I am software engineer by profession and started trekking as a hobby 4 years ago. Me and my husband love travelling and it is from him i developed passion for trekking. Trekking is like meditation to me!
Monsoon treks attract me the most! Being in karnataka and not visiting western Ghats in monsoon is like not watching "ZNMD" or "3 idots" 1st day 1st show!
We are a group of 15 people all belonging to IT industry who met on several treks 3-4 years ago and formed our own group.
Quite a few people had asked me to share my trekking experiences so that they can go and visit/explore the places i have been to as trekker or tourist.A thought of saving my experiences came into my mind and the next idea why not a blog!
Here i go my first blog! My heart is beating 10X times faster with excitement as i begin to write my experience of my best trek till date "Doodh Sagar"
Planning Phase:
Sometime in May end Rahul drops an email to the group asking if we could plan a trek. Our group is little lazy in replying which meant several emails had to be sent only for approvals for the trek.
Btw entire 15 are on watapp but only useless talks happen there :) all productive talks are on emails :) Finally people started agreeing for the trek. Our group is a very accomodative group they say "Yes" without even asking the place :) this time around the history continued. Doodh sagar was suggested by Rahul since we had missed it last time on our way to Goa.
The planning phase began with number of people joining, how many days, bookings, route etc. None of us had been there earlier so we had to do some initial findings on the same. Initial plan was a 3 day plan to hike in doodhsagar and then head to goa. Since majority of us had to be back on monday for our work, kitti(Krishna Iyer) laid out a plan for 1 day trek and budget within 1000 bucks. 1000 bucks??? if you are surprised yes it is indeed 1000 bucks .
Numbers and time looked good and everybody agreed instantly. People who were interested in going to goa would plan separately with rest of the gang interested. Next came tickets booking where our elders Krishna and Karthik took the charge of booking :).Plan is to leave on Friday 5th july Bangalore- Castle Rock and return on 6th July Castle rock to Bangalore. Bangalore arrival 7th July "Home Sweet Home". Return tickets were confirmed instantly but ongoing journey was waiting list 59-71(13 tickets).
I was a little skeptical seeing the waiting list number but kitti and karthik were pretty confident that we would clear them :). So keeping hopes positive we were checking the waiting list everyday. In the mean while i started to plan for the Trek, mainly read some blogs, do's and dont's in the terrain and since it was monsoon we had a list of things to carry to survive for a day.
July 1st:
4 days left for the trek and Karthik checked the waiting list we were still 29-41 :(.But kitti was confident that we would still make it and asked me not to plan any alternates. In the mean while we called punith one of the trek gang guy to check with his dad(who works for Railways) if he could arrange for tickets.
I spoke to puneeth, whom i had never seen earlier, i knew him only through people and asked if his dad could help. The problem was Puneeth sir does not pick up calls before 2pm which mean half the time is wasted calling him without any response. Finally he picked my call and i asked him to check with his dad and update me asap. Puneeth does not understand ASAP.. A while never came and puneeth never called me.As usual i called kitti(Krishna Iyer) and kitti had only one recorded reply "Hey sigate tension togol beda avana appa madake agala andre railways ge avamana :) pukka agate".i would say ok each time and cut the call and immeaditely call puneeth for status.
July 3rd:
2 days to go for the Trek On July 3rd Puneeth confirmed that his dad would put our names in "Emergency Quota" list and our tickets would be confirmed only on 5th July(on the day of travelling).I was a little relieved and started sending emails to the group with the checklist of things to carry for the Trek.
July 4th : 1 more day to go...
4th July i had completed my packing and was checking on the weather since it was raining cats and dogs near managalore.
Was scared where the routes would be closed since kukke trains were being cancelled because of the land slides.However with all excitement i put a post on FB of my upcoming trek and was excited to see the response and likes on my post :).I did get replies to the post but only telling its raining and be careful etc etc which was something i did not expect :). Not being disappointed i was positive that we would make it to the trek since it was monsoon and we wanted it to rain.
The "D" day just arrived. I was on cloud 9 and was waiting for the clock to strike 3 to leave office and head to the railway station where we would meet and board the train.
My packing was done we had discussed on watapp on who will be starting from where and who would come along with whom, still the tickets not being confirmed we were all excited :) At 11am Puneeth called and gave a shocking news that in emergency quote only 6 or 7 tickets can be confirmed and not all. Here we go again, as usual i call kitti and gave him status update, kitti suggested people whose names are confirmed go by train and rest catch the bus and take the same train from Hubli at 6:45am the next day. Second option was all of us take the same train with 6 or 7 tickets confirmed and we adjust and take turns to sleep for which all of us agreed.
