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A trek to Tadiandamol [08-Jan to 09-Jan, 2005]
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Team :
![Move Mouse over the persons Name to see the Photograph]()
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Dates : 08-Jan and 09-Jan,
2005
Location : Tadiandamol, Coorg, Karnataka
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Background:
There have been various
inspirations for other trips. But this is one is odd. The real
reason this trip was planned was to use the Tent that Yashpal
had brought from China 18 months ago. Well, for a 2 member squad,
not much preparation is needed. We got all groceries that we
liked. Yashpal booked the tickets well in advance and we were
all set to go. The bus was for 11:59 and the journey took around
6 hours and 15 minutes. We reached the Virajpet bus stand at
around 6:15 AM on 8th January. The KSRTC bus-stand has a decent
toilet... for those who are more health conscious, there are
many hotels around that which can be used to freshen up. The
bus journey was not all that comfortable. But the clear air,
twilight environment made us forget all that. The moon was still
visible against a clear blue sky lit by dim light of the rising
sun... Why don't I get up early every day to see this? After
finishing morning chores, we went to the local bus stand which
is about 100 meters up the hill behind this bus-stand.
Travel Information: The tickets can be booked to Virajpet
at any KSRTC reservation counter. A Rajahamsa ticket costs Rs167/-
and the journey is 6 hours long. So plan accordingly and not
to reach Virajpet at unearthly hours.
The local bus-stand is lined with many shops and doubles up
as a busy market place. We had quick breakfast at "Blue Bell
Coffee Tea Bar". I recommend khara-bath and a hot cup of tea
here. Anything else can not be proven to be fresh. We learnt
that there was a bus to Nakoplu at 6:50... But we did not want
to hurry. More so when we heard that there was another bus at
7:30. After breakfast, we bought fruits and cucumber from the
local stores... We may be in Coorg... but oranges are not cheaper
here. One word of caution... buses never run on time here. 7:30
easily can mean 8:00... In our case, the bus never came... and
at around 8:15 the next bus came and we got in.
Travel Information: From Virajpet, we have to take bus
that goes towards Nakoplu. We have to get down at Kaikamba.
This comes after a place called Kabbinakaadu which is the stop
for people going to Honey Valley. The fare is Rs13/- |
The walk to Nalknad
Palace:
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The board
at the Kaikamba bus-stand says that the palace is 3 Kms from
there. It is a easy jeep track till the palace. The place has
become increasingly commercial with many coffee estates also
serving as home stay resorts. Clearly India is becoming a favorite
destination for tourists world wide. Added to this, locals get
an additional source of income and serves as insurance against
their principle vocation which is growing coffee. Kings Cottage,
Mist Woods, Palace Estate and so on... Finally we reach the
Nalknad Palace. There is a shop at the end of the road which
has direction to Palace, the Tadiandamol peak and the palace
estate. But disappointment awaited us since the palace was under
repair. For good or bad, somebody thought of repairing the so
called palace. I had seen pictures of the palace earlier and
it was in real bad shape. There are enough boards requesting
trekkers not to stay at the *palace* over night... but hardly
any body listens.
Next to the palace is a small school for about 50 students.
We saw only one teacher... the guy who is playing hockey with
the kids. No matter how poor a government school looks to be,
it will always have a flag post to hoist the national flag on
special days. |
| Rural Hockey in
India |
Its both
a matter of pride to see such symbolism present in every corner
of the country and pain to see the plight of such schools. Elementary
education does make or break a child's outlook towards education.
Principles of Mathematics is taught there... which is critical
to any branch of Science or logic. In spite of being in such
a pathetic state, Indians are still considered best when it
comes to average arithmetic knowledge.
Starting from the palace, the jeep track becomes a well tarred
road built and maintained as part of "Pradhan mantri graam sadak
Yogana" (Prime minister's village Road Plan). The climb is steep
but not tiring. May be it is because of the pure air we breath
or just excitement, we never felt tired even though the walk
was much tougher than climbing 10s of floors by stairs. The
road winds along through many coffee estates and after about
2 Kms, terminates into a muddy jeep track. Some more distance
on the jeep track brought us to a fork in the road. I seems,
the fork was not there when Yashpal came here the last time...
