Trek to Yedukumeri

Hi frens..

I’m back… I’m really back… I’m back in 2005 :) this is an account of a trek that I’d been on in the August of 2005. This is a longish post… It was a memorable trek and I really hope it interests you too.

Here it goes…

It was time for the trek next for the guys at Gignext. It was decided that this time, it would be a trek to Yedukumeri.

Yedukumeri is a small railway station on the Bangalore – Mangalore rail road. The track has been not in operation for more than a decade, thanks to the plan of converting the narrow gauge to broad gauge rail. I never knew it takes so long for this task. What ever the reason, it nonetheless gave an excellent opportunity for walkers and hikers to walk on the abandoned railway tracks and enjoy the natural beauty of the Ghats. Most people started the trek from Sakleshpur and walked all the way on the railway track to Kukke Subhramanya. We thought that was a good idea and decided to do the same.

19th Aug 2005 – In the evening, I joined Vetrivel (Vetri) and Sharath at Vetri’s place. We started in Vetri’s car to Girisha’s house in Rajarajeshwari nagar. Rajaram also joined in and we picked up Krishna and set out on the Tumkur road at around 12 midnight in Girisha’s beast, Scorpio. The road was good and the driver, Girisha was excellent, getting his beast to roar and cruise at high speeds into the dark night.

We reached the Kamat hotel, Channraipattana at around 2 in the morning. We parked the vehicle, got down, freshened up and had some thing to eat and drank some hot tea. It was monsoon and the rain was coming down but luckily not so heavily. We had a small walk around the hotel, spent some time discussing about the plan we had for the next day.
Got into the Scorpio and set out towards Sakleshpur, which is not too far from the hotel.

The plan was to visit one of Sharath’s friends’ place in Sakleshpur for the early morning chores, have some breakfast and keep our excess luggage in their house before we start the walk. We reached Sakleshpur well before the expected time. Decided to park the vehicle on the side of a silent street and doze off until 6 in the morning. At six, we started and reached the friend’s place. Got down and done with the important morning chores, placed the stuff that we are not going to require during the walk at their house. There was a brief talk of how it’s been raining for the past few days, making it not so good a time for this walk. But we had made up our mind and certainly there was no turning back. The friend then drove us in his vehicle to the spot from where we need to get on to the railway track.

There it was, our trek on the railway track, my first ever in fact has begun…. Sharath had done it couple of times earlier and hence naturally was the guy in charge. We started the walk with the essentials in our back pack. The back pack contained some important stuff - Since we knew it was long journey on mostly deserted railway track, we had carried MTR’s ready to eat packets of food for lunch, dinner and the next day’s breakfast. We also carried rain jackets as we had decided to do this in the monsoon season.

It was wonderful, within minutes from the start of our walk, we were well into the forest. Not a soul in sight, it was just us and the railway track in the midst of the forest. The air was so clean and view was so good, occasionally took a break to enjoy the beautiful views. There were numerous little water falls along the way. We stopped by one of them, which was slightly bigger. Decided to have a shower… it was such a refreshing feeling. After the natural shower, continued our walk.

There are number of bridges on the way. I must say, it was an amazing experience to walk on the railway bridges with slippery rails, nothing to hold on to, old wooden planks lay at a distance of a foot from each other. The water flowed in the streams below with great speeds. With the eyes down on the bridge while walking, the sight from between the wooden planks of the water flowing in the stream below made our heads go dizzy adding some spice to the task and making it a little difficult. Some of them decided to take the four limbed approach of our ancestors.

When we thought we had identified ways to negotiate the slippery bridges, our next challenge was in front of us… the long winding tunnels, pitch dark with no lights. We were ready for it…. But as we entered the tunnel, we realized its not gonna be so easy…. The tunnel had a lot of loose wet sand… cannot walk unless we walk in balance on the rails… and there you go.. the torches we carried decided to ditch us.. the tunnel had a thousand bats flyin and they had done everything to make sure the tunnel was sticking. But, we did it… walked in the tunnel filled with loose sand, dark, heavy with the stink, we did it by walkin on the rails with great balance. We were all proud of us once we were out of it.

We were now experts with slippery bridge crossing and the dark tunnel cruising…. No, that was not all… the trek wouldn’t have been interesting enough but for these adventures and the ones that we were about to encounter. Since it had been rain for days together, there were landslides all around. On our walk till now, we did not really face any issues because of that. But now, what do we see in front of us ?? there’s been a huge land slide.. large enough for even the heavy and strong rails to be cut and bent and it is full of wet loose sand for the next half a kilometers or so. There is no option but to walk in the loose sand. We start and our feet feel the submerged rail track. Now again we start the balancing act and try to walk on the rail, only this time, we do not exactly know where it is… we have to put our leg into the mud and then feel with our foot for the track and move forward. There indeed were a couple of incidents when some of us got stuck in the mud and every move to get out was pushing us a li’l deeper. But we were fortunate and some how managed to wriggle out and march forward with heads held high and eyes slightly squinted to see what lies ahead next.

The journey after the sand and mud scene was not that tough, we kept walkin. It was close to 5:30 in the evening and after an adventurous and tiring walk of 16 kms, we were very close to our destination for the evening and night, the abandoned railway station at Yedukumeri. What a feeling it was….. not sure if I can put it in words…

We reached the railway station, there was some construction work by Indian Railways planned in the near future and hence there was some raw materials piled up. We were greeted at the station by two skinny little guys who were the watch men, living there to guard of the raw materials. Interesting to know that they actually think somebody is gonna all the way walking on the track to steal the stuff. The watchmen lived in one of the many abandoned Railway quarters near by. We dumped our backpacks on the platform and walked around a little to enjoy the monsoon evening in the jungle. Sat down by finding a clean place and then, dozed off for an hour.