As i told earlier we are super accomodative all we need is good company and we compliment each other very well :P .
It was 3pm i called yeshas who was leaving from kormangala and asked her to pick me up from my office in EGL sharp at 4pm. As decided for the first time in her life yeshas comes promptly at 4pm to pick me up near my office and we head home. On my way i had to buy a jacket which was light weight, we stopped at wild craft brought a jacket and headed home.
It was 4.30pm! in exactly 30min time the list would be announced with confirmed seats.watapp messages were being shared every second on status and kitti was refreshing the irctc every milli second :) i dnt think any of us have waited so eagerly even for our results when we were in college :) 5.30pm Kitti message "awsome news" even before we could guess he said "None of the tickets are confimed :D".the next exp in watapp was "What!" and where the hell is puneeth who promised us to atleast confirm 6-7 tickets. Kitti had another plan where we had to travel by bus to Hubli, reach hubli at 5am to catch the same Chennai-Vasco express at 6:45am.
Kitti informed one part of the gang and i called puneeth and asked him to meet us at KSRTC bus stop sharp at 8pm.His instant reply was "Plastic cover tartini" me:"Yake" Puneeth:"Vanti madake" (To vomit since puneeth has motion sickness).Hearing his reply all i could do is laugh at his reaction :) The message was communicated to all the folks and we decided that we will meet at KSRTC bus stop at 8pm with karthik and Rahul coming by 9pm.
The whole point was that neither we had train tickets nor we had booked bus tickets for Journey to Hubli being a weekend we were not sure if all 13 of us could find seats in the same bus.The truth is nobody bothered and we all were in excitement of meeting each other. Me and yeshas took the bus from my place to Majestic. Kitti,shravya,gaga(Monica),priyanka and Himanshu had reached the bus stop and were at swathi deluxe hotel where me and yeshas joined the gang, later followed by Rahul(DG),Nidhi,Bhoomi,Anjana,Puneeth,karthik.
5th July 9:30pm
Most of us had dinner at Swathi Deluxe and we were thinking of booking the bus tickets for 11pm bus. 11pm means we reach Hubli only by 6.30 in the morning which also tells that we cannot board the 6:45am train to doodh sagar. Kitti and Nidhi decided not to book tickets but goto the platform instead and search for any buses that would leave at 10pm and also has 13 tickets. In the mean while i took out my camera to take some photos of our posing queens and kings.
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Nidhi called us and asked us to come to platform No 1 where they found a bus to Hubli which leaves in 5min and has exactly 13 tickets. We all rushed to the platform and i remember Nidhi telling us the conversation between nidhi and conductor "Nidhi: Sir bus yestoge horadate Conductor: 10 gante ge hortu Hubli 5 gante ge irtivi, Nidhi: Sir 13 ticket Beku Conductor: 13? 13 ticket kotre Bus full agogate :)". I dnt think nidhi knew hw to react to the conductors reply.
We all boarded the bus which came from chennai and got the last 13 seats.Now we are good to reach hubli and board the same train at 6:45am in the morning. On our way we played some games "Rahul's Pink pyjama movies inside rahul pink pyjama :P","Fuzzy Duck, ducky Fuzz" and last but not the least Puneeth's elephant and ants PJ's.
The bus stopped for dinner break and our masala dosa queen yeshas was all excited to see "Food!" infront of her ran towards the resturant only to order for Masala Dosa at 11.30pm in the night.Yeshas means Food! We continued our journey in the bus where majority of us got some good sleep for few hours and we reached Hubli sharp at 5am, The road between bangalore to Hubli was excellent and volvo sailed perfectly on the roads for comfortable journey.
July 6th 5am
We took our luggage and we had more than an hour to reach Hubli railway station and buy tickets to Doodh sagar. Since we were 13 of us we wanted a vehicle where all of us could fit in with luggage.
We found a Tata Ace and we negotiate for Rs 150/- to hubli railway station for which the driver agreed, but the only problem was how will 13 people fit in? we got in with our bags and we adjusted with gals sitting on each others lap and we werent sure if the vehicle could pull 14 is us including the driver :). Surprisingly the vehicle did go and we reached hubli station in 15min.
Hubli railway station is very well built but poorly maintained.Staff are not to be blamed but the people who commute are to be blamed since they lack civic sense and dont respect hygiene :( sad state of our country today where we blame our infrastructure, but we dont realize how we are equally responsible to maintain what is built.
This was my insight when i saw the station!! We headed to the cloak room to brush and change our clothes. To our horror we see the cloak room the next reaction is Yakkkk!!!! wat the hell is this? The toilets were horrible and we could not even step in. We managed to change our clothes ,brush our teeth thats it!!!
