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