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I had been starving for a trek since long. After having completed my college it had been a boring affair, with just routine stuff of office work. I needed to be out of Bangalore and relax in some cool and serene environment, out of the noise.
It was some time after the rains and I thought of a trek to Mulliangiri, I had heard a lot about this place from a lot of people so decided to try it out. There were only three people on this trek. Gopi, Vinay and Me. Vinay was on his second trek and this was the first with me. Gopi was one of my usual compnion during college days. He was one among us in the trek in which we lost our way.
All three of us met up at the KSRTC bus stand and then boarded a bus to get to ChikMagalore. The Mulliangiri peak is not far away from the bus stand. We landed in Chickmagalore in the wee hours of the morning… it was around 4:30am. We had cup of hot coffee (coffee in coffeeland) from the local shop there, and enquired about the route to Mulliangiri. We came to know that there was a bus which would leave at 7:00am. We enquired for any alternate transport… the suggestion was Autos… but we did not feel like taking any. We decided to wait.
We did our morning ablutions and then had some breakfast at a local hotel. We then decided to have a tour of the locality and just made a small morning walk.
We found a bus ready to go to Bababudangiri via Mulliangiri. We did not want to loose any seat that would be available. The time was approximately 6:30am. We took our seats and waited for something to happen… ha ha… nope for the bus to move. I had a small nap, when I woke up the time was 7:30am. I then realised that this bus would leave at 7:45am. At 7:45am the bus set… as we looked at the beauty of this awesome place with the chilling weather… we found a lot of people climb the bus and in no time the bus was completely jam packed. We asked the conductor to let us know where to get down… and when the stop came… it was real tough getting down.
Some time after getting down, we started off with our trek. The trek is more of a uphill walk on a path that is followed so frequently by trekkers. The only problem that we had was… it was very cloudy. We could not see anything beyond one meter. It was our experience of “Walking through the Clouds”. The route we chose to climb is called “Sarpahadi” – meaning Snake Path. The whole path is serpentine… winding till we reach the peak. Remember, when ever there is a fork prefer the left over the right. It’s a nice trek. I was not very tiring as all this was done in the clouds. Some times we would get the wind blow away the clouds to give us a very beautiful view of the valley. We continued our uphill trek and reached the “Nandi” temple that is below a tree. We just waited here for some time to pick individual snaps and then moved on. Just before we reach the temple a small deviation will take us to two caves. We did not waste time to probe into the caves too deep. We just went till we could and came back with the snaps.
We entered the temple premise, had our breakfast there… called as many people as we could to tell them “I am on the tallest peak in Karnataka”. We rested for around the temple and then continued our trek. We asked the directions towards Bababudangiri, and then tried following it. We just lost the way while trying to search our way. The clouds were getting denser and we did not want to risk taking the wrong foot. So we went back to the temple and asked for guidance till we come to a route without ambiguity. The guide was kind enough to help us till we came to the correct route, then he returned back. We continued on the track and reached a nice view point. We could get down to the road easily from this spot. The clouds slowly started clearing out.
We sat viewing and clicking the entire nice and serene environment. We spent nearly 45 minutes doing this. There was a Vivekananda statue nearby and some cement benches. We rested having our lunch there. We could also spot a old telephone exchange and a check post nearby. All these were posing for our photos. After some rest at the spot we decided to continue our trek back to Chikmagalore.
We waited for some bus, or some jeep that would take us to Chickmagalore, we could not find any there and then finally we decided to walk down the road in that direction and climb any vehicle that could take us to Chikmagalore. We walked for nearly 1 hr when a jeep came down that way. The jeep owner was kind enough to drop us till Chikmagalore. We reached Chikmagalore at 4:30pm, got into the bus to Banglore. All along the route I was thinking of the beautiful day I had… what an experience! Cherish it for life – the memories, the temple, the cave, the winding path, the guide, the walk through the clouds, the sight seeing spot, and finally the walk back…

Kodachadri the famous peak near the auspicious temple of Mukambika Kollur, is a frequent trek destination.
This was my first trek of the year 2006. The time was around January 15, 2006. We were group of 9 people on this trek. Most of us were software professionals from different companies in Bangalore. We did not know each other closely before the trek, the trek got all of us close together.

We met up the KSRTC bus stand, but as it was a holiday season we could not get any seat to go to Shimoga. Finally we got a private bus which was going to Shimoga and all of us climbed in. We reached Shimoga quite early at 5:30am. We finished our morning ablutions and then went in search of a Hotel to have our breakfast. It took around half an hour before we compelted our breakfast and then wait for the bus. We went in search of the information regarding the bus that would take us to Kodachadri, the information we for was the bus would leave in another half an hour; it was around 6:45am. The bus came a bit before scheduled time and we occupied our seat. We chose seats of our own choise as we were early to climb it and not many commuters were communting. A short while after the bus started off at around 7:15am, most of us dozed off. The travel time would be around 3hrs to take us to the point were we wanted to start off our trek. On the way we get some other stops from were we can start off – Sampekatte, Nittoor and Kalkutika are the stops. We chose to start from “Kodachadri Cross” as most of them call it… I am not sure about the actual name of this place.