We went to the platform, some of us had lite breakfast and were heading towards the platform to board the train into Unreserved compartments. The train was behind schedule by 30min.
We saw atleast 50 people excluding us in the platform who were waiting to board the same train to Doodh Sagar. Wait did i say Trek?? Yes now comes the next question from where do we start trekking?
Again our Kitti Baba suggested that we get down in place called Caranzol (fondly known as Karan johan by Our DG(Rahul)) and we hike to doodh sagar which is approx 7.8kms from Caranzol.
Caranzol is not actually a station so we did not know for how long the train would stop there. We did not bother much and we start chatting again.
The train arrived and we rushed towards the unreserved compartments to find seats for 13 people. Luckily we found 13 seats and train left Hubli in next 15min.
The weather was perfect that morning with cool breeze desirable weather for any trekker. As we continued our Journey taking photos nidhi popped a question to Yeshas "Yeshas u sing right?" When Yeshas hears the work Music she starts singing in her high pitch voice.
There you go! she starts her singing. But this time it was better only because Nidhi started singing along with her and believe me he has a beautiful voice.
For the next 3 hours we heard and sang some amazing old and new kannada songs with rains in the background. "This was the journey i was looking for and could not have asked for anything better at that moment".
When you are with people whom you like the most we wont realize how time flies. The same happened with us 3 hours went like 30 mins and next thing we see is its pouring outside and the train stops at a station "Castle Rock".
This is station where people actually start trekking to doodhsagar and this is the name i have been hearing in blogs for the last 3 weeks. We had decided that we will get down in caranzol and start our trek/hike from Caranzol.
We asked a fellow passenger if caranzol was next stop for which he said yes and it is approx 7 kms from Castle Rock.
We crossed Castle Rock and the next thing we see is Caranzol a small station where we need to alight. Karthik, Monica, shravya,Priyanka,Bhoomika are standing near the door and train stops where these 5 get down and next thing we see "Train is moving" Oh Shit! the train stoppped for less than 30 seconds in the stop and now the group is separated.
It was Me,Nidhi, Kitti,Himanshu,Yeshas,Puneeth, Rahul, Anjana were in the train and we decided to get down in doodh sagar. Me yeshas and Nidhi stood near the door of the train and i see we are crossing tunnels now yayyyyyyyyyyyyy :) the most favourite part of train journey.
Me and yeshas were shouting with excitement. After we cross each tunnel all we see is greenary and mountains covered with mist. wow!!! i seriously have no words to explain how fantastic western ghats are during monsoon. One has to experience it, but cannot document it completely. It will stay in my memory for ever!
We crossed 10 tunnels one after the other and we reach our destination "Doodh Sagar" station, the place all us were waiting to be in for the last 8 months. And Finally we made it!! The train stopped there for more than 2 minutes and we have enough time to get down.
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But the only concern was we had split and we have to join again to go towards the falls. We got down took 4 churmuris and discussed on how to meet the rest 5 who were left behind.
Got few suggestions and we decided that we would trek towards Caranzol so that we can meet them mid way as we had a lag of 1 hour. Kitti, me and Himanshu carried SLR's which meant time for some photographs. We had our models Nidhi, Puneeth Me of course :) and anjana.
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Yeshas was in a different mood when she saw water. yeshas goes crazy on seeing 2 things "Water to play and Foodddddd!!". We did some Photo shoots and started walking to our mission meet the rest of the gang, 100 mts from where we got down was our 10th Tunnel and it was raining heavily.
We packed our cameras and headed towards the tunnel.The tunnels are extremely dark and we need torches to walk in them. At the end of the tunnel we saw small waterfalls and yeshas, rahul and himanshu instantly headed to play. some more Photo shoots.
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We took some photos with various Poses of Nidhi and puneeth and next we hear is siren and yes this was a train coming towards us and we were on the track. With little over 30 seconds we had to clear our luggage from the track and we had to get out of the track which we managed to with less than 15 seconds left.
The next thing we realize that we are standing adjacent(inches away )from moving goods train!!!!. Till that date i have never noticed what kind of wheels do trains have :) and i next thing i realize is i am standing inches away from it wow!! We start walking towards finding the missing 5 where we see another tunnel.wat next? i wanted to be on the track and catpure the photo of the train coming towards me and to my surprise my dreams came true. We heard another train and this time i see the train entering the Xmts tunnel and i am on other side of the tunnel and train will approach me in next 15 seconds and i am standing on the track to capture a pciture of the train. Yes! I finally did it. Managed to get the picture and come out of the track with less than 10seconds left.I had not done anything as crazy as this till date.
