DAY 1: KUDREMUKH:
Driver was ready by 9:00am. We had breakfast in near by restaurant and started to kudremukh, which is around 100kms from Chikmagalur.. Below were the places on our Itinerary in Kudremukh..
- Destination 1: Lakya Dam
- Destination 2:Ganga moola
- Destination 3: Hanuman Gundi Falls.
- Destination 4: Kudremukh National park.
Kudremukh lies in the Chikmagalur district at an altitude of 1894 meters. Kudremukh means “Horse face”. (In kannada). This hill town derived its name from a mountain range in the region that looks like the face of a horse.Kudremukh was once very famous for it's splendid beauty. These days because of Iron ore reserves and it's mining, beauty is spoiled.
This dam was built to collect the waste tailings from the mining operations. So this dam does not have any water but only waste. The dam is at scenic location surrounded by Shola Mountains. Guards of KIOCL stopped us at the Dam gate saying, tourists are not allowed inside. (Earlier tourists were let in, who can walk on bridge of the dam and enjoy the Scenic beauty offered by Peaks of Shola mountain) God knows why it is stopped now.. Also these days mining activity is stopped here, to save further spoiling of environment through mining. So we had to just take snaps and return seeing closed Gates....
The Leech Experience....
Our next destination was Ganga moola. I was very eager about visiting this place as my trekking friends had told Ganga moola is a 1458m high mountain , which is the origin of the rivers Tunga, Bhadra and Netravathi. And gangamoola has a cave which has a 6ft tall image of Varaha and a shrine of Goddess Bhagawati.
We stopped car, seeing a Sign board "Ganga moola" and asked driver to drive in that direction, after going a far long, driver gave up saying there is no roads further and we have to walk around 1km to reach the starting point of trek, and further trek to reach Caves & Shrine. We started walking, and finally reached the Starting point of trek. There was literally no one there, and was not sure about the route further, also there were couple of deviations, so we decided to go back. That is when we saw a group of guys coming towards us.. Even they were not sure of the route, but they all decided to walk in a path, which looked like the route :), since we had company now, we also decided to go.. We along with that group of boys started walking. Place was very moist with full of earth worms.
I told Ramesh "yeah its full of earth worms be careful" , before i could complete this sentence, One of the boy ran back shouting its full of Leeches... I was totally puzzled, because i had never seen or heard much about this Leeches thing. But since they all started running back, we also followed them back. Only then i realized it was not just normal earth worms but Leeches, which feeds on blood of other living beings.. Each of us checked ourselves for any leeches stuck on us. I had lots of them as i was wearing Slippers, and could remove few easily as they had still not stuck completely. But couple of leeches was struck between my toes, and i had to spray perfume on them to release. Which was followed by Blood.. I washed of my legs, and then went to next destination..
Destination 3: Hanuman Gundi Falls.
Our next destination was Hanuman gundi falls. We reached the place in next 30mins.. The place was totally cold. Lots of eatables were sold near the Entrance of falls...We were about to buy entrance ticket, then i saw couple of people trying to get rid of Leeches stuck on them, I asked them if there are more leeches. They told there are around 400 steps, there are leeches only on the way, and once u reach water there is no Leeches... I told Ramesh i want to skip this place. It was at this moment, I realized this phobia of mine - leeches! Ramesh agreed, we just ate some chats there and left to next destination.
Destination 4: Kudremukh National park.
Next destination on our itinerary was "Jamalabad fort" . Driver dint know about this place, and it was strange that none of the locals knew or had any information about this fort. We had to skip this tooo. Only kudremukh park was left for day, we took a stroll in the park, only to find swings, slides n stuff..Also It started drizzling, so we decided to return back.. We had skipped lots of things today. And felt like we saw nothing today.. We were hoping to have better day tommorrow..
Destination 5: Chickmagalur Tea Estate:
One the way back to Chikmagalur, we got a great view of tea estates all along, the roads were totally empty . And was a Picturesuque view with green lush on either sides of the roads.. We got down from car, spent some time taking snaps.. It was so chill with evening breeze and it was drizzling again!.
Very informative!!
ReplyDeleteHI
ReplyDeleteTHANKS...