So we did not know which one to take. BTW, there is a little
bit of history. Nobody I know has climbed Tadiandamol the first
time they attempted... every body ran into problems... some
serious and some trivial. My previous attempt was foiled by
a riot at Virajpet and hence could not proceed. Yashpal's earlier
attempted was thwarted by 2 people who abandoned the mission
after being afraid of leeches... I know that Hari also had some
problems when he tried for the first time... |
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| Pleasant rays of
Sun |
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The fork
in the road was the place where Pranjal hurt his foot last time...
only there was no fork then. I went about 500 mts along the
upper arm of the fork... unfortunately, it was turning away
from what we perceived as Tadiandamol peak. Hence we decided
that it must not be the route to be taken. We went along the
lower arm. A few meters ahead there was another fork... But
there was a house too... the guy in the house told us to go
on the upper fork this time and we would get a stream, a barbed
fence and an open ground ... and then, the earlier road would
join us. We were very happy to learn that we were on the right
track and proceeded eagerly on the told route. We reached the
stream very quickly and granted ourselves the concession of
having a break... We ate the Oranges (or Chinos as Yashpal pointed
out the difference) and resumed our journey. We even crossed
the barbed wire and reached the open ground (left Photo) from
where we could see Tadiandamol clearly.
But beyond that the route was very unclear. There were many
trails that were leading out from the ground. We just guessed
that the one leaving in the direction of the peak must be the
right one and just got going. Were were encouraged by the presence
of a traceable path... but at the same time concerned since
there was a lot of undergrowth around it as if it had not been
used for a long time... Once in a while we would see chopped
would, which is a sure shot sign of human movement... But after
a lot of walking by the side of a fence, we reached a point
where we were surrounded by 3 sides by the fence and the only
other way was the way we came in... The path we followed was
for a small shelter to store wood used to make fences... This
meant we were totally lost. The path continued in the same direction
on the other side of the fence. We decided to go against an
earlier advice in some travelogue which warned not to cross
any fences lest we wander into someone's property. A few more
anxious moments and making way through the jungle, Yashpal recognized
some huge rock over which they had taken rest last time. After
the rock, the jungle suddenly ended - so did any path. |
| First look at the
Tadiandamol |
After getting
out of the jungle, we had no idea which direction to go. We
had a mountain ahead of us, and to out left at a distance was
Tadiandamol. We decided to climb that mountain to get a better
view as to where were we... geographically. The size of the
mountain was very deceptive. We kept climbing... and it seemed
as thought it was growing in height all the while... We were
not that worried since we could see the peak always... path
or no path, we would reach it any how. Moreover we had lots
of time still. Luckily when we were almost at the top, we saw
a train of people far far across on another mountain. We thought
they were the same foreigners that we had met before. We waved
and yelled... and they waved back. We had two options, just
climb our mountain down - cut across the jungle between us and
join them OR walk around our mountain without losing altitude
and still keeping them in sight. Obviously, for fear of having
have to climb again, we chose the second option. When we came
around, Yashpal recognized another landmark. A long stone wall
built to serve as a fence or a fort... And was reachable without
entering the jungle - even though we would have to walk amid
thick dried vegetation. We hoped that there would not be any
snakes and just marched in the general direction. Ignorance
is bliss.
As we were walking hundreds of seeds got stuck on our clothes...
reminding me of the invention of Velcro
and the programs that I saw on discovery to demonstrate innovative
ideas plants use to disperse their seeds. |
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| Anonymous mountain. |
Clear road to
the Top:
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Our idea of keeping
the other group in sight really paid off... They even had a
guide to lead them. So we were finally sure that we are on the
right track. Once that was sure, we opened our food packets
and started eating... Oranges, chikkis and proceeded. But we
had one more shock waiting for us... the guide told us that
they had already passed the last water source... We had missed
it any way. We had only one bottle of water left... We had juicy
sandwich made from burger bun, cucumber and cheese slices for
lunch... we started conserving water and eating cucumber instead.
From the big rocky wall, the summit is only an hour away...
I liked the way a foreign lady described it "There a little
bit of sunny part... then there is a shady part and then there
is sunny part again and you are there". Yes, the route was as
simple as that. But climbing it was not that easy... given the
time of the day - mid afternoon. The part inside the jungle
was cool... but steep. After that, the view was amazing. Tadiandamol
is the highest peak among its surroundings and hence we can
see for long distances on all sides. |
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| We realized that we
would be on the summit too early and slowed down our pace...
slowly savoring the oxygen rich air and crystal clear air...
If only we had enough water... it would have been perfect. At
about this time, all those ahead of use started to turn back...
I was amazed to see so many foreigners(Iran, Finland, British,
Germany)... The cottages nearby must have had a good tourist
season this year. More over, they do not do the full trek. They
come as far as possible on Jeep and trek only the last part
which is about 2-3 hours before the summit... But there were
a few of them who walked all the way from Nalknad palace. At
last by about 2:30 we were on the top. We emptied a packet of
electral into a bottle of water and re-hydrated ourselves. Luckily,
a group of Indians from Bangalore (I remember only Jyotsna,
the teenager and Shaukat, the guide) had given us an extra litre
of water... A big group of foreign tourists had reached ahead
of us and hence we had to wait an hour or so for the peak to
be all ours... |
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| Eastern
side of Tadiandamol from the summit |
More then 10 square
Kms per person....
| Solitude is a great
feeling. After the foreigners left, we were left alone on the
peak... Obviously there would be no one more since normally
people don't stop on the top here. We were the only people as
far as we could see. I slept on a ledge that I named "Prashanth
Point" for about half an hour. I was reminded of Hari who always
found this urge of nomenclature very strange among humans...
