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A PLACE FAR FROM BRUTAL CIVILIZATION

Day 1: 3/8/2003 – Sunday

            2245 hrs at the bustling Bangalore railway station where many dreamy eyes from far off places are seen setting their foot on Bangalore’s ground with new dreams about the always celebrated city of opportunities, we boarded the “Bangalore-Shimoga Express” to get rid of the mad Bangalore crowd, where one can hardly see anything apart from the maddening and sickening rush and hopelessly time stricken homo sapiens and at 2300 hrs the train started towards our 1^st destination (rather the 1^st checkpoint) Shimoga 260Kms.

             In the train we had a lot of good time making fun of each other, chatting, and each of us was looking forward to the rest of the trip, but we very well enjoyed the train journey itself, in the dark of midnight, we went to the doors of the train and peeked out and held our heads to the cool breeze and fresh air (which is quite next to impossible when you’re traveling with elderly people or your parents), which seldom does anybody experience in Bangalore. The train stopped at many stations and to see the activities of the railway stations late in the midnight is another different experience and as the train approached different cities, the lights of the city appeared like gem studded ornaments thrown by somebody out there on this planet. We had a nap for quiet a short time say 2 or 3 hrs, we were so excited, we hardly could sleep; apart from these, the journey was quite eventful.

 Day 2: 4/8/2003 – Monday

             At around 0445 hrs (0441 hrs) after a journey of about 5 hrs and 45mins, we reached Shimoga, we boarded off the train in the early hours and the railway station was not very busy at that hour, though there were people boarding on and off our train, but that apart not much activity as you’d see if you were to be in Bangalore railway station at the same time.

 We enquired about a railbus (click for historical importance of the railbus and more info on it) we had heard of, which would lead us to Talguppa town 82Kms from Shimoga. At the railway counter we found out that the railbus was scheduled to leave at around 0600 hrs and reached Talguppa at about 0930 hrs, we had almost an hour till the railbus left and we enquired about buses to Talguppa and found out that we had to go to Sagar if we did not get a direct bus to Talguppa and there board another bus to Talguppa, we thought and decided we would take the railbus though it traveled slow and reached Talguppa late, as we would save ourselves a lot of trouble not just having to catch 2 buses but also save a lot of money, since the ticket to Talguppa costed only 20Rs, and the bus journey may well have costed more than 40Rs, we had already spent 146Rs to travel from Bangalore to Shimoga and we were on a quite strict budget (may be we’ll try hitch hiking next time).

 Since we had an hour till the railbus left, we thought we would take a stroll outside the railway station and started to walk on the city main road, dimly lit by the street lamps, the air was not too chill for an early morning but was pleasant in its own way, the sleepy town with morning just about to graze was something that couldn’t for long keep our minds from thinking about food, while walking we thought it would be better to have something to eat packed for that unseen worst case scenario, but even as we walked for 10 – 15mins we found no hotel, not even those roadside carts, we thought we’d turn around and return to the railway station as we could see no hotels nearby, but while walking back, we saw a small cafe called “Mangala Upahar” which we had failed to notice walking down the road (the reason is too obvious, it was closed!) we went inside and some had tea and we packed hot idlis for the journey and had a bit there as well, the chutney was very spicy and the idlis were soft (now, at that hour even the stalest of foods would have tasted that better but this was not that way if you’re thinking so).

 We now hurried back to the railway station (of course we had to hurry we had not much time and weren’t planning to spend the rest of the day at Mangala Upahar just to have good idlis), it was around 0555hrs and we bought tickets to Talguppa and the person at the counter told us the railbus was about to leave and it was about to depart from platform 1, we ran with all our luggage and baggage and all the other ages we had, and as far as our eyes could see there was no railbus on platform 1 (none of us had any kind of eye defects, atleast not me), another person on the platform told us to go further down, but as we ran in a single breath and couldn’t see that railbus anywhere, at least I personally thought we had missed the railbus but to our relief the railbus was still there standing on another track in the shadow of another line of mail-cargo bogeys.

 Believe me when I tell you that the railbus is no bigger than a toy train you would find at cubbon park (it’s not even as lengthy as the toy rain), after we took a deep breath of relief after finding the railbus hadn’t left us, we started wondering if such a railbus commercially existed, the machine we saw had just 2 compartments one housing the engine as well, had an Ashok Leyland bus engine, like other buses, it had 4 gears, an accelerator peddle, a clutch peddle, a brake lever, the miniature train that had just 72 seats split in to 2 compartments and ran on meter gauge.

