Sakleshpur Trek

Disclaimer : This is the longest piece of garble i've penned... i mean, ever!... you should probly write a couple of hours off your life if you intend reading this... here goes... if you actually get to the end, please let me know... your opinion is very valuable to our company(sic)...

hey people!!

Since I had some time on my hands and my next meeting with the boss is quite far away, I thought it was time to pen down the last couple of days…they've been eventful. Probably the most eventful in a long, long time… Just like all the best things that happened, this began in a pretty unplanned way…

Happened to see some post regarding a trek somewhere… Saklespur... Never heard of it... Which isn't exactly a miracle coz my geography's pretty bad… Anyway, research on the net showed that it was a trek in the woods on the tracks. An abundance of leeches in the area and the slippery bridges and bat-infested tunnels sealed the decision. I was going! I needed some company, and deepa was quite easily convinced of an interesting trek. I also quite conveniently forgot to mention anything about the landslides, leeches, lack of accommodation (we even took along a charger to charge our cell phones in the hotel in Yedikumari). Between the both of us, we managed to be absent for every meeting that was held. Somehow managed to get the sleeping bags and backpacks. I even forgot to ask for the meeting place and time and Alok very kindly called up to inform me of the same…

We finally met up at the Enquiry Counter at the KSRTC bus stand…and boarded the 11:45pm Rajahamsa. To Mangalore… the conductor had intelligently chosen the last seats for us… and we were allowed to create havoc, in peace… the introduction rounds were held… Priyanka was established as the monitor of the team… I finally got to know who the organizer was… naresh was discovered as a potential spy (I still strongly believe Alok had something to do with Naresh's fall on the second day…)… Feroze seemed an Infy-frustrated guy… certainly not contributing to any ESAT surveys…there was Usha I knew from blogs… pallavi was yet to be discovered… asif, who who strongly denied being a cell-seller… okay, enough of half-baked intros… they'll introduce themselves as the story progresses…
I cant remember when I finally dozed off into sleep… the road wasn't too bad and I only woke up once we crossed sakleshpur… we were dropped somewhere… in the middle of nowhere, around 5:55am… we found our respective bags and vishal(our Columbus) went around looking for a railway track… once discovered, we set off in a procession… we soon came across and passed the Donigal station… after that, it was a pretty monotonous procession…it was 6:10… we walked… and walked and walked… there seemed to be nothing but never ending, ever winding tracks… it was pretty unexciting… I must confess, I had doubts if I should continue along… and the rocks on the tracks only made matters worse… I'm not really used to hobbling along on cobblestones… but the atmosphere was good… it was a cold, not chilly, morning… lots of dew everywhere…finally, after what seemed a long, long time, we came across a bridge and a stream.. we decided to eat something there… deepa and I made our way to the stream, threw off the shoes and socks and sat on the mossy rocks, with our feet dangling in the stream… we were deservedly admonished by Priyanka for such risky behavior… the water was pretty turbulent and could have washed us right off.. though we'd have to make quite a lot of effort to drown ourselves in the two feet deep water…

we cleaned ourselves up, had a breakfast of bread and jam… photographed some goat as if they were a rare, extinct species of sabers, and were finally on our way, again… deepa and I had a habit of rushing along… as the group was of 20 people, we tended to split into three groups… the onrushers, the intermediates and the back-benchers… and we were in the onrushers for most of the morning… we came across some tunnels… they varied in length from 80m to 572m… some were winding, some were straight… in one of them, deepa decided to check strength of the cement blocks on which the rails are laid… she accomplished this by kicking viciously at them… it was proven that they were strong… the side-effect though was that she stubbed her big toe… in the next tunnel, which was quite slippery, she managed to slip down and hurt her knee… after a couple of more accidents, she was thoroughly in no mood to be a party of the onrushers… we fell back to intermediates and finally to the back-benchers… balaji very kindly assisted us… he motivated her by pulling her along… we were already contemplating at this stage of ditching the whole trek and just catching a bus to Bangalore.. deepa was in no condition to walk and I thought I had had enough of railway tracks for a lifetime… we didn't have much of a choice as we later found out… it was hard to keep track of the time… it was always cloudy… it rained… you got wet… it stopped raining… you kinda got less wet… when it again rained… you get the idea…

we finally reached Yedikumari… a lot of ideas regarding the meaning were discussed… kumari of yedi, the young one of yediku and other equally improbable ones… I even managed to sell the most preposterous idea of a Crab-Princess (Yedi – crab, kumari – princess)… we never found out… anyway, it was a god-forsaken place in the middle of nowhere… any plans of running catching a bus and running away were put to rest… forget a bus, there wasn't even a road, no people, no chai-houses, and certainly no hotels to charge our cellphones…

