were not prepared for it!! Timmappa himself was surprised. Thankfully, I had carried my raincoat. I got drenched completely, but got my raincoat on.
Soon, we got to know why Agumbe is called as 'Cherrapunji of the South' ... 
I must say that trekking in rain is a enjoyable one if you are prepared. The reason is, you will not get tired too quickly. Trekking started to get a little bit difficult as the trekking track was steep. Timmappa started to get little impatient as he was trying to reach forest guest house by 4:00PM.
We covered about 3KM of steep distance in quick time and had a little break. Rain gods showed mercy on us as raining stopped for a while.
Forest cover was over and we entered grass lands.... Nature was at its best! we enjoyed the nature and got some snaps as we continued our trek.

Beautiful Hills covered by grass ...

Wonderful golden grassland!

We reached the Forest Guest House by 4:00 PM as planned. The last 1KM stretch was the steapest one and while covering this distance, it started raining again. Timappa, for our surprise was very impatient and he started pushing us real hard to reach the guest house.
Forest Guest House: Is a old house(not really!! just walls with two rooms) ... it has rusted metal doors. This is used by the forest officials to rest/stay during combing operations against the Naxals.
No one stays here and it is just like a abandoned structure, used very rarely.

Forest Guest House

Night In The Guest House:  No one was prepared/anticipated rain. So, all clothes including bed-sheets bought by Ram was fully drenched. So, we had nothing to protect us from the cold. Not even a mat to sleep. To make the matters worse, the wood which was available for fire was wet, which made the task of fire making very difficult. Timmappa made fire, collected his fees and left us. Siddu was very tired .. he fell asleep soon after reaching the guest house. He was hardly able to move his body :( ... Maha and Ram got into the act of making fire. Room was full of smoke ... no option for us to go out as well as it was raining heavily. 
With much difficulty, they put the fire properly. Now, we have entire evening and night to spend in the forest guest house!!! 
Night was horrible... We used Maha's towel and my raincoat as mat to sleep on. Also, we had to take care that fire is on for entire night. Somehow, we spend the night (ya somehow... really!!! ) .. 
Day Two - Sunday 17th Feb
Trek down to Kigga: In the morning, we packed our luggage and started our trek to Kigga. Trekking started at around 9:00 AM. It's a easy trek of 6KM which we completed in 1 hour 45 minutes. We reached Kigga by 10:45 AM. 

Beautiful hills en-route to Kigga ...

  
We took a rickshaw to reach Sringeri, which is about 8KM from Kigga. We booked a lodge in Sringeri, rested for some time, had prasada in Sringeri Matta for lunch. Took enough rest and relaxed. In the night, we had dinner at Guruprasad hotel, just opposite to temple .. Bus was ready for us at 10:00 PM to reach back Bangalore on 18th Feb at 6:00 AM morning. 

All in all, it was a great trek and a memorable one due to our 'Unexpected Agumbe Rain' and 'Guest House' experience.

Difficulty: I would rate this trek as a moderate one as a whole. The first day trek is moderate, bit difficult in patches, especially the last 1KM which is steep and some parts of trek after Barkana falls. Rest is manageable. Second day trek to Kigga is very easy as it is just a 6KM trek of downward trekking... 
My Experience and Notes:

• Always be prepared to face rain if you are trekking in Agumbe. Don't take any chances.
• Police clearly told us not to stay in the Forest Guest House, as there was risk of Naxalites. So, our staying in the guest house was completely against what police warned us. This was Timmappa's responsibility. I repeatedly asked him if it was fine. He told it is OK. If everything goes well, there wont be any problem. So no problem for us. But what if something unexpected happens!!!! It concerned me. 
• Timmappa cheated us by demanding more against what was decided as guide fees. Fees initially decided was Rs. 1000. But once reaching guest house he started demanding Rs. 1500, which we had to pay.
• Timmappa, from my experience is not professional. He leaved us in the Guest house on our own. And told us how to reach Kigga... this according to me was big risk for us. Thankfully nothing bad happened.  
• If anyone uses Timmappa as guide, speak to him properly in advance about the fees and tell him upfront to stay for the complete duration of the trek.