 As the railbus started to move we could feel the moving more predominant than the normal train and less than a bus (I presume), the railbus started plowing through the cultivated lands and widespread plains, the railbus had left the station at around 0605hrs and was scheduled to reach Talguppa at 0930hrs, while to travel the same distance a bus would have taken not more than 2hrs this railbus took almost 3hrs and 30mins as it could not to travel more than 40kmph, not that the engine didn’t support it’s just that the tracks weren’t that strong, but take my word for it when I tell you that we wished that the journey would have lasted long, the slow moving railbus gave us time to rejoice and relish the splendid beauty of the malnad region while at the same time taking us towards our destination.

 I spoke to a person sitting next to us about the railbus, this chap had boarded the railbus by stopping it in the mid way by holding out his hand as if it were a bus, this man a high school teacher told me that the railbus would make many stops before reaching Talguppa and when I told him about our trip to Honnemardu, he told me that it was the best place in and around Shimoga but the rainy season was not suited for our visit, he almost discouraged us, but we were undaunted and had planned to enjoy the trip anyway (for us even Gobi desert would be fine as long as it was not Bangalore), rain or no rain.

 As we watched the track we left behind we could see the forests thickening on both sides, as this railbus was taking us in a route far from the main roads and their traffic, we could feel the freshness in the air, that’s another reason why one should try this railbus, it took us amidst thick jungles and we could see peaks of mountains covered with mist and a slight drizzle here and there, we could see small streams in the woods, also small ponds formed by the rains, the greenery was just too much for us city broods, we were all finding superlative degrees to admire nature, but after just a few tries we would go silent, we could almost see nothing more than the greenery and the track. At around 0700hrs we reached the Kenchanaalu station, and the railbus stopped for a tea break there, we got down to enjoy the fresh air, the lush green serene surroundings, the joy our hearts felt after bearing all that Bangalore traffic, the engineering stress was just too much, we started off again, finished the still warm idlis, enjoying the journey. The ambience would suddenly change, from cultivated paddy fields to thick untamed rain forests, a small hut here, a cottage there, sometimes plains stretched so far that we had to peek out of the window, we made another stop at Anandapura at around 0830hrs, this station had a refreshment stall all covered by grass and the whole station was covered with flourishing green foliage, there were many other stations in between but these were the stations that specially drew our attentions, we then made at stop at Sagar at around 0845 hrs, we reached Talguppa station at around 0915hrs, the whole journey was an experience that we still were rejoicing, we had seen all shades of green that all our hi-fi 3d cards can hardly render.   

 When I tell you that the Talguppa station itself is an experience or a vacation spot I’m not exaggerating, this sleepy station was all covered in fresh green foliage, the grass everywhere was still moist, the ground was wet as it keeps drizzling all the time in those places, we booked our return tickets from the same station, we then walked to the so called “bus terminus”, the sleepy town of Talguppa is just one of those towns which grows on either sides of the main road, this town is a must visit before you can go to Honnemardu, Jog falls or other places in that direction.

 Near the bus terminus we hired a Tata trax to drop as at Honnemardu, the driver Mahesh would not budge to an amount less than 175Rs, which came to 35Rs per head, and as we started towards Honnemardu, about 13Kms away from Talguppa, we could see malnad rain forests thickening on each side, at one point I was reminded of Jim Corbett’s description of the forests of North-east India, the tar road had ended and we were driving on slippery, muddy tracks, we came across tiny villages, I’m still finding a better or tinier substitute for the word “tiny” as these villages contain not more than five or six houses and often just one, on the way to our destination we saw a fresh water stream, almost a mini water fall and we planned to come back to the stream once we reached Honnemardu, we were actually climbing a hill almost unknowingly, and as we could hardly suppress our emotions seeing the scenic surroundings, and the more close we drew towards our destination, the more exited we got, sometimes the road got so worse that no other vehicle (now don’t think about all those hummers or monster trucks, I’m just talking about those small segment cars) would have made it through (well we know the saying “try a little hard, heaven is further up”), after a journey of about quarter an hour at around 1000hrs we reached Honnemardu (Our question to what could be more beautiful than the railbus journey had been answered on the way by those breath taking scenic shots of nature just overwhelming the deepest of our imaginations and the wildest of our expectations).

