Sakleshpur green routes: Admiring the Beauty of Western Ghats along the railway tracks

I thought at least,I will write about this wonderful journey that we had, before I forget the details (already forget something else). The details may be fade but the fun we had and the green sights,falls, tunnels our eyes beheld will never ever fade away.

while trekking

It was my unexpected trek, on octobar last weekend at 8.30pm, am roming with Pavan at back gate of our college.After few minutes ,may be around 9pm.they told to go for home tomorrow   (2dys holliday).Pavan suggested for me trek, then he called to kini but at that time they are already in KSRTC bus. Kini said anyway come fast aspossible we will wait for you ,then took auto at backgate n catch the bus. Thanks to conductor because he waited hardly 40 minutes.

It was my one of the dream to go for trek on "WESTERN GHATS".

Being students it's obvious to go for a trip. But they wanted to try something different, something which only few would prefer to do. So we opted to trek. And thats how it began....

 We had been wanting to go for this from the first time becaz we heard about it. But then there were a certain number of uncertainties. Goods train had started plying on this route and there was two passenger train also. Apart from it being risky ,we were unsure whether the railway authorities will agree for trekking. Finally we forgot everything turned out to be like nothing we had thought about.

Sakleshpur is around 220kms from Bengaluru (Bangalore) and Donigal is 7kms further up in NH48. The railway track connects Hassan to Mangaluru (Mangalore) and passes through the western ghats past Sakleshpur. It runs around NH48 near Donigal, but gradually moves to the south of highway. The track passes through the stations Yedakumari and Shiribagilu and then crosses the Subramanya road.

        They plan to take a Saturday night KSRTC bus in  Tumkur to Sakleshpur, get down there, take a auto  donigal and start trekking there by morning 7 and reach yedkumari before sunset.Catch "kannur express" train to subramanya road next morning at 4.



We were a group of 13 people  Me, Abhishek, Ashwin, pavan   bandoji,Nithish,Harshith, Abhinandan