Tadiyandamol

Hello Guys…
Recently we bought a new tent ie me shashi, Vai and Rohit put together. And so we wanted to check the credential of this tent. The only way to do it was a trek. It was long pending I guess after Dabbe ie 8 months back we hadn’t gone on a proper trek as such. We had climbed Skandagiri, KadaiKall, etc in between. But a trek was long due.

Tadiyandamol:

We were planning to visit the Tadiyandamol from long time, after the Dabbe trek we were hell bent on going for a trek during the monsoon itself. Everybody was opposing it, including my buddy GD. So silently we dropped him off the list and we four proceeded along with the plan that included Shashi, Vai, me and Srikar. It was decided that Me and Srikar will board the bus from Bangalore and these two ppl will join us from Mysore. As the timing was not matching I could find only a SARIGE CLASS of BUS that could match with our criteria....
So after the job, hurried packing followed it and we two were off to the bus station. After an interesting conversation with the Autowala regarding the current political situation to surveillance camera (This is after he came to know our guys had installed it over the city), he explained me how he had got 3 traffic violation tickets because of it in past one month, he went on lambasting the Traffic Police to Cops then the politicians so on.

Anyways I don’t want to touch the traveling part ie Jorney from Bangalore to Virajpet. U ppl might have experienced it, so let me skip it. Anyways these two guys joined us in Mysore @1:30AM. And we continued our journey towards Virajpet.

We reached Virajpet quite early in the morning around 4:45 AM and came to know that the local bus service to Napoklu, from where the trek starts, would start at 6:30 am only, and as it was about 30 kms from Virajpet. In the mean time we walked to the local bus stand. This was about 1km from the KSRTC bus stand. We loafed around a bit I took a short nap and we hopped in as soon as the Anuradha  came into the stands. That 1 hr journey again served a nap time.

We were there at Napoklu at 7:30 and we had to hike 3 kms to the starting point of the trek ie the Aramane AKA Nalakand Palace. The walk was amazing it was misty and we could see mist covered mountains on the distance, and it was green every where. Btb you will find lot of Home stays in here, so if u plan to relax by just reading a book or spend some time alone this would be a good place, considering it being so near to Puttur, I guess its just 80 kms away, and its lot cooler.

If I am right we came across any where around 5 home stay’s and 1 resort in this short stretch of 3 kms, I guess that might be due to the popularity of the place. But one good thing was we never came across any plastic covers, bags or bottles any such thing on our whole journey, I think all the credit goes to local ppl who manage the place. We were very glad that it was maintained in that way compared to what we saw in kadaikall, where 4 bags of ours were filled with plastic covers and bottles that the ppl had thrown around. I don’t know when these ppl come to their senses and try to keep Nature as clean as they keep their houses (There are few exceptions in here also).

Anyways after 3 kms of trek we came to a fork, the left path goes towards Nalakand Palace, Govt School & a resort. I forgot the name of that and the right takes to the peak. And there was a bus load of ppl from Bangalore who had come to visit that resort. We came to know it was quite good it seems, from our 2 fellow trekkers (It should be when u r paying 3k per person/night). Anyways we had different perspective; we had come there to get away from the usual hectic city life, giving up the luxury of couple of days.

Anyways there was a stream near by and we took a leap onto it, after 20 mins of welcome break we were back on the trek trail. Came to know that it would be around 7 km’s to the top from that point and we dint waste much time and continued on our way up. On our way to the top we passed numerous streams and the thing is, this narrow steep tar road follows the trek trail for about 2 kms. So if u have come in a bike, or a car with a good ground clearance, you can park it near a big stream, which serves as a water source for the locals in here, the tar road ends here. We had our breakfast in here. It was chapathi with amazing kobri chutney Vai’s mom had prepared (thank god I went to his home and collected it) we had a nice scrumptious breakfast. Refilled our water bottles, from this point onwards it’s a mud road for next 4 or 5 kms. It was a nice walk, with green all around us, minus the leech’s I guess due to the heavy rains that had struck Coorg couple of days back was responsible for this.

We reached a flat surface after a couple of kms from the Breakfast stream. Where in we planned to pitch our tent, Cos it was kind of ideal place-mountain on one side and a huge boulder on the other side giving ample protection from the wind. And a water source was very nearby. As we were pitching the tent, a group of 8 to 10 ten ppl passed us, so we discussed and delayed our plan of climbing the summit for couple of hour’s time. All of us were bit tired after the bus ride. So we tried to catch some sleep, so we climbed the big boulder and lay over there but alas couldn’t sleep there also. We were really amazed by the Vai’s ability to snore in such a place, in such kind of situation. Guys imagine u r lying on a big boulder, temp anywhere between 15 deg to 18deg, highly windy, and bit misty but still he SNORES...GOD Tussi Gr8 ho!!!! 

And after this not so successful attempt of sleeping, we thought of climbing the peak and we tried to wake up Vai, but he out rightly refused to come along with us. He wanted to sleep it seems, anyways it was a blessing in disguise, we were bit hesitant to leave the tent without nobody guarding it. So we locked Vai inside the tent, along with our trek bags, and started to climb further. It was around 4 o clock in the evening by that time only it was cloudy and misty, and one of the memorable point of the trek.

On our way back to the base camp we came across couple of Infosians from mysore and Shashi was most exited to see them and so myself and srikar left him to do the chit chat as we climbed down. Meantime we came across Mr. Tamanna who told us it was not a good idea to stay over night in that part as elephants pass that point during night and all. But we put a brave face and told him that we will be staying in there (We hadn’t come across any elephant dung in that area or surrounding area so). But he invited us to stay in his place, which was very generous of him. But we wanted to exp the feeling of sleeping in the tent, in such a place. Anyways it got dark pretty early and wind started to blow at higher speed and temperature dropped further so we got inside. Quickly finished our dinner and tried to catch some sleep.

I had a disturbed sleep in that tent, even though it was cozy inside, wind was howling outside and it was pushing the tent from side to side add to that it started to rain around 12 in the mid night, some how I could manage to sleep for couple of hrs time. Got up at 6 in the morning but as it was still dark and cold we continued to sleep for another hr or so. Finally everyone was up by 7 and we struggled a lot to dismantle the tent as it was too windy..

I can swear if only one guy if had he tried to hold it, easily he would have been air-borne.

After much of struggle we were able to properly dismantle the tent and we started our journey back. In between we stopped at one of the streams and had our breakfast and continued with our journey. In matter of mins the weather change drastically from clouded & misty to bright and hot day. In no time we were back at the Fork. But we missed visiting Nalakand Palace, as we were running out of time to catch the bus back to Virajpet. As I and srikar had 6 hrs journeys left with us compared to 2.5- 3 hours for Vai and Shashi, who were heading back to Mysore itself.
To our bad luck we couldn’t find any other bus back to mysore except SAARIGE……….

Again after 3 hrs of nightmare, we were in Mysore, I and Srikar continued our journey back to Bangalore. Thank god we could catch a Volvo from there to Bangalore. Oh my god u should seen our face wen we rested our bum on that cozy seats of Airavatha. God it was a gr8 feeling  really I mean it…..

Finally we were there in Bangalore by 7.

IT was one of the nice treks we had, reasons behind it were
•It was well maintained spot. No plastics nothing.
•Locals have digged pits at regular intervals where in you can throw the garbage and
ppl do follow that rule, so it was really nice to see that.
•For the first time we stayed in a tent.
•The time we choose to visit this place was just perfect.
•It was cloudy and misty on most of the part of our journey in there.
•Only 4 ppl ventured out for this trek, less ppl u enjoy more.


That’s how it went, so long……………..