Dabbe falls trek

Chethan as usual called up, a day before the commencement of this trek, to cancel his tickets. We knew that the vacillating mood of Chethan was always going to come to rest, on this time and tested decision so we were not surprised (Except for maybe Pramod who booked the tickets :)).

Shimoga express was scheduled to leave Bangalore city junction at 11:40 pm, I arrived at the station quite ahead of time, and found Praveen sentinelling the gates. The others took their time in coming and finally when they reached the station they barged in towards the platforms without waiting or calling us up. After a lot of thought I attributed this discourtesy to maybe the traumatic incidents of Mumbai, everyone was scared to spend time waiting in the station and become sitting ducks. Our bogey was fixed next to the engine so I had my fill of the trains whistles and chuggings, enough to drive out any lingering nostalgia about them.

The next day mornings event set the pace for the trek, The train had long stopped at Shimoga station, almost all the passengers had got down but many in our group were still pleasantly slumbering, including myself. Only after Pradeepa frantically confirmed that this was indeed Shimoga town and not some outer station, that we got into action. But by the time we had packed our things, the train had started moving, A mental picture of a hike from some railway godown was in everyone's mind, but luckily the train parked itself on the next track and we had to jump across one track to reach the platform.

Shimoga station resembled Sholay's Rampur station to the tee, there was total sanaata(silence) around. The railway station is located at around 4-5 Km from the City bus stand, but instead of Basanthi we had to make do with auto rickshaw guys. We boarded a rickety government bus to Sagar from the bus stand and reached Sagar in good time. After a sumptuous breakfast of Idly vada and Palav, we decided to give a thought for our destination. After some enquiry we boarded a bus going towards Jog and got down at a place called Kargal which is about 20 Km from Sagar. Here started the round conference discussion's with the Taxi guys, Our representatives being Pramod and Pavan. After a successful round of negotiations, the vehicle was produced before us only for us to find that we were to be herded like animals as there were no back seats in it. Instead we decided to wait for the Bus which was due in 15 minutes. The Bus going towards Batkal finally dropped us at Hosagade and the time was 12:15 in the afternoon.
The trek route started off with a jeep track but soon after we were at the mercy of the villagers for directions. The path has many forks, deviations and runs through many peoples farms and even across small streams. Once near any house, Satish(Being a native of this region) sported his hoi-hoi call to get the people out of their homes to show us directions. People were very friendly and helpful and some even came down with us for some distance to make sure we take the right paths. A check dam built on a small rivulet was a wonderful spot.

Finally after two hours of trek or rather walk through semi forested terrain we reached Manjiah Gowda's house, also popularly known as Dabbe manne. Here we unloaded our baggages and went for the falls, The path towards the falls is a very steep climb down, In most of the places the incline is close to 70-80 degrees. Only with the support of the overhanging branches and protruding tree roots it was possible for us to reach the bottom. It took us more than 1 hour to make it to the base.

The Water fall was a fantastic sight to behold, It was majestically falling off the mountain side all alone in the wild but having a lot of pride in it. I made a dash at the inviting water and was under the whipping water of the falls in no time.

The moment was one of exhilarating action, Sitting under a water falls is altogether a different adventure in itself. After the play and frolic we climbed back, the climb back was much faster, it took us around 40 minutes. Again by the time we had finished a fulfilling lunch of Bullet Rice and Sambar at Dabbe Manne , It was already 5:40, Our plans of trekking to Kanoor kote's doctors house which was some 8 Km from dabbe manne looked not feasible, that too without a guide. We then decided to trek to a house, 4 Km from this place, who had an Omni for hire to take us back to Sagar.

The next day we hired a Qualis and spent our time in visiting a couple of waterfalls, more about this in a later post.