 

  
 

Chembra Peak: A Unfinished Business …

After lot of planning and preparation we decided to trek Chambre Peak and camp there for a night and to visit some other places around for 3 days.
We booked a vehicle and we were set to leave, 7:00 PM on Friday night, driver called me and informed me that the path to Wayanad which goes through Gundlupet and Sultan batery will be blocked as night driving is banned in the Bandipur region.
Our plan was to reach Kalpetta by 6: 00 AM on Saturday and start trekking at least by 7:00. So it was a severe hit on our plan.
Then I decided that we will leave Bangalore by 12:00 AM and plan to reach Bandipur checkpoint by 4:00 AM as we had to pick Karthik from Mysore on the way.
Vehicle came to my home by 11:45 PM, had to pick up Ram, Kummi, Swarup and Viru from various parts of Bangalore … so finally we left Bangalore by 1:15 AM.

Driver was in no mood to drive that night as he was feeling sleepy for most part of the night and frustrated us to the maximum! We managed to reach Mysore by 5:30 AM !!! Ghosh! Almost 4 hrs to reach Mysore. Thanks to our driver Srinivas who likes sleeping 

We reached Meppady by 10:30 AM.

After taking 1 hr to get fresh up, headed straight to Chembra peak. Took permission from the forest officials to trek and camp and started our trekking by 1:15 PM.

Sid was a first time trekker and he had a torrid time trekking!

Yes, one thing to mention here is that, we went till the tower in our vehicle and then from there we started trekking. Since it was very sunny, we didn’t carry any rain jacket with us(turning point uh!!!)

From tower, slowly we started to climb the peak as the way is not that tough compared to my Kodachaadri trekking!

When we had climbed about 1/4 the of the distance, we saw a small lake, which is very beautiful. Misty weather... clouds moving over the lake and we enjoyed the view which was superb!!!

And there was a fabulous love shape lake! This lake is naturally in the heart shape and it is said that this lake never gets dried up. The view is really good.

By this time, there was a small drizzle … we continued our trekking and we were almost at the peak when it started raining. But we were without any protection!!!

So we forcefully started to descend the peak reluctantly as it was already 3:30 PM and it could take more time for us to descend than to climb as the surface was very slippery!!!

We managed to reach to the tower by 6:30 PM and by the time we reached tower, it was complete dark there. We were completely drenched and our plan to put up tent was a flop show…
With no other option, we left to the Meppady town to find a lodge. Thankfully, we found one to rest. We had a good sleep as everyone was tired and wanting to rest.
Next day, the only good thing for us was the visit to Banasura Dam.
We spent some time in the dam and headed back to Bangalore. Our plan to visit Meenmutty falls didn’t workout as it involved some walk(a small trek) for which guys were not ready 

All in all, a revisit to Wayanad is for sure as I must say this trip was a incomplete one.

Nice Little Village Trip

Bharath, out trip planner suggested us of visiting to his uncle's pace which is a Village named Tharthi, in Tumkur. We 9 of us: myself, Bharath, Rama, Arun, Abhi, Soma, Vijay, Janardhan and Chikka left Bangalore at 9:15 PM in two cars, mine and Abni's. We reached Tharthi at around 11:30. It was a very nice ride till Tumkur, which hardly took 1:15 hrs. But from there, to cover 18 KMs, we took close to 45 min as the road was in real bad condition.
Bharath's uncle was waiting near his house. Dinner was prepared for us. We had dinner and started playing Remy until 2:30 AM.

Morning, we got up by 7:00 AM after Bharath forcefully woke us up. After quick shower, we headed near lake side ground to play cricket. I must tell that the Village beauty in the morning was really refreshing.

We played 5 matches and i must tell i enjoyed it a lot as it involved a rear six from me :) ...