 The trax stopped in front of the office cum house cum hotel cum everything (we shall call it the canteen, I have my own reasons to call it so which is at this moment irrelevant), Nayan (Mr. Discovery – as he was the kind of person who knew the place too well and well deserved to be showcased on the discovery channel) and Chandru (Mr. Suspense – as he would reply “suspense!” to each of our questions about what we would be doing there next or what the food was etc.) were waiting for us and greeted us, we were given keys to another hut kind of building (a dormitory kind of place, lets call it the mat house, just because there were many mats dried up there) just another 2mins walk from the canteen for us to dump our luggage.

 We went dumped our luggage, came back and were told to have a wash at a well next to the canteen, we went to have a wash and we saw frogs in the well but that wouldn’t matter as were just having a wash, but surprise, and shock all came at once when we got to know that we had to drink the same water for the next 2 days as people there used the same water for cooking and drinking, though the water was safe and pure, we all had a mental setback as we had seen frogs in the well, anyway we had dosas for breakfast, Mr. suspense made hot dosas and 5 hungry men hardly gave anytime for spare dosas, after a hearty breakfast we headed back to the mat house to get into our swimming costumes, I brushed my teeth (not all of us were very particular about brushing) got into shorts and a tee and we all got back to the canteen, we were given life jackets, each one of us were working out on making the life jackets fit exactly.

 Mr. Discovery took us to the waterfront of the Linganamakki reservoir /*Check out the sitemap of Honnemardu*/, through the path through the woods and we saw the hugest stretch of water in a reservoir we had ever seen, we were still wondering if what we were seeing was real, a reservoir that supposedly grew up to another 60Kms and as far as our eyes could see we could see water, the mammothness of nature left us spellbound, We were really thinking if we would really get into such a huge water mass, The reservoir was almost 1800ft when we were watching it (at the dam end not damn end), the water was calm unlike the ocean water and as we gave a rest to our WOWs and Ahhhs, we could see an island straight ahead at about 1km from us, it was a small heap like structure, it almost looked like a seashell, we named it kappechippu, the kannada word for a seashell, it looks so much like a seashell that even the people at Honnemardu had named it so, anyone who sees it will definitely think of the same (I’m not talking of those who lack the slightest of imaginations and cannot even try to imagine a seashell), this island had no huge plants or trees or any other kind of thick greenery but for some very small specks of grass and some small plants which were spread at pretty large distances, but from where we stood we could not see nothing more than a huge brown heap, to the right of this island was an island (camp island, why? Simple just because we would camp there that night) with thick greenery, basically it looked like a small rain forest (well it is), this was the place we were supposed to camp the coming night, to left of the kappechippu was the other bank which was as thick as the camp island and we could not, I repeat COULD NOT see the ground or even a speck of brown earth from where I stood on both these islands. There were some other very tiny islands which were about to submerge due to the rains in the coming days, the reason why these other little islands did not have greenery was that they submerge almost every monsoon, where as the other bigger islands have in fact not been submerged for a very long time, to make the whole thing simpler there’s a rough sketch of the place, its not accurate and not to scale but it gives a clear picture of the place.

The bank from which we entered water was pretty rough and rocky so one had to be careful not to tip over or slip over this terrain, as we entered the water and walked a few steps we were already in water till our chests and then on we could not feel nor touch the ground anymore and we were still floating (still because of the life jackets), the life jackets as their name clearly speaks are one of the marvels of human discoveries (or inventions whatever applies appropriately can be considered and the author does not wish to create copyright issues regarding this), in any given condition this life jacket doesn’t allow you to drown, no matter how hard you try, after a few moments we all gained confidence and were no longer, even in the remotest corners of our mind we were not slightly, lightly or vaguely in even those dark areas of the mind scared or hesitant about being in water which was atleast some 150ft (not that it makes any difference it makes if it’s 15ft or 150ft ‘coz anyway you’re going to drown and die if you don’t know how to swim even in 15ft, but it makes it easy to find your body afterwards).