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We went inside the tunnel and we realized it was 1pm and we were hungry. Nidhi and Kitti had packed Upma from Hubli station. Believe me Upma never tasted so good as it did on July 6th. I had 2 packets of them :)
We saw some people on the other side of the tunnel and one person always reacted Puneeth! "Hey adu Bhoomi" how do you know puneeth? Ad chaddi(shorts) avalde :)(Hey thats bhoomi , i recognize her shorts).
Puneeth has told this atleast 10times and all 10times he guesses was wrong. Finally we decided at 1:30pm that we will start walking towards doodhsagar and the missing 5 would meet us there.
No signals to call we were only assuming that they would reach there. In the next 15min, we saw the missing 5 walking towards us. 13 of us were back to-gether again and started walking towards doodh sagar.
In the next 1 hour we were 10min away from doodh sagar falls where we spotted a mini water fall. The water was in such force that we wanted to be under gushing water . Here we go!! For next 30min we enjoyed being under mini water falls ans started walking towards our last tunnel to reach doodh sagar falls. The last tunnel was longest and darkest amongst all.
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We crossed the tunnel and i could not believe my eyes. Doodh Sagar falls is mesmerizing. Water from falls was splashing to distance of a Km, that was the force.
We went and stood infront of the falls. We separated and all of us wanted to be left alone for sometime which we did. For me it was me and only me then! i could not think if anything else around me. I stood still for 10min watching the beauty of mother nature and how lucky i was to be there. The kind of mechanical life we lead in today's world how many people have passion for exploring things and make time for the same? Here i was feeling proud to say "I was one among the very few people who explored their passion for travelling along with awesome 12 who are a part of my journey in a very special way"!!! Never felt so good before. It was Me and only Me!!! In the span of 10min i recollected so many things of my past and Some feelings cannot be shared it is best kept only with oneself. .It will remain as a everlasting memory of a lifetime for me!
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It was 4.30pm and it was time for us to board the train, we headed for a small tea stall, had some tea and started walking towards the doodh sagar station. Doodh sagar is/was never a station and tickets are not issued in that name. Trains stop there only beacuse of the people who come to trek.
We reached this virtual station only to find out that we have atleast 200 people standing to board the same train to castle rock. We were told by a employee of railways to move 200 mts from where we were standing as the general compartment of the train would stop there and place we were standing A/C compartments would stand where the doors DO NOT Open.
We took the employees suggestion and we would 200mts and stood there for 30min and train does not come. Finally at 6pm we hear the train siren and more than 200+ people waiting have less than 2 minutes to board the train. I wasnt even sure that all of us could make it in that crowd.
The train stops and yeshas madam runs towards the door which is locked and is trying to open that for few seconds :)but in vain the door did not open. In the mean while we run towards the other door where 50 people are trying to get it inside and some how managed to squeeze in and train leaves. We werent sure if all the 13 of us have got in. If we miss this train ,there are no trains after this and we have no option left but to walk 14kms!.
To our luck all the 13 of us had boarded the train. We had some awesome cake offered to us by a Firangi in the train. We were very hungry and without shame we eat like we hadnt seen or eaten cakes in our entire life! Our station arrived in next 30min and we had sufficient time to get down. We were all wet and desparately needed to change.
Well guys did not have a problem the only problem was for us(8 girls). The waiting room was filled with water and we could not even think of stepping in there. We went in search of a house behind the station and we found a house where a gentleman agreed to let out his house for sometime till we changed.
His only condition was that we wait for him to arrive and then we leave the house for which we agreed. All of us changed and we left the guys to stay there till the owner arrived and we headed towards the station. Our train from Castle rock to Bangalore was at 11pm, we had ample time and nothing to do.
Around 8pm we thought of eating some lite dinner and we were told that there was a small hotel inside the castle rock town which was 10min walk from the station. Castle rock is a very small village and the lane we went in search of food was very dramatic.
It felt like we were in some movie set. We had some awsome roti and rajma curry served to us. **Some details are not disclosed for some personal constraints people have***will edit after getting approvals :)
We walked back to station and enjoyed the next 1 hour with our usual non-sense, useless talks. We boarded the train and i did not feel sleepy. About 1 or 2am i went near the door stood for next 1 hour recollecting my 24hrs unplanned journey to the my favourite destination till date with a smile!
7th July:
Wokeup around 7am and all of us had some tea and biscuits and we had to calculate the amount spent. We were sure that we overshot our budget since bus tickets were 3 times of train tickets.
We calculated and i was in shock that we completed our jouney with only exceeding 100Rs of our budget. yes, it was 1100/- per head.