Then, we came roamed around Village to get some glimpse of the village beauty.

We came back home, had breakfast and started our journey to the GoravanaHaLLi Lakshmi temple. It is a famous temple which is about 8 KM from Tharthi.

Coming back from temple, guys started preparing much needed lunch. Arun was actively involved in preparing some dishes.:) ...

By 5:00 PM, we headed in search of Custard Apple, which is there in plenty as it grows naturally in Tharthi. Plan was to go for a small trek to a nearby hill to get some custard apples. But due to shortage of time, we decided to buy it from a vendor who offered one for Re 1. It was a good deal given the size and taste of the fruit.

We came back home and started to pack up and leave as it was already 6:00 PM.

We thanked Bharath's uncle for the nice food and bearing us for one full day :) ...
We started our journey back to Bangalore and we were in Bangalore by 9:00 PM.
A nice little trip to remember.

In the wilderness of Amedikallu

It was long time since I had last been to a trek. My last trek was in December 2009 to KP. So I was raring to go for a trek and when I read about Amedikallu trek being organized by BMC, I didn’t want to miss it.
I called up Swaroop and Ravi, who were as ready as me and we started the journey from Bangalore to Amedikallu on 29th October from Bangalore in a vehicle (mini bus) arranged by BMC.
Before going further, a little info about Amedikallu for those, who are not aware about the place. This place is situated in Charmadi Ghats, some 14 KM from Dharmastala
Nearest town to this place is Ujire.
Route: Bangalore - Nelamangala - Kunigal - Channarayapatana - Hassan - Sakaleshpura - Shiradi - Kokkada - Dharmasthala

There is a bus from Dharmasthala to Shishila (via Kokkada) at 7 a.m. which reaches Kokkada at 7:15 a.m.

Coordinates: 12°58'44"N, 75°30'40"E

Camping Sites:
1. Open space at the peak.
2. Rock shelter one hour before peak.

Okie… back to our trekking story :). I can say that the journey from Bangalore to Dharmastala was a bit troublesome as we (myself, swaroop and Ravi) got the last seats and given the ghats road condition, we could get only 2 hrs sleep in the night.
We reached a home-stay named SteamOfJoy(for more info, you can visit the site
www.streamofjoy.com ) at around 8:00 AM on 30th of October.

We got ourselves freshened up and started to trek at around 9:30 AM.
We were a team of 20 odd ppl lead by Krishna and guide Chennappa. Most notable person in or team was a kid named Abhinav. He was aroung 7 yrs old and was the most energetic and active person in our group . He was one of the firsts to reach the top.
We started our journey and it is an 8 mile trek to the top and for the first 2 miles, it was through dense forest with tree cover. This stretch was not that difficult.

Then came the grasslands. I must say that the real challenge starts from here. As we hardly find any tree to take cover and the path is simply steep from here on. About 0.5 KM into the grasslands, myself along with Krishna had to wait for 3 guys who were lagging behind. They took nearly 30 min to reach us and this separated us from the rest of the crew, who were heading to the top. Once we got those 3 guys, we started climbing up with them. The plan was to reach the top by 2PM, spend about an hour there, have lunch and head back to the base by 6:30 PM.
After climbing some distance some guys retired due to the heat and steepness of the peak. And I was left behind as I used to take snaps of nature.

After some painful hard trek, I met Vishwa, who was climbing the peak slowly. I was thankful to the god that I got him as I was alone with the rest of the crew some 1 hr ahead of me. We both continued our climb and I must tell you that the scorching heat was sucking a lot of energy from us making climbing really difficult. Luckily, we encountered a stream which was slightly off the trekking track.