The water wasn’t that clear as it is in the pools or in the oceans, in the reservoirs it doesn’t get much clearer but if it weren’t for the rains it would have been much clearer than it was now, and now the instructor whom we call Mr. Discovery told us to swim to the Kappechippu island, it doesn’t seem too far when you stand on the banks the same way you feel you can do those stunts shown on TV but only when you start swimming you realize even to swim 100ft you need a lot of practice and stamina and this island we are talking about is almost a km far, and as we all were in high spirits and decided to go for it (the spirits were so high we would have agreed to swim the English channel also), I was already exhausted when I made it to 1/4^th of the distance and was trying different types of swimming styles to make myself more comfortable and spends less energy, but as I was trying these and made my way to half of the distance or perhaps a bit more, My stamina I thought wouldn’t last long and thought that if I put my head into the water and try, may be it would feel easy and as I did so and started swimming I did not realize I was swimming in the opposite direction and after a while when I lifted my head up and saw I realized I was too close too the opposite shore, I did know that I couldn’t swim to the island after I had expended so much of energy and safely returned back to the shore. The others were also trying hard and I saw 2 of us reaching the island and the other 2 drifting to different sides as the wind had started making more than mild waves and then the others who did not reach the Kappechippu also started to make back for the shore and after a while even they reached the shore, the worst thing to happen when you are swimming is getting cramps which is quite unavoidable if you are out of practice of swimming for a long time.

As we returned to the main shore and rested our “Really tired” bodies our instructor took us on a Coracle and taught us how to coracle and all of us with Mr. Discovery and Mr. Suspense headed for Kappechippu, the important thing in a coracle is to maintain your direction as it is a circular piece of contraption (and does not really know where to go as all it’s sides are curved, it’s like trying to find a corner in a circular room). The first time we reached the Kappechippu coracling our elbows started paining as we were continuously rowing the coracle which had 7 people on it, this coracle a fiber make can accommodate 7 people at the most or may be in worst cases 8 (not to mention that the 8 I’m mentioning are quite rightly normal and do not have any abnormal growth as one might find with couch potatoes). After resting for a while on the Kappechippu we headed for the island where we were supposed camp the following night. We had shifted sides on the coracle; those of us rowing left were now rowing right, Mr. Suspense who was a pretty good singer was entertaining us on the coracle with his songs mostly Kannada and rarely Hindi (now please! we cannot expect rock music), his songs were really good, soft, subtle and suited the ambience well. In a huge stretch of water where there’s no single animal as far as your mortal eyes can see and there’s huge stretches of water on all sides, the sensation of incomparability of human life against that of nature is just out of this world. We made it to the camp island, rested for a while and did not go explore the island as we would do so in the evening when we were planning to camp there.

I decided to swim to the Kappechippu back as I hadn’t done so in the morning, I swam along with another friend and we both reached the Kappechippu and the others followed us in the Coracle, this time the swimming was pretty easy as I was strictly determined and would not allow any kind of wind deviate my path. And then we all coracled to the shore and were very tired as we had all swam on an average 2-3kms (depending on who went off the course too much) and coracled around 3-4km, all this time after we started to swim and we reached back the shore some 3-4hrs, we experienced mild spells of rain lasting for a short time and starting again after some time.

We now went back to the Canteen as I have been calling it and had our humble meal of rice, curry, papad and vegetables, the food was not particularly delicious but we were all tired and did not expect 5 star luxury (not that 5 star restaurants offer food fact, in fact they serve some of the planet’s horrible food) in the middle of a forest, we were lucky to get food which was not particularly bad. We finished our lunch at around 1530hrs, Mr. Discovery told us assemble back at the Canteen at about 1600hrs.

We all went to the mat house and most of us finished our daily duties which were pending for that day as we had not a moment to spare from the time we arrived there that morning, this place hasn’t got a proper toilet with water and the ones that they are building right now is without a door as of now and you’ll have to get your own bucket of water, so you’ll have to be ready to squat down in the woods infested with worms, insects, flies etc. etc. but that’s the way you have to turn your body, very non-fussy, ready to do these things as you are preparing yourself any kind of situations you may face on a trek to an uninhabited place or something similar in the not so distant future. We had let go of our cleanliness for our stay there (our cleanliness still lied bundled up in the banagalore railway station where we had left it), without a bath, without toilets etc. so squatting in the woods was not a really big issue.