We still had 500/- remaining which we decided to spend on breakfast. The train reached bangalore at 11am. We headed to our respective homes and i could not wait to share my experience of my 24hours trek. Came home and the first thing i did was gave a ring to "My Best friend also My Better Half" whom i had not called for the last 24 hours and told him every second of my entire journey and crashed for the next 12 hours"!
Manasa Kaushik :)
Monsoon treks attract me the most! Being in karnataka and not visiting western Ghats in monsoon is like not watching "ZNMD" or "3 idots" 1st day 1st show!
We are a group of 15 people all belonging to IT industry who met on several treks 3-4 years ago and formed our own group.
Quite a few people had asked me to share my trekking experiences so that they can go and visit/explore the places i have been to as trekker or tourist.A thought of saving my experiences came into my mind and the next idea why not a blog!
Here i go my first blog! My heart is beating 10X times faster with excitement as i begin to write my experience of my best trek till date "Doodh Sagar"
Planning Phase:
Btw entire 15 are on watapp but only useless talks happen there :) all productive talks are on emails :) Finally people started agreeing for the trek. Our group is a very accomodative group they say "Yes" without even asking the place :) this time around the history continued. Doodh sagar was suggested by Rahul since we had missed it last time on our way to Goa.
The planning phase began with number of people joining, how many days, bookings, route etc. None of us had been there earlier so we had to do some initial findings on the same. Initial plan was a 3 day plan to hike in doodhsagar and then head to goa. Since majority of us had to be back on monday for our work, kitti(Krishna Iyer) laid out a plan for 1 day trek and budget within 1000 bucks. 1000 bucks??? if you are surprised yes it is indeed 1000 bucks .
Numbers and time looked good and everybody agreed instantly. People who were interested in going to goa would plan separately with rest of the gang interested. Next came tickets booking where our elders Krishna and Karthik took the charge of booking :).Plan is to leave on Friday 5th july Bangalore- Castle Rock and return on 6th July Castle rock to Bangalore. Bangalore arrival 7th July "Home Sweet Home". Return tickets were confirmed instantly but ongoing journey was waiting list 59-71(13 tickets).
I was a little skeptical seeing the waiting list number but kitti and karthik were pretty confident that we would clear them :). So keeping hopes positive we were checking the waiting list everyday. In the mean while i started to plan for the Trek, mainly read some blogs, do's and dont's in the terrain and since it was monsoon we had a list of things to carry to survive for a day.
The countdown begins............
July 1st:
4 days left for the trek and Karthik checked the waiting list we were still 29-41 :(.But kitti was confident that we would still make it and asked me not to plan any alternates. In the mean while we called punith one of the trek gang guy to check with his dad(who works for Railways) if he could arrange for tickets.
I spoke to puneeth, whom i had never seen earlier, i knew him only through people and asked if his dad could help. The problem was Puneeth sir does not pick up calls before 2pm which mean half the time is wasted calling him without any response. Finally he picked my call and i asked him to check with his dad and update me asap. Puneeth does not understand ASAP.. A while never came and puneeth never called me.As usual i called kitti(Krishna Iyer) and kitti had only one recorded reply "Hey sigate tension togol beda avana appa madake agala andre railways ge avamana :) pukka agate".i would say ok each time and cut the call and immeaditely call puneeth for status.
July 3rd:
2 days to go for the Trek On July 3rd Puneeth confirmed that his dad would put our names in "Emergency Quota" list and our tickets would be confirmed only on 5th July(on the day of travelling).I was a little relieved and started sending emails to the group with the checklist of things to carry for the Trek.
July 4th : 1 more day to go...
4th July i had completed my packing and was checking on the weather since it was raining cats and dogs near managalore.
Was scared where the routes would be closed since kukke trains were being cancelled because of the land slides.However with all excitement i put a post on FB of my upcoming trek and was excited to see the response and likes on my post :).I did get replies to the post but only telling its raining and be careful etc etc which was something i did not expect :). Not being disappointed i was positive that we would make it to the trek since it was monsoon and we wanted it to rain.
July 5th: "The D Day"
The "D" day just arrived. I was on cloud 9 and was waiting for the clock to strike 3 to leave office and head to the railway station where we would meet and board the train.
My packing was done we had discussed on watapp on who will be starting from where and who would come along with whom, still the tickets not being confirmed we were all excited :) At 11am Puneeth called and gave a shocking news that in emergency quote only 6 or 7 tickets can be confirmed and not all. Here we go again, as usual i call kitti and gave him status update, kitti suggested people whose names are confirmed go by train and rest catch the bus and take the same train from Hubli at 6:45am the next day. Second option was all of us take the same train with 6 or 7 tickets confirmed and we adjust and take turns to sleep for which all of us agreed.
