Where the rails lead

Trek to Sakleshpur

December 2005

SAKLESPUR TREK

Trek route- Bangalore-Donigal-Yedukumari-Saklespur-Hassan-Bangalore

It was a Thursday night and the initiator of this trek (Chaitanya) was almost final on going somewhere on a trek...alone if he had to. Well, he didn't keep this intention to himself and three of us joined...we decided to go the very next day...we had planned absolutely nothing right from the place details to travel to terrain..not to worry...adrenalin comes to rescue to anyone in need...so with all our enthusiasms pumped up...we found out quite an amount of information from the net..some of which later proved to be counter factual in our case. We also talked to a former trekker to the same place a few months earlier. So then armed with a 'wealth' of information we planned to take a bus from Bangalore to Mangalore and get down on the way at Saklespur..as it turned out our gulte friend here(Chaitanya) used his 'skills' to talk to the driver( who happened to be a gulte too..).The result of such an exercise was that we were dropped off on the highway at 430am..the driver said that he was dropping us right at the tracks and we could start the trek from there itself.

Not to mention the rigorous and on the spot thoughts on survival strategies to battle the cold and also the natural inhabitants of the nearby forests, we decided to wait in a clearing near the tracks until dawn to preserve our torch batteries and collect our composure for the trek ahead. Come dawn, we started walking on the tracks..well at first it wasn't much difficult, and we were getting used to the sound of gravel stones crushing each other as we stepped on them. Our first meal of the day was at around 830am. We had been quite well prepared, considering the fact that we planned the trip in the eleventh hour. To mention a few items, we had bread, jam, noodles (we had devised strategies as to how we would light a fire if needed and boil water for the noodles..) apples, MTR pongal(cooked), cakes etc. Well, as it is said, Discovery comes to the prepared mind, since we were 'prepared' to boil water if necessary, we soon 'discovered' and came across a worker lady (construction was going on the tracks in converting them from meter gauge to broad gauge. And the construction workers were a welcome presence.) who boiled water for us..:-)

To come back to the purpose of the trip, which is to trek, we walked for nearly 7-8 kms before we encountered the first bridge followed by the first tunnel( of course!) Well, nature believes in going from simple to complex and rightly, the bridges and tunnels were short to begin with and got longer., which means we would have acquired more mental toughness in tune with nature, some of the bridges were very long..there are a couple of aspects about these bridges..one if they are above a flowing river, they are more scarier than they should be, because though all bridges do not have any other support for the rails apart from the sleepers and the vertical supports of course, when you look down a bridge above a flowing river..it scares the hell out of you as you walk..the bridge seems to move in the opposite direction and faster( here comes the concept of relative velocity)..so the idea is to just concentrate on stepping on the sleepers. That's just a disclaimer. Well, not all bridges were precarious, and we had our own share of fun by crossing over first and watching a second group of trekkers trying to cross the bridges. The walk through the tunnels were rather uneventful though, not encountering as many bats as we supposed, probably because of human activity.

By 1130am ,we had covered around 10km and crossed 14 bridges and 7 tunnels..The longest tunnel on this route was 572m. It was time for refueling ourselves .

Just to describe the route, we encountered plenty of streams, many down the hill and below bridges..One literally runs out of words to describe the richness and verdure of the evergreen vegetation and that was numinous in many ways that such scenic beauty is no coincidence.

We were no longer walking pari-passu..we had slowed down as per the predictions of our predecessors..We had reached the 17th bridge by 1.45pm..Then the real adventure for us started..the three guys started climbing down the hill, following the crevices made by the rain water and towards the sound of a gushing stream...I decided against such bold initiatives and thought of crossing the bridge and waiting on the other side. The guys would describe their adventure down there better. As for my part, I slipped between two sleepers and got stuck within a steel bar. In that fraction of a second I had no idea which world I was in and thanked God(again, nature proving its numinous trait) that I was still on the bridge. My only fear was that I would end up with a twisted ankle, and thankfully through a series of adjustments and maneuvers of my corporeal existence I heaved myself on to the bridge and sincerely thanked the Almighty for allowing me to slip in the presence of the steel bar between the sleepers. All said and done, we were together again after about half an hour. Less shaken than a half hour earlier, I had recovered and regained my courage to continue the trek afresh.