After that we started collecting wood for the night. That was
not difficult at all.. there were some really fat ones and a
lot of dry sticks. We pitched up our tents and put our ruck-sacks
in them so that it would not fly away. Very soon we were finishing
all the do-ables and it was still just 4:30 PM... what would
we do for the rest of the night ?? City life has made us so
restless, that we could not sit idle for 30 minutes at a stretch
to enjoy what we were seeing... The question of "What next?"
seemed to be always on our minds even though the answer did
not matter to us then. The first thing we prepared was "Sweet
Corn Soup". It tasted great... especially when garnished with
Cup-o-noodles and drank in a sliced up water bottle using a
tent peg as stirrer. By this time the breeze had picked up and
it felt great to face the incoming wind with hot soup in our
hands and looking directly at the setting sun. We decided that
in order to conserve water we will heat our Pulav in in very
less water... and that had to be done by sunset... So we did.
By 6:00 PM, we could see the last rays of sun as he descended
behind a sea of clouds. People say that on a clear day (April-May),
one can see the sun sink into the western sea. We, we have to
see it to believe it. By now, much of these clouds had descended
down most of the other smaller summits all around us. Only the
twin peaks of Tadiandamol, were above the clouds. The breeze
had picked up and we felt that at least one of us had to be
inside the tents at all time to stop it from blowing. Worried
Yashpal even pegged the tent on 8 sides just to be on the safer
side. Then, we thought that we will take an early nap now and
get up at 10:00PM and light a campfire... Seemed to be a nice
idea. We got into warm clothes and got into our tent and slept...
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| The Prashanth Point |
The Sunrise and
the decent:
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The idea of a 10:00PM
campfire never worked out. We were too tired to be woken up
at night... through out the night however, the strange sounds
were coming from outside the tent... A 2 layered tent like this
one is bound to make such noise when wind blows at such high
speeds. We sleep on and off... through out and were woken up
by around 5:00AM. Obviously going out was out of question...
We spent one hour eating biscuits, taking photos and playing
games over mobile phone. Once in a while we opened the tent
doors to see if it was safe going out. A strong gust of wind
would always suggest not to. However, when we saw first colors
of sunrise appear on the eastern sky, we took turns to go out
and have a stroll and the other waited inside the tent preventing
it from being blown away. We soon started a fire in front of
our tent to keep ourselves warm. It was not difficult to start
one because of the wind. On either side of the peak there was
mild forest fires... though it was not threatening, we were
not sure who started it... we were more unsure about the intent...
Anyway, as the minutes passed by, the eastern sky became a canvas
on which nature painted her marvelous colors for only us to
see since anybody else from the cities below would only see
the clouds. The picture on the top right of this page tries
to capture what we saw... |
| Early morning Warmth |
| But as
always photos do little justice to the real thing. After about
half an hour of dumb folded admiration of what we saw, we boiled
milk, and drank it with Parle-G biscuits for breakfast. There
was absolute silence all around... but for birds chirping in
the forest near by... an occasional gust of wind making a hustling
noise as it went past us... and the fluttering of our tent...
This morning goes right on top of my list of all time ecstatic
mornings ever closely followed by Kumaraparvatha,
Yedakumeri
and Isle Royale. |
The Climb
Down:
| By 8:00
AM we packed all our belongings and left the summit after a
brief look around. We decided that we would have breakfast at
the water resource which was about an hour down hill. We made
very quick progress... and by 8:45 we were at a big rock (not
the same one that Yashpal recognized the previous day). This
was the shelter for a group of 10 trekkers from YHAI. They were
kind enough to invite us for breakfast with them and their effort
was so genuine that we could not refuse. The team was lead by
YHAI representatives named Aman and Gopi. Gopi was a middle
aged lady who had gone to Sar pass more than 10 times.... Some
people have all the enthu in life. After that, our journey was
down hill continuously and lacked any excitement. The topic
of discussions was mainly political and I better not air our
views here... By 11:30 we were back in the same bus-stand we
started yesterday. |
Back to Bangalore:
Buses never run on
time in Coorg. Sharp contrast to neighboring Dakshina Kannada
where every minute is counted. But we traced back our route
exactly and reached Bangalore around 9:15PM.
Travel Information: There is a Rajahamsa from Virajpet
to Bangalore at 1:45PM. The bus was fairly empty even after
it being a Sunday. Fare is the same as the onward journey. |
THE END.
Prashanth Kota
[Send your comments: prashanth_k_blr (at) yahoo.com]
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