As i told earlier we are super accomodative all we need is good company and we compliment each other very well :P .
It was 3pm i called yeshas who was leaving from kormangala and asked her to pick me up from my office in EGL sharp at 4pm. As decided for the first time in her life yeshas comes promptly at 4pm to pick me up near my office and we head home. On my way i had to buy a jacket which was light weight, we stopped at wild craft brought a jacket and headed home.
It was 4.30pm! in exactly 30min time the list would be announced with confirmed seats.watapp messages were being shared every second on status and kitti was refreshing the irctc every milli second :) i dnt think any of us have waited so eagerly even for our results when we were in college :) 5.30pm Kitti message "awsome news" even before we could guess he said "None of the tickets are confimed :D".the next exp in watapp was "What!" and where the hell is puneeth who promised us to atleast confirm 6-7 tickets. Kitti had another plan where we had to travel by bus to Hubli, reach hubli at 5am to catch the same Chennai-Vasco express at 6:45am.
Kitti informed one part of the gang and i called puneeth and asked him to meet us at KSRTC bus stop sharp at 8pm.His instant reply was "Plastic cover tartini" me:"Yake" Puneeth:"Vanti madake" (To vomit since puneeth has motion sickness).Hearing his reply all i could do is laugh at his reaction :) The message was communicated to all the folks and we decided that we will meet at KSRTC bus stop at 8pm with karthik and Rahul coming by 9pm.
The whole point was that neither we had train tickets nor we had booked bus tickets for Journey to Hubli being a weekend we were not sure if all 13 of us could find seats in the same bus.The truth is nobody bothered and we all were in excitement of meeting each other. Me and yeshas took the bus from my place to Majestic. Kitti,shravya,gaga(Monica),priyanka and Himanshu had reached the bus stop and were at swathi deluxe hotel where me and yeshas joined the gang, later followed by Rahul(DG),Nidhi,Bhoomi,Anjana,Puneeth,karthik.
5th July 9:30pm
Most of us had dinner at Swathi Deluxe and we were thinking of booking the bus tickets for 11pm bus. 11pm means we reach Hubli only by 6.30 in the morning which also tells that we cannot board the 6:45am train to doodh sagar. Kitti and Nidhi decided not to book tickets but goto the platform instead and search for any buses that would leave at 10pm and also has 13 tickets. In the mean while i took out my camera to take some photos of our posing queens and kings.
Nidhi called us and asked us to come to platform No 1 where they found a bus to Hubli which leaves in 5min and has exactly 13 tickets. We all rushed to the platform and i remember Nidhi telling us the conversation between nidhi and conductor "Nidhi: Sir bus yestoge horadate Conductor: 10 gante ge hortu Hubli 5 gante ge irtivi, Nidhi: Sir 13 ticket Beku Conductor: 13? 13 ticket kotre Bus full agogate :)". I dnt think nidhi knew hw to react to the conductors reply.
We all boarded the bus which came from chennai and got the last 13 seats.Now we are good to reach hubli and board the same train at 6:45am in the morning. On our way we played some games "Rahul's Pink pyjama movies inside rahul pink pyjama :P","Fuzzy Duck, ducky Fuzz" and last but not the least Puneeth's elephant and ants PJ's.
The bus stopped for dinner break and our masala dosa queen yeshas was all excited to see "Food!" infront of her ran towards the resturant only to order for Masala Dosa at 11.30pm in the night.Yeshas means Food! We continued our journey in the bus where majority of us got some good sleep for few hours and we reached Hubli sharp at 5am, The road between bangalore to Hubli was excellent and volvo sailed perfectly on the roads for comfortable journey.
July 6th 5am
We took our luggage and we had more than an hour to reach Hubli railway station and buy tickets to Doodh sagar. Since we were 13 of us we wanted a vehicle where all of us could fit in with luggage.
We found a Tata Ace and we negotiate for Rs 150/- to hubli railway station for which the driver agreed, but the only problem was how will 13 people fit in? we got in with our bags and we adjusted with gals sitting on each others lap and we werent sure if the vehicle could pull 14 is us including the driver :). Surprisingly the vehicle did go and we reached hubli station in 15min.
Hubli railway station is very well built but poorly maintained.Staff are not to be blamed but the people who commute are to be blamed since they lack civic sense and dont respect hygiene :( sad state of our country today where we blame our infrastructure, but we dont realize how we are equally responsible to maintain what is built.
This was my insight when i saw the station!! We headed to the cloak room to brush and change our clothes. To our horror we see the cloak room the next reaction is Yakkkk!!!! wat the hell is this? The toilets were horrible and we could not even step in. We managed to change our clothes ,brush our teeth thats it!!!