We spent around 30min there relaxing and recharging ourselves. Already behind the rest of the crew and now we were confused as to which route to take to move ahead. There were two routes, one beside the stream and the other which was leading to the path which we used to reach the stream. Vishwa suggested for a head/tail. Head – to go in the earlier route and tail - to go in the route beside the steam. And it was tail !!! but we decided to go against the head/tail as we somehow thought that the path besides the stream may not lead us to the peak  and we took the route which led us to the stream. We started the trek in that route and soon we were back to the normal trek route .
I did some mistakes in the lead up to the trek in not carrying glucose and torch. This proved costly to me as in the scorching heat, mere water did no good and I was very tired. Somehow, we both reached almost close to the rock shelter(one of the camping sites) just one peak away. At this point there was no clearer trek route. We kept shouting anticipating any answer from the rest of the crew who were on top. We heard some sound from the top which was slightly towards right top from us. But there was no clear route and we decided to climb a rocky path and reach the top. It was a false decision, as we took one of the tough routes to climb the top and I must tell you that it was very dangerous climbing the rock. After some 45 minutes of climbing the rock, we saw the rest of the crew already trekking back  … We were relieved to see them but equally disappointed at not getting to top along with them. We made it to the rock shelter, had our lunch there. Guide Chennappa stayed with us and the others continued to climb down. We finished our lunch and we were about to trek downwards.
But it started raining heavily and we were forced to stay back. Chennappa was more worried about the kid Abhinav but we were helpless as they had already started to climb down. After 30 min, rain stopped and we started our journey downwards at 4:00 PM. We were already late and wanted to reach the base point before it gets dark as neither of us(myself, Vishwa and Cehnnappa) had torch with us.
We somehow covered the grasslands fast and were into the forest by 5:45 PM. It waqs already becoming dark and the tree cover in the forest made it even more dark. One lifeline was that I had my mobile torch which was good enough for me. Due to rain, the path was very slippery and there were many leeches. With much effort we reached the base at 7:00 PM. Much thanks to Chennappa as he carefully guided us to safety.
We came near the bus, removed our shoes mto clean ourselves from any leeches. There were as many as 12 leech bites in my leg. My socks had many blood marks on it. Leeched had got its share of blood.
We came back to our home stay at around 8:00 PM, had some snacks and after a quick shower, we headed towards the campfire. It was good fun near campfire for 30min.

We had very good dinner and we were back to our tents by 10:30 PM for a very good earned nap.
In the next morning, there was a river side walk which was organized at 6:00 AM. But many of us gave it a miss due to our tiredness. But I must say that we missed it as it was very good and relaxing as described by my friends.
We left the home stay at 10:00 AM and headed towards Shishila temple. We reached the temple at around 10:30 AM. This is a very calm place.

It is a Shiva temple and one can see a lot of fishes with in our reach as we see in Sringeri. But as in Sringeri, it is not for fishing and is considered sacred.

After spending about 1hr, we were back in the bus to return back to Bangalore. We had lunch in Hassan and were in Bangalore by 7:00 PM.
All in all it was a good trek and for me it was a tough one as I lacked in fitness.

Contacts: Guide Chennappa’s contact no: 9480239185

Trek to Kumara Parvatha

Myself, Babu, pradeep, naveen, Vijay, Bala, raghu, naveen and Irfan started off for KP trekking on 25th night. We reached Kukke Subramanya(KS) at 5: 30 AM on 26th and immediately headed to a lodge which babu had booked. KS was very crowded as it was the holiday season. We finished our morning activities, took bath in the river and reached our trekking base point by 10:00 AM. We started trekking from the base point at 10:15 AM. Seeing the trek route Pradeep was surprised and frightened as it was his first trek. He had expected a nice straight route …



Journey to Battara Mane(GiriGadde):
Gunda (Raghu) was very slow as he was carrying heavy load which included 5 pairs of clothes(!!!!) myself, babu and naveen were with gunda which reduced our pace. The rest of the crew reached Battara mane by 2:30 PM. We managed to reach battara mane by 3:30 PM. This stretch of 7 km is very strenuous. The day was sunny which made the trek
much difficult. The scenic beauty on the way was too good!