Finally we reached the station… we were to camp on the platform… I'd thought someone was just pulling my leg when I first heard of that!! And even that wasn't so easy… We first had to ask permission off a very bad-tempered Station Master… all the kannadigas were quickly rounded up and sent to the station master to get butchered… (I somehow escaped notice ;-) ) there was a lot of screaming and shouting and other unpleasant noises while the station master established that he was the RajaKumara of Yedikumari and we were puny unwanted things encroaching his royal terrain… to cut it short, after all the noises, we were allowed to stay…

we unrolled the sleeping mats and got rid of the backpacks… I was so tired, I curled up and slept… I woke up to find the smell of food wafting in the air… vishal and shalini were cooking soup and the delightful smell awoke the me and the rumblings in my stomach… I doubt if we had had any lunch… maybe we had… I cant remember, honestly… anyway, I waited behind the cooks without seeming too ravenous… the first round of soup was grabbed away by the stronger people… I got mine only in the second round… then there was the bisibelebath… deepa n I had forgotten to bring any plates… we had a 2-ltr vessel though which served the purpose… under those circumstances, you cant really afford to be choosy about your cutlery!! So, we ate out of a vessel… so like prisoners… that was the dinner…finally, opened up our sleeping bags, and huddled together to sleep… I was lulled to sleep by Pallavi's songs… I love the way she bursts into a song with the least provocation… and such amazing voice too…!

Next thing I remember… someone waking everyone up… I opened my eyes to the green hilly rock right across the rails… lay there amidst the bustle, while people packed… finally got up and washed from the pipe that collected the mountain water… strolled along the rails for a little morning walk… it's amazing that a place like that still exists… so cold, so fresh… so green… there was this small quarters house… it had long since been abandoned… I could look right through its backdoor into the backyard and the yonder hills… everything covered in white fog… it was beautiful! Finally, we started off… deepa n I started early… given deepa's delicate condition ;-) … passed an orange truck on rails… there was a guy in the truck and I jokingly asked if he was going anywhere… he replied 'sakleshpur' and promptly revved the engine.. wow! A truck on tracks found during a trek…! More bridges… more tunnels… people soon overtook us… we suddenly came across a bridge which was so covered in fog you couldn't see where it ended! It was a most wonderful sight… we crossed it… and found a ramshackle house, a signal tower… asif climbed the tower and we stood on its steps(deepa, abhilasha, usha n i)… we've decided to caption it as 'charlie and his char angels'! more walking… everyone finally meet at some point… we munch on the theplas which are rationed out… this was the breakfast as I later discovered… then more walking… deepa's feet hurt too bad and we fall really behind… we bring up the rear… shalini's often found when we come around a curve… she's the other back-bencher… at one spot, we come across a caterpillar-crane… it's moving the mud back and forth… clearing the tracks from a landslide… we go in and get our photos clicked… pretending to be operating the monstrous thing… we then urged deepa to carry on and sat down at a bridge… I had been warned a dozen times by the track-guys that bridges were dangerous things and one should not stop in the middle of them… but the catch is that the best view is always from the middle of the bridge… across the stream, looking down on the huge valley, I forgot all warnings… the tracks curve very frequently and there's no chance of seeing the train before it's almost at the bridge… we were in the middle of some discussion… and didn't hear a thing coz we were sitting right next to a waterfall… and then we saw the damn thing coming… I turned… took one look at it… stood up, grabbed my bag, and ran… TOWARDS it! I know it qualified as the dumbest thing I've done until now… but I did just that… I ran right towards it… and then someone shouting behind me woke me up and I turned and ran the other way, across the bridge… to safety… with not too much time to spare… we set off again… found deepa somewhere… waiting for us… doubting if we'd gone ahead… vishal offered to walk along with deepa… alok and I walked ahead… we crossed a tunnel and stopped.. he suggested that we should go along as vishal would come with deepa… I insisted that I'd wait… so we decided to wait… on the bridge with a spectacular view… I peeked into the tunnel and saw that deepa n vishal had stopped for something… I thought he probably was showing her something interesting… and since alok insisted "hum wait karenge to yahin pe" we took off the bags and sat down… not more than a second later, out comes a monstrous engine, without any carriages, hence faster, right in our face… we grab the bags and run for our lives… again!... there were similar near mishaps… vishal was walking in front of me and I was absorbing the beauty around… didn't notice the broken plank in the bridge… I remember my feet right on nothing before stumbling into safety… but vishal calmed my jangled nerves saying that if I'd fallen through, my bag would've gotten stuck and I could've waited with a few bruises until someone pulled me up… comforting thought!