We went to the platform, some of us had lite breakfast and were heading towards the platform to board the train into Unreserved compartments. The train was behind schedule by 30min.
We saw atleast 50 people excluding us in the platform who were waiting to board the same train to Doodh Sagar. Wait did i say Trek?? Yes now comes the next question from where do we start trekking?
Again our Kitti Baba suggested that we get down in place called Caranzol (fondly known as Karan johan by Our DG(Rahul)) and we hike to doodh sagar which is approx 7.8kms from Caranzol.
Caranzol is not actually a station so we did not know for how long the train would stop there. We did not bother much and we start chatting again.
The train arrived and we rushed towards the unreserved compartments to find seats for 13 people. Luckily we found 13 seats and train left Hubli in next 15min.
The weather was perfect that morning with cool breeze desirable weather for any trekker. As we continued our Journey taking photos nidhi popped a question to Yeshas "Yeshas u sing right?" When Yeshas hears the work Music she starts singing in her high pitch voice.
There you go! she starts her singing. But this time it was better only because Nidhi started singing along with her and believe me he has a beautiful voice.
For the next 3 hours we heard and sang some amazing old and new kannada songs with rains in the background. "This was the journey i was looking for and could not have asked for anything better at that moment".
When you are with people whom you like the most we wont realize how time flies. The same happened with us 3 hours went like 30 mins and next thing we see is its pouring outside and the train stops at a station "Castle Rock".
This is station where people actually start trekking to doodhsagar and this is the name i have been hearing in blogs for the last 3 weeks. We had decided that we will get down in caranzol and start our trek/hike from Caranzol.
We asked a fellow passenger if caranzol was next stop for which he said yes and it is approx 7 kms from Castle Rock.
We crossed Castle Rock and the next thing we see is Caranzol a small station where we need to alight. Karthik, Monica, shravya,Priyanka,Bhoomika are standing near the door and train stops where these 5 get down and next thing we see "Train is moving" Oh Shit! the train stoppped for less than 30 seconds in the stop and now the group is separated.
It was Me,Nidhi, Kitti,Himanshu,Yeshas,Puneeth, Rahul, Anjana were in the train and we decided to get down in doodh sagar. Me yeshas and Nidhi stood near the door of the train and i see we are crossing tunnels now yayyyyyyyyyyyyy :) the most favourite part of train journey.
Me and yeshas were shouting with excitement. After we cross each tunnel all we see is greenary and mountains covered with mist. wow!!! i seriously have no words to explain how fantastic western ghats are during monsoon. One has to experience it, but cannot document it completely. It will stay in my memory for ever!
We crossed 10 tunnels one after the other and we reach our destination "Doodh Sagar" station, the place all us were waiting to be in for the last 8 months. And Finally we made it!! The train stopped there for more than 2 minutes and we have enough time to get down.
But the only concern was we had split and we have to join again to go towards the falls. We got down took 4 churmuris and discussed on how to meet the rest 5 who were left behind.
Got few suggestions and we decided that we would trek towards Caranzol so that we can meet them mid way as we had a lag of 1 hour. Kitti, me and Himanshu carried SLR's which meant time for some photographs. We had our models Nidhi, Puneeth Me of course :) and anjana.
Yeshas was in a different mood when she saw water. yeshas goes crazy on seeing 2 things "Water to play and Foodddddd!!". We did some Photo shoots and started walking to our mission meet the rest of the gang, 100 mts from where we got down was our 10th Tunnel and it was raining heavily.
We packed our cameras and headed towards the tunnel.The tunnels are extremely dark and we need torches to walk in them. At the end of the tunnel we saw small waterfalls and yeshas, rahul and himanshu instantly headed to play. some more Photo shoots.
We took some photos with various Poses of Nidhi and puneeth and next we hear is siren and yes this was a train coming towards us and we were on the track. With little over 30 seconds we had to clear our luggage from the track and we had to get out of the track which we managed to with less than 15 seconds left.
The next thing we realize that we are standing adjacent(inches away )from moving goods train!!!!. Till that date i have never noticed what kind of wheels do trains have :) and i next thing i realize is i am standing inches away from it wow!! We start walking towards finding the missing 5 where we see another tunnel.wat next? i wanted to be on the track and catpure the photo of the train coming towards me and to my surprise my dreams came true. We heard another train and this time i see the train entering the Xmts tunnel and i am on other side of the tunnel and train will approach me in next 15 seconds and i am standing on the track to capture a pciture of the train. Yes! I finally did it. Managed to get the picture and come out of the track with less than 10seconds left.I had not done anything as crazy as this till date.