Heading towards Mantapa:
We had a very good lunch at battara mane and started off towards mantapa at around 4:40 PM. We had to request the forest officials as it was already late. So after 10 min of intense discussion with the forest officials we paid the money and headed towards Mantapa. It will usually get dark by around 6:30 PM so we had limited time to reach Mantapa … we started at 5:00 PM from the forest office and this time our pace was good. In one hour we reached Mantapa…on the way I got to capture good pics of sunset …







once we reached Mantapa, we started to put up tent.
Adventurous Night out:
We wasted around 20 min in discussing the place to put-up the tent ( :o ) … so by the time we decided the place, it was 6:20 PM and the light slowly started to fade away … we had 3 tents and we had chosen sloppy region!!!
We finished with two tents and we were putting up the third tent and it started drizzling!!!
And heavy rains started immediately …
We were still not done with our third tent and it started to rain heavily. We didn’t have any chance but to head towards our two tents leaving the third tent half done!!
We were 9 ppl and there were only 2 tents  … in my tent we were 5 and in the other tent 4 ppl.
At around 8:30 PM, water started coming inside the tent …  we were fully wet and we had to stay in the tent no matter what! We spent the entire night inside the tent in the water … Naveen was a bit nervous as it was raining with thunder storms … Babu was afraid all night thinking he caught up with cold and fever!! The sound of thunder storm was really good to hear I must say  …. We were lucky that the wind was not much .. Otherwise our tents would have taken a blow ….

Morning we packed the tents and started our trekking … Naveen, Gunda and Pradeep decided to go back to the battara mane as they were fully tired … so we remaining 7 guys started our journey to KP top.

Trek to the KP Peak:
The scenic beauty at mantapa in the morning mist was really good … water droplets on the leaves, hills covered by clouds … and the cloud movement… it was marvelous. Each time some clouds moved on us, there used to be some rain and once the clouds were off the rains used to stop  … it is just nature at its best…







The journey from mantapa was a bit easy compared to the first 7 km to the battara mane. We have to cross approximately four peaks before reaching the KP top. The path is a zigzag path through the hills. Between we got to see really good scenic beauty. At around 10:15 AM we started the trek from the mantapa and at around 12:30 we reached Sesha Parvatha(SP). This is the peak before Kumara Parvatha peak. By heights, I think SP is at a higher altitude compared to KP. From SP, we head to a thick forest, which is just like a rain forest. Full of green and moist ...




After this green patch, we will encounter a brief distance to be covered which is very steep and is full of rocks. After this comes a big rock, which we need to climb and is quite dangerous for the first timers as it is slippery!!





Once this rock is passed, we are almost at the top. Just another 15 min trek is all required … We reached the KP top at around 1:15 PM … oh the joy of being at the top if KP was marvelous … I fell in love with the place and the scenic beauty there!!! No comparisions to the nature there … There is a small cave like structure which contains Shiva Linga.





We had food, took some snaps and after enjoying the sceneries, we started to descend from the KP peat at around 1:45 PM. The descent was in a good pace. We reached back to mantapa at around 3:15 PM and battara mane by 4:15 PM. We had lunch in battara mane and decided to stay back as it was getting dark and also it started to rain. But irfan left on the same day to Kukke with another group as he had booked bus tickets on Sunday night.
Bhattru arranged for our night stay and also the night dinner. Morning, we thanked bhattaru for his help and started at 7:30 AM from battara mane and we descended towards kukke. We finally reached kukke by 10:00 AM exactly 48 hours after starting the trek 
This trek was one of the most exciting treks of mine … compared to Kodachaadri trek it was equally good. Hope to make it to the KP top once again in near future 
You can see my photos at link http://picasaweb.google.com/mail2vinay.bs/KumaraParvathaPics
Statistics: KP overall trek distance from Kukke – KP – Kukke : 36 KM. (18KM from kukke to KP peak)
Distance to BattaraMane or Girigadde : 7 KM
So if planning for this trek best time is from November to Feb as it will be cold and rains will not be there.