Others faced similar mishaps… naresh slipped on the rails, fell on the rocks and then into the waterway in the side… gagan, in high spirits went into the pool at the bottom of a water fall and came up covered head to toe in leeches… pallavi started walking on the outer end of a bridge, just a couple of inches away from a 200feet fall… a bunch of them were walking in a curved tunnel and before they knew it, were faced with an oncoming train…

There was the waterfall where we plunged in and had good back massages…

Finally it was tunnel 35… we took a diversion to the right… into the jungles… and started walking… it started pouring… that is the only word… it was as if someone were emptying a never emptying bucket of water over your head… I didn't really get to appreciate the beauty of the jungles… leeches… i found one crawling up my leg and totally lost all of my senses… I hopped around trying to get the thing off… I didn't even have the mandatory salt… someone very kindly poured the salt and got the damn thing off… after that, I concentrated more on my shoes than anything else… oh, there were the stones… the path was leafy mostly, with leeches crawling everywhere… the stones were covered in moss and slippery… lohith, an on-rusher, in an attempt to overtake me, got on to the stony path and slipped and fell.. with such a clamor that I was struck numb for five seconds… enough for half a dozen leeches to begin their crawly path up my legs… deepa fell once… I turned around to ask her if she was alright and fell too… but it was alright, nobody was seriously injured… vishal once had to leave us at a clearing to verify the path… and it was a nightmare… we had to stand at a place and the leeches starting crawling up… and since there were branches of trees overhead, leeches kept falling on to your arms and backpacks… and one was found on someone's head!... finally vishal was back and 3km of jungle finally took us to gondiya… we stopped at the local school… vishal and Priyanka cooked up some MTR and we had a full meal… more walking on the road and reached the highway…

Our plan was for all of us to catch a bus to blore if possible… seemed highly unlikely.. didn't see a single bus to blore… the next plan was to catch a bus to Kukke and then from there to Blore… Kukke is 22km from place but due to reconstruction and rains, a diversion of 15km had to be taken… we decided to hire a jeep to kukke for 300 bucks a trip… but the guy jumped up the charges to 500 saying he had to take a diversion… we then discovered that it would take 2.5hours to get to kukke by the new route which was awful… we considered Uppinangadi but inquiries at the shop told me that it was 40km from our current position and 60km to kukke from there… a total of >100km… so, it was dropped… we had Hassan to go to… but finally decided on Dharmasthala as there would be a lot of buses to Blore from there… to get to Dharmasthala, we tried stopping a lot of trucks… unsuccessfully…

finally the shop-keeper introduced us to a tipper-guy… talks with him revealed that there was place for 3-4 people(which turned out to be 2) within and the others would have to be on the outside… there was no covering if it rained… though it seemed hardly a grand prospect, we had no choice… we'd been waiting for quite some time and there wasn't a bus in sight… some people were less inclined towards the whole crazy idea… but I finally convinced them… insisting that there were no buses after 9 (it was already 7:30) and if we delayed we wouldn't find any buses from Dharmastala too… shalini and abhilahsa were promised seats on the inside and the rest reluctantly agreed to the clamber onto the tipper… finally, we asked the rates… he said 30 bucks per person… it was a 50km ride… though happy on the inside, I insisted it was too much… finally settled on 25… climbing posed a problem.. the tipper wouldn't tip and people had to be pushed and pulled… finally, everyone settled into the tipper… and we were on our way… it was the best roller coaster ride ever! Any muscles that had been overlooked on the tracks and jungles were pulled around now… but it was fun…The wing tearing in your face, the rain horizontally hitting you like little needles… everyone singing (or screaming)… it was over too soon… climbing down was as clamberous as climbing up…

finally we walked a little to the bus-stand… booked tickets for the 10:33pm bus… and were on our way back… we hardly slept due to the roads and the driver who insisted on keeping everyone awake if he had to stay awake… we reached blore at 6am… got on to a rick and were home by 6:45… there! That's the end of the Saklespur Trek without Sakleshpur!

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Saras