It was already 1600hrs and we hadn’t rested for a while when we went to the canteen with our luggage to camp that night on the camp island, we were given tents and we carried our luggage along with the tents to the coracle, and in 2 coracles we rowed towards the camp island, all this time the rain had started to pace up and as we coracled the drizzle had stopped luckily otherwise we would have a wet tent to sleep (not that it was any better in the night but of that we’ll speak later), but for now another reason for joy was that we felt the coracling a lot easier as we were used to and without much strain reached the camp island and put our lifejackets we were wearing under the coracle which was left upside down on the banks (so that it would not drift away while we were sleeping), and picked up the luggage and the tent and started towards the campsite and as we started to move towards the heart of the island, the forest got thicker, this forest had no fauna but lot of insects and birds, though we never spotted birds ourselves we could hear them, the lush green, thick, unbridled, undomesticated rainforest was really a feast to our starved eyes which had not seen nothing but concrete and cement structures for a long time, after a walk of less than 5mins we reached the camp site, this campsite is a place about 100-200ft in radius and is clear of trees but for the lush green grass spread over as if it were a lawn, the greenery got a fresher look with the rain drops adhering to each leaf of a tree and each blade of grass.

We were taught how to pitch tents and we pitched 2 tents, there was already a bigger tent which was pitched before hand and we put our luggage in it, and left to collect firewood. As we trekked through the slippery paths and listened to the sounds of wood cracking and insects and birds making their own music, we reached the other end of the island where we could see the Linganamakki dam which is 3kms wide stretching in between 2 land areas and is the biggest dam in Karnataka the Sharavathi river across which it is built and on which we are having so much fun, does more than providing water for all the nearby towns and cities and villages, it’s also responsible for many hydroelectric projects along it’s course. Mr. Discovery picked out firewood from the trees as if it were kept in a cupboard, he knew the island too well and could spot whatever he needed as if it were his personal cupboard (I wouldn’t find things easily in my own personal cupboard that easily). After we picked up the firewood and placed it near our campsite, Mr. Discovery took us to an other end of the island from where the dam looked even better, night was closing on, it was already around 1830hrs and the we could see lights on the dam and the nearby villages the only places of civilization we could see from where we were sitting, it started to rain heavily as we sat there, but we were used to any kind of rain by now and did not bother.

After a while experiencing the silence and solitude on an island far from materialistic cities and towns we volunteered to go to the mainland to get our dinner and as we coracled on 2 coracles back to the mainland the night had started to thicken and from the coracle we could only see a silhouette of the mountain on the mainland due to the cities in the background raging with their Megawatts of light energy, all of a sudden there was a decrease in the amount  of light and it took a few seconds by the time we realized that the city behind the mountains had gone out of power, it’s lovely just to imagine yourself in the middle of a huge water mass in the night and hardly can you see anything except the water, trust me its something all the technology in the world can never give you, we had a tough time maintaining our direction in the dark waters as we could hardly see a thing the only way we could guide ourselves was seeing the bright colored boats on the mainland.

We reached the mainland picked up our dinner buckets and started to coracle back to the camp island it was already something like 2000hrs or so when we reached the campsite and spent another hour or so trying to learn to make a campfire in the rain and then were successful to a certain extent and then had our dinner on an uninhabited island with no electricity or any man made solid structure, the dinner was chapatis and a certain vegetable curry and some rice and curry. After dinner we headed back to our tents trying to make ourselves comfortable in the plastic house of ours, we were 3 in my tent and 2 in the other tent and Mr. Discovery slept in the big tent which housed our luggage, and in the middle of the night I woke up to find myself in almost a puddle of water, the tent was all dripping from the inside, as it was raining very heavily outside, all our bed sheets were drenched and after sometime we went to the bigger tent where Mr. Discovery was sleeping and found out that even that was pretty wet but somehow we all snuggled in the wet bed sheets and spent the rest of the night and well when I came back to Bangalore I was not shocked to find out that the night we spent in the tent was the night which had received the maximum rainfall in that monsoon season and the dam water level had risen by 2ft.

 Day 3: 5/8/2003 – Tuesday

             When we woke up it was already 0700hrs and we packed the tents finished our daily duties on the island, when we went alone on the island we had a lot of difficult getting back to the campsite as it was the thickest rainforest I had seen (Only by screaming loud to each other like some animal’s mating call could we find our way back). We now coracled back to the mainland in the morning; the wind was not blowing much and we easily got back

 At the canteen we had our breakfast of Puris and changed our clothes dried them in the mat house and we planned to trek down to the stream that we had seen while coming to Honnemardu to fetch water and spend sometime there we started our trek of about 4kms at around 1030hrs and while trekking down saw all those tiny villages with just one or two houses (I’m still finding the substitute to the word tiny and all your suggestions are welcome) at our own pace and on a small hillock to the left of the road where the grass had grown as if a lawn we placed stones and wrote “METALLICA” as a sign of our visit, it could still be there with nobody to disturb and after 45mins reached the mini waterfall and spent an hour there filling up the water bottles and very obviously having fun and at around 0100hrs reached the Canteen and by then another team of 3 arrived at the Canteen and went to the water front.