It was around 7 when the watchmen prepared sweet tea and some onion pakodas for us. Felt so nice to have the hot tea and pakodas. We sat around and discussed our plans for the next day. We were warned by the watchmen that it is not advisable to take the railway track till Kukke Subhramanya as the bridges would be more slippery than the ones we had experienced and also the path would be dangerous at that point of time since it has been raining heavily for a long time. We discussed for some more time and decided not to go ahead with the trek towards Subhramanya. It was time for dinner, we opened the MTR ready to eat, heated them and finished it in no time.

The next task was to find a decent place to spend our night. Of all the places, the one that looked the best was the railway platform. Said yes, spread out the sheets, went to sleep. With in half an hour we felt something falling on us.. oh God, how could we forget… it was monsoon and it was bound to rain.. and rain it did…. slowly at first and then furiously. We had already picked up our stuff and taken shelter in an abandoned railway quarter. One of us suggested we spend the night in the railway quarter itself, we did a small survey and decided upon a room that looked the cleanest of them (hmmm yeah, clean as clean can be when a room hasn’t been used for years). Again, spread the sheets and went to sleep. I pulled another sheet over and packed myself in it, gave me a little bit of comfort. Not sure how, perhaps due to the tiredness and fatigue we all drifted into deep sleep even in such a surrounding. Were woken up in between a couple of times by some sounds, we decided to ignore and continue to sleep. It was morning again, we opened our eyes and checked out the room and the railway quarter…. I said to myself, never again will I want to even step into such a place…. It was filthy is all I will say, will not go into the details of the different variety of filth that was happily living in that apartment. Oh, and that sound in the night… it was rats munching on and finishing off our supply of breakfast.. the MTR ready to eat !!! so no breakfast for today..

Had some tea, posed for snaps with the watchmen, thanked them, bade them goodbye and then carried on our walk. It was decided that we would walk back route we had taken for a couple of kilometers and then take the hill. Five kilometers’ trek on the hill would take us to a village from where, would get catch a bus back to Sakleshpur. So, after a couple of kilometers on the railway track, we identified the spot where we would have to start the hike on the hill. We took the route and started the trek. It was certainly a tough and tiring job. Within minutes of walk, we realized something. We cannot stand still at one point for more than even a few seconds… coz if we did, we would have leaches all over our legs. Eeek these small, thin, wormy creatures, my first brush with them…. We had hundreds of them climbing on us. The more experienced guys handled them well, were ready with salt to get the leaches out of their hold on our skin. It was my first experience with them and I learned to take it easy too.

We kept trekking up hill and then suddenly were faced with the fact that we have actually lost our way in the jungle!!! We were tensed.. it’s getting late, we need to identify the way out.. we kept going around for around an hour before Sharath found out that the way out was concealed by a tree that had freshly fallen probably in the rains last night. We all thanked God, breathed easy and started the walk again… crossed lovely little streams, took regular breaks as we were all certainly tired, drank the clear water running in the stream when we felt thirsty…. I must admit the water in those clear streams tasted so pure and so fresh and sweet. After walking in the jungle up the hill for five kilometers and hours together, we finally saw some humans…. Happy or what ???? We asked for directions and headed towards civilization and automobiles !!! There we were…. Mission accomplished !!! We had completed the walk that we had planned for… though there was slight change of plans, we had made it! Safe and in one piece with a few scratches and bites and probably a couple of kilos lighter .

We boarded a private bus and were on our way to Sakleshpur. No…. the excitement is not over yet. When we were sitting in the bus and discussing the trek, suddenly couple of us felt funny inside our shoes. We removed then only to find a few of those bloody leaches hanging to our feet. I couldn’t believe my eyes, they had sucked so much of blood that they probably had grown 10 times their regular size… I just ripped them off my legs, some of my skin too came off with the leaches. Then again checked out to made sure we do not have any more of them on us. Most people in the bus were lookin at us and I guess were enjoyin what they were seeing. Then suddenly the bus stopped…. The conductor announced “ok, some of you get down and push the bus up the hill” he said that’s the only way to get the bus to start again. Damn !!! I’ve never been through so much adventure in just 2 days… Got down and pushed the bus for a couple of meters and then gave up, we were not even able to walk properly…. A couple of old senior citizen fellows who were walkin very fast and were eager to push the bus gave us “what the hell?” kind of look… we politely smiled back and jumped into the bus and on to our seats when the bus roared again.

Reached the Sakleshpur bus stand… lookin like people who’ve been just run over by a train…. shoes and clothes muddy and soiled, we were tired to hilt. It was another challenge to walk through those thick stares of people thinking “what’s wrong with them?”, “where are they from?” and get out of the bus stand and reach the frend’s house. We did that and yeah, we could almost be sure that the adventure is over…. But no it wasn’t… there was one last adventure…. Taking bath and cleaning ourselves off all that we had been through :)

After the getting fresh and havin something to eat, we wished farewell to our friend and thanked them for everything.

Back in the Scorpio and towards Bangalore !!!

It was one of the most adventurous trips I’d ever had been on and probably would remain so for a long time. I was happy to be back home and see all my family and frens. Thanks to the wonderful Gignext gang, because of whom I got a chance to experience this trip. This is something I will not forget in a hurry!!!

Adios amigos, until I’m back again… yeah back to the future :)