Some trivia first. 'Honnemardu' is supposed to be a village submerged under the Linganmakki reservoir in Shimoga district. 14 of us got together (4 colleagues and other college buddies). We left for Thalaguppa (nearest bus link to Honnemardu) on Friday night at 9:30 and landed there at 5:30 in the morn. The journey was comfortable, except for the missing Glass window of the KSRTC bus and I was the one at the Window:( But, this gave me an opportunity to stare outside in much the same way I do while traveling by train !! I woke up at around 4:30 and the bus was already in the thick of 'Malnad' (translates to rain country). It was a bit cold and very much misty.

After having some hot tea at the roadside teashop, we set out to Honnemardu, which is some 12KM by road (you can hire a Jeep) and about 7 KM by foot. Since we chose to walk we needed to contact some local encyclopedias for directions. After walking for 3-4 KMs, we got a glimpse of the reservoir, and boy, its just toooo big (hope that produces the phonetic effect). In spite of the severe drought this year, there was enough water for us to enjoy :) (over 50sq. KMs of water).   Honnemardu camp is managed by a dedicated team of nature enthusiasts called 'Adventurers'. (The group had its office in Bangalore and to go to Honnemardu we needed to book our seats 2 weeks in advance). We met a guy called 'Muthu' there who would be our team leader (TL/PL?) for our stay there. Honnemardu is not a resort. It is just 2 small houses in the middle of the forest and nothing else except water and forest. You don't even have loos there.You literally/virtually live in the forest world (That's why I call it a place out of our worlds). After some quick breakfast, we got ready to enter the enticing waters. What came up over the next two days did not disappoint us.

Me too! Me too!

Action Time.

The reservoir is some 80KMx50KM and you can see water until your sight gets lost. The water is pretty clean and left virtually untouched. Nowhere will you find traces of human interference especially of plastic type of interference. After an initial 'how to use' session with life jackets, we were on our own swimming to a nearby island, of course with our jackets on. I had never ever realized the convenience/ importance of a life jacket until then. You can literally float without any effort and that was the reason for all our faces getting tanned. For some of the guys, it was the first time experience with swimming. After swimming for 2 hrs, we had a heavy lunch followed by sound sleep.   Evening time was 'Coracle' time. 'Coracle' is a big round tub like thing with seats. Two people row it and it was a good first time experience with a boat:) We went to a nearby tiny island for the night's stay. We pitched our tents, collected firewood, make the campfire, had food and chatted, sang, danced away to glory. After dark, we could see the beautiful lit Linganmakki Dam. It was a sight to watch (though our cameras could not capture it).

Next day morning we coracled back to the mainland. One more thing we learnt here was diving into water from a boat. It is always done backwards. We even tried out getting back into the boat after diving, with not much success. After the morning rituals, we got ready for a session of diving. I was excited here. Diving is what I like most in water. We tried all sorts of diving straight, deep, reverse, somersault, blah blah blah. Most of us ripped off our life jackets here and felt free. Some memorable were photos here. Muthu gave us lot of encouragement to the first timers here. We had group diving sessions too !!

Fun in the sun