At the water front we were taught how to use a canoe and we started to canoe to a nearby land area, the difficult part is balancing a canoe and it can be really tough and scary as you can tip off and fall into the water, the fear is not of drowning as we all had lifejackets but bringing back the canoe, afterwards we headed to Kappechippu in the Canoe, 2 Canoes 5 people, Mr. Discovery was with the other team which had arrived that morning and was teaching them to coracle and we reached Kappechippu and swam there for some time, by that time the other team came to Kappechippu in their coracle, we all planned to reach the other bank which was pretty far on the canoe and the other team on their coracle, as we started to head towards the other bank the wind started to blow pretty roughly and we had a tough time balancing the canoes and we started to head back to the mainland, as we were making our way back to the mainland the wind started blowing pretty heavily and the waves started splashing against our canoes and for the first time on the entire trip all of us were a bit scared but finally we made it back and for the last time had fun in the water swimming taking pictures climbing the partly submerged trees. For a final time we bid farewell to the water and headed back to the canteen.

 We had our lunch of rice, curry, papad and vegetables and were supposed to get back to the Canteen at around 1630hrs and when we came back we had hot pakodas with tea and chatted with the Mr. Discovery and Mr. Suspense, we read the many articles they had collected about Honnemardu in various Newspapers and magazine and also many photographs, trust me that’s the only time we had rested our backs after coming to Honnemardu in the daytime. After the leisure we started to trek the mountain which was around 200ft from the base of the Honnemardu camp.

 As we trekked for some 5mins we found another small dormitory kind of structure with some 4-5rooms where the newly arrived team of 3 was staying and from there one of the 3 joined us to trek and as we started to trek we saw a mist covered mountain, pretty big it seemed from where we stood and I lost my breath when I heard we would be climbing to its top, as we started climbing the mountain the forest started to grow thick and we had to be careful of leeches, as we saw the path we left behind in the background of the reservoir and the islands we had been to, we were simply left without words for nature’s beauty is something that men from the beginning of the start of the commencement of the creation of human civilization have been trying to put in words and have never found enough words to describe nature (and henceforth the oxford dictionary is still building it’s database). As we reached the mist covered mountain we could hardly see a thing as we were in the middle of a huge cloud, it was already 1830hrs when we had finished resting on the top of the mountain and the mist was clearing and we got an aerial view of the place we had been to. We could see the dam much clearer and started to trek down, the place is so addictive you hardly feel like coming down, but as all good things must come to an end, we trekked down to the structure with 4-5rooms.

 Mr. Discovery left us there, telling us that we come from the other side as the path we trekked up was too slippery to get down and the 3 guys would show our way down, we spent an hour in the room chatting and as we had no torch or the sense of the route that we were supposed to take to get down we followed the 3 guys and as it was 2000hrs plus, it was pretty dark and the moon was shadowed by the thick clouds, its not required to remind you that rain had never stopped for more than 20mins all along our trip, and in the dark night with only one torch and 3 guys who had only been once on this path we were almost lost in the middle of a thick forest in the night without a single source of light than that of the torch, I really till now do not myself know if it was our sense of direction or our luck that got us back to the canteen, we were actually walking paths which had turned into running streams due to the rains.

 We reached the canteen at around 2045hrs and had the same dinner of chapatis and curry and then went back to our mat house, since it was raining pretty heavily we could harvest rainwater and fill our water bottles, this was done by the people there by tying a half cut bamboo to the end of the sloped roofs. When I came back to Bangalore and gave this water for examination the results told that it passed all tests for mineral water and could very well be bottled and sold without any processing, we took off our wet clothes draped ourselves in the dry clothes and made room to sleep drying our wet clothes in another adjoining room and we had a brilliant sleep as this was 7 star luxury compared to the previous night that we had spent on the island, needless to say all our body parts were paining, we had a heavy sleep.