The rest of the walk, including us taking a ride to Yedukumari railway station for about 1.5 km s, was rather uneventful and peaceful.

On reaching Yedukumari station at about 4.30pm, we learnt that we were already late in starting for the river...Well here my 'tam' skills came a bit handy although ironically the guy preferred to talk in broken English! Maybe I shouldn't be surprised as he would have been alarmed at my command of the language! After a bit of rustle-tussle of yeses and noes, we finally decided to take the risk of crossing the river, of course with a guide ( we paid him 200Rs.). It was a 3-4 kms downhill descent and was supposed to be covered in an hour, as the river height increases faster as dusk approaches and one could not tell when they would release water from the nearby dam. The next leg of our adventure starts here..The path was infested with leeches and I would be understating their presence otherwise.. they were everywhere, under dry leaves, stones, puddles and even on plants..for the duration in which we were to reach the banks of the river, who had the time to use salt,tobacco or fire to ward off these leeches..we stopped every now and then and removed them ,I mean pulling them off by hand. Well, they are tough blood suckers and man can learn a couple of things about how they attach themselves to the skin like vacuum pads...it is quite an ordeal to pull them off and at the same time ensure that you do not stop for very long at a spot as they swiftly climb onto the shoes and make their way under your pants.. to end the horror story with a horror note, we found the water to be not so shallow as we thought..it was shoulder deep..and that meant getting wet almost completely. No time to waste and think and not forgetting to mention the helpful people who were on the other banks, and carried our bags dry to the other side, we took quite an amount of time (actually half the time we had taken to come downhill,which was about an hour) to cross the ~150m wide river.

Thanking our stars for reaching the other side safely, getting onto the highway meant only another 100m or so. The adventure does not end here..in all the hurry we didn't have time to check for leeches completely..we had to wait till we reached Saklespur. We took a lift in a lorry along with the blood suckers( climbing onto the seat was another ordeal for me) on the highway at about 7.00pm and reached Saklespur at around 8.00pm. After a thorough search for the forest blood suckers (two of us, Sagar and myself) and horrified to find still a few of these parasitic organisms drinking away our circulation fluid and of course deposing them from our bodies, we boarded a bus to Hassan at about 11.30pm, and another bus to Bangalore. We were back at the base by around 3.00am. Tired and weary from the turmoils of the day, there was nothing else to do except head straight for one's abode of peace, namely the bed.

JAYASHREE

I just wanted to describe how it was when we went down to take a bath in the river that was flowing. We were walking behind Sagar and Bhaskar. We just crossed another bridge and I was wondering where we lost them. Just then I heard Sagar calling from somewhere below the bridge. He was asking me also to come down to take bath. There was no way to go down except for the crevice made in the sand by running water flowing into the river. If you slipped there was only one way. Roll down into the river. If I was left to me I wouldn't take the risk of going down to the river. But already Bhaskar was on his way down to the river. Sagar was following Bhaskar. Then I also decided to go down and this is when the incident described by Jayash above happened where her leg got stuck in the rails. Finally when I was ready to go down Bhaskar was already down in the river. Now I had the confidence that if Bhaskar could do it, I can also do it. I hurt my hand sometime during the decent. Finally I reached the river. It was breathtaking. The river was gushing down the slope at full speed. It was actually a bit risky to go into the water. Any we went in and had nice bath. And now was the time for photographs. Fortunately I was carrying the camera with me while going down. Bhaskar took a few shots with me and Sagar in the water. Then I came out and took one shot and then when I was trying to take another shot the camera froze. I was wondering what happened. I was really worried that water would have got in(and the camera was Jayash's and not mine). Luckily we loaded another role and the camera was working again.

Chaitanya.