We saw some people on the other side of the tunnel and one person always reacted Puneeth! "Hey adu Bhoomi" how do you know puneeth? Ad chaddi(shorts) avalde :)(Hey thats bhoomi , i recognize her shorts).
Puneeth has told this atleast 10times and all 10times he guesses was wrong. Finally we decided at 1:30pm that we will start walking towards doodhsagar and the missing 5 would meet us there.
No signals to call we were only assuming that they would reach there. In the next 15min, we saw the missing 5 walking towards us. 13 of us were back to-gether again and started walking towards doodh sagar.
In the next 1 hour we were 10min away from doodh sagar falls where we spotted a mini water fall. The water was in such force that we wanted to be under gushing water . Here we go!! For next 30min we enjoyed being under mini water falls ans started walking towards our last tunnel to reach doodh sagar falls. The last tunnel was longest and darkest amongst all.
We went and stood infront of the falls. We separated and all of us wanted to be left alone for sometime which we did. For me it was me and only me then! i could not think if anything else around me. I stood still for 10min watching the beauty of mother nature and how lucky i was to be there. The kind of mechanical life we lead in today's world how many people have passion for exploring things and make time for the same? Here i was feeling proud to say "I was one among the very few people who explored their passion for travelling along with awesome 12 who are a part of my journey in a very special way"!!! Never felt so good before. It was Me and only Me!!! In the span of 10min i recollected so many things of my past and Some feelings cannot be shared it is best kept only with oneself. .It will remain as a everlasting memory of a lifetime for me!
It was 4.30pm and it was time for us to board the train, we headed for a small tea stall, had some tea and started walking towards the doodh sagar station. Doodh sagar is/was never a station and tickets are not issued in that name. Trains stop there only beacuse of the people who come to trek.
We reached this virtual station only to find out that we have atleast 200 people standing to board the same train to castle rock. We were told by a employee of railways to move 200 mts from where we were standing as the general compartment of the train would stop there and place we were standing A/C compartments would stand where the doors DO NOT Open.
We took the employees suggestion and we would 200mts and stood there for 30min and train does not come. Finally at 6pm we hear the train siren and more than 200+ people waiting have less than 2 minutes to board the train. I wasnt even sure that all of us could make it in that crowd.
The train stops and yeshas madam runs towards the door which is locked and is trying to open that for few seconds :)but in vain the door did not open. In the mean while we run towards the other door where 50 people are trying to get it inside and some how managed to squeeze in and train leaves. We werent sure if all the 13 of us have got in. If we miss this train ,there are no trains after this and we have no option left but to walk 14kms!.
To our luck all the 13 of us had boarded the train. We had some awesome cake offered to us by a Firangi in the train. We were very hungry and without shame we eat like we hadnt seen or eaten cakes in our entire life! Our station arrived in next 30min and we had sufficient time to get down. We were all wet and desparately needed to change.
Well guys did not have a problem the only problem was for us(8 girls). The waiting room was filled with water and we could not even think of stepping in there. We went in search of a house behind the station and we found a house where a gentleman agreed to let out his house for sometime till we changed.
His only condition was that we wait for him to arrive and then we leave the house for which we agreed. All of us changed and we left the guys to stay there till the owner arrived and we headed towards the station. Our train from Castle rock to Bangalore was at 11pm, we had ample time and nothing to do.
Around 8pm we thought of eating some lite dinner and we were told that there was a small hotel inside the castle rock town which was 10min walk from the station. Castle rock is a very small village and the lane we went in search of food was very dramatic.
It felt like we were in some movie set. We had some awsome roti and rajma curry served to us. **Some details are not disclosed for some personal constraints people have***will edit after getting approvals :)
We walked back to station and enjoyed the next 1 hour with our usual non-sense, useless talks. We boarded the train and i did not feel sleepy. About 1 or 2am i went near the door stood for next 1 hour recollecting my 24hrs unplanned journey to the my favourite destination till date with a smile!
7th July:
Wokeup around 7am and all of us had some tea and biscuits and we had to calculate the amount spent. We were sure that we overshot our budget since bus tickets were 3 times of train tickets.
We calculated and i was in shock that we completed our jouney with only exceeding 100Rs of our budget. yes, it was 1100/- per head.
We still had 500/- remaining which we decided to spend on breakfast. The train reached bangalore at 11am. We headed to our respective homes and i could not wait to share my experience of my 24hours trek. Came home and the first thing i did was gave a ring to "My Best friend also My Better Half" whom i had not called for the last 24 hours and told him every second of my entire journey and crashed for the next 12 hours"!
"I still stick to my words no country better than India, No city better than Bangalore and No place like western ghats to visit during monsoon"Cheers!!!
Manasa Kaushik :)