Day 4: 6/8/2003 – Wednesday

             We woke up fresh in the morning got ready, packed our things and headed for the canteen had our breakfast of idlis and as we had earlier informed the trax driver Mr. Mahesh to arrive at 0930hrs that morning, he was there to pick us up, we bid farewell to both Mr. Discovery and Mr. Suspense and started off our journey towards Jog falls, though we were not still mentally prepared to leave Honnemardu we had to, we stopped near the mini waterfall filled up our bottles and headed to Jog falls on the well tarred roads which were washed in the rain and the contrast of the road with the lush green surroundings is an amazing thing to watch.

 We reached Jog falls at around 1100hrs the mist had covered the entire falls as we reached there, the rain still continuing, and as the mist uncovered and we saw the falls, the mammothness of nature and its beauty was yet to sink into our minds when somebody told us that a Youngman had slipped from the top of the falls and had died the previous evening. We got ourselves an Ambassador to take us near the top of the falls from where we could get a clearer look at the falls without the mist curtaining them, as we reached the top, which is next to the Instructor’s Bungalow we saw the friends of the guy who had died the previous day, the search for the body was still continuing, and hearing their story and seeing their faces which had seen a death, nature’s beauty was masked by its other death defying face, it took some time for this feeling to sink in, since we had gone in the monsoon we could see many small falls apart from the most famous huge Raja, Roarer, Rocket, Rani we could see another one called Mavinsoppe falls, all these plunging down from a 1000ft make your heart skip a beat, I won’t explain much about the water falls as it is a world famous tourist destination and there are a lot of articles available about it, then we saw a hydroelectric power station whose name I don’t remember, then we came back and had a so called lunch at hotel Mayura.

 It was around 1300hrs then and we were deciding on whether to climb down the falls but rain was too heavy, the highest in that season and we caught the next available bus to Talguppa at around 0145hrs and as we traveled to Talguppa along the route passing through many small villages grazing on the hills and watching the activities of the people their, who live their lives in such beauty, I got really pretty jealous, after traveling for about an hour and a half we reached the sleepy town of Talguppa, we headed for the railway station, the rain had never stopped and the town looked more beautiful in the rain than otherwise (we still were cursing the moron who had disheartened us on the railbus, that nutcase high school teacher), as we went to the railway station it was 1500hrs and the mini railbus was still standing on the tracks, the funny part being it was tied to the railway track by iron chain. We had the snacks we had got from Bangalore, and as we had almost three and a half hrs for the train to leave (we had already booked tickets to Bangalore from the Talguppa station).

 We then wandered in around the town for some time and got back to the railway station which itself is a tourist destination in itself, we spent some more time in the sleepy railway station and at around 1800hrs another co-driver of the railbus taught us more about this railbus, we went into the engine room saw the Ashok Leyland engine and the clutch, gear, accelerator and brake levers, we also learnt about brakes and brake pressure and at 1830hrs the railbus left the station and headed back to Shimoga on the same track it had come, though the route was same.

 In the evening we had different experience all together and by now my throat was out of commission for having shouted in the water mass and drinking the chill water and everybody had a good time guessing my hand gestures, we also had a good time playing a round of Dumb charades, me enacting the movies and others guessing. We got back to Shimoga at around 2200hrs, we were all very hungry and me and another friend went to a nearby hotel and packed rotis and gravy and got back to the train and as the train left we had our dinner messing up the whole cabin. We made friends with the TTE (Travel Ticket Examiner) Mr.Babu of the cabin and he shared his experience, after about 2 or 3 stops the driver of the train Mr. Paneesh who had been relieved by another joined us and as all the rest slept he told me a lot about the working of the train and we chatted till the morning without even getting a nap for 5 mins, I do not regret not sleeping as I made up for it the next 2 days only sleeping, but the information he gave couldn’t be made for.

 Day 5: 7/8/2003 – Thursday

             We reached Bangalore in the early hours at around 1700hrs and 5 days had passed very quickly and our trip had ended and we all landed in our respective beds for the rest of the day.

             I learnt on this trip that we had let so much beauty go unnoticed and there’s so much more to watch out for and many places of immense natural beauty await and also as we met a variety of people ranging from a small kid in Talguppa station to the train driver we had met a lot of people and known a lot about various professions and different lifestyles, this is one journey which shall stay very close to the heart which seeketh beauty.             

-Signing off
amogh
 

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