It was around 10:45 when we reached this place. Once we alighted from the bus we did some fastening of the shoe lace and stuff, to start off with the trek. The route was a mud road that would lead us to the Mallu hotel – “Hotel Santosh”. From the starting point to the hotel its walk along the mud road, through the forest. You get to see dense forest at some placed, the light hardly reaches the ground, at some other places it is open space – the vegetation is not uniformly spread out. A walk of 45 min to 1 hour (depending on the speed of the group) we reach the famous Mallu hotel – the famous recipe of “Puttu”. We took some snaps on the way, and now it was time to continue clicking, in front of the hotel there is a school, and a huge play ground. You can stand in the play ground and look all over to find a lot of mountains and nice scenery – a rustic life to be picturised in case.

We spent around one hour at the hotel before we resumed our trek. Till now the trek was on a mud road, now it would be a uphill trek. There was a small path formed out of the trails of the earlier trekkers and water during rainy season. Well this initial stretch is through the forest area, so it’s not very hectic to climb. After a brief trek uphill we come to an open grassy area on the hill. This opening gives a splendid view of the mountain ranges and the lush green vegetation; a photographer can quickly be in action here.

The opening then lead to a much steeper climb, but the view gets better all the while. You then move on the trails through the side of the valley. You can in fact listen to the stream flow at a distance. You can also spot the guest house from this path at a distance. That guest is going to be your destination; there is no way you can get lost as the trail is thick and clear. We rested a while in a small shadowy region before we continued again. A break of some 30 min here, and we were ready to proceed. We continued on, the trek after this was a routine one, not very difficult, a small distance later we were in the shade of the forest again. Once out of the forest you have a open space and a route which takes you to the left. Climb across the route and you will be in front of the old – Mookambika temple.

We enquired for our stay and got a room for our self in the guest house. We dumped our luggage in the guest house and then had our lunch at the small hotel beside the temple. We were exhausted and went back to the GH to have a small nap before our evening sunset view. We slept for around 2 hours and decided to go to the peak, a 15min trek from the GH.

We set out from the guest house at 5:00 pm so we decided to go to the “Agathya Teertha” and then via the “Ganesh Guha” to the peak. “Agathya Teertha” is a small stream that originates in here. I think it is the sound of this stream that we hear when we are on the trek route from Mallu hotel to the Guest house. We picked some snaps of the stream and then continued on to the “Ganesha Guha”. We just did some prayers and then continued on to the peak. I think we were left with some half an hour before sunset. So we took some snaps of the surrounding and the “Sarvajnya Peetha”. We then went on to another smaller peak a bit closer to the western side; we find a communication tower here. We went over to the peak and then took some nice snaps… it was real good view – the sun setting into the sea, the birds flying to their destination, the wind blowing, all making it a memorable experience.

Once the sun set, we were on our way back. With our torches we reached the guest house in no time. We ordered the night dinner and then spent time chatting till it was ready. We were called once the dinner was ready, had our dinner and gave the order for the breakfast next day. All went on well and as planned the first day. No hiccups anywhere. We reclined in our room discussing the trek this far and the plans we had for the next day.

Some of us got up early to have the sunrise captured in our camera, others wanted more time to wake up from the bed, and their sweet sleep. Those who woke up for the sunrise I am sure would have seen the best sunrise in their life. The far off mountains, the sun sun appearing as if from a deep slumber slowly to do his days duty. The small stores of water that were visible here and there were visible even in low light. We viewed this sunrise from the main peak, and not many people actually turn up this far to view it. A neat clear sunrise and then we went back to wake those in deep slumber and get done with our breakfast.

All of us were ready, by 8:00 am and were on our trek. We had planned to visit Hitalmane falls, but unfortunately we lost the actual foot trail that would take us to the falls and ended up going on the mud road that the Jeeps use to get to the peak with some pilgrimages. When we started on this mud road we did not did not know what we were into. It would turn out later that this would be a flop in all means; still there was some excitement in this flop show.

Having missed the foot trail we decide to go try the mud road and then reach the base of the falls. We reach the village from where we could go to the base of the falls. The locals directed us to the route, but then we took a wrong turn at some point and then we landed up in front of a huge mountain. I don’t know what instincts in us provoked us to try climbing this mountain. For us amature trekkers this was almost like the vertical limit. We tried reaching as high as possible, we reached a point from were we could not go any further and retraced our self back. It was just for fun that we did it. We returned back and told the villagers about our route and they then told us that we had missed the route. We rested beside the stream for some time…ate the food that we had brought along and then continued our trek.

We resumed our trek along the road and after around 3 hrs we reached Nittoor. One thing that we learnt on the trek was not to ask the villagers how far is a place.. they invariable will tell it to be 1 mile or one km and you are stuck up if you believe they are right. You will have to understand that their concept of distance is all wrong, invariable wrong
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We then reached Nittor and had a nice lunch there. We spent some time discussing the experience; we decided to make a Jeep to take us to Kollur. It was around evening sunset time when we reached Kollur. We just visited the temple and then went to the bus stand where we were waiting for our bus to Bangalore…
Back we came to the same city, the same work, the lifestyle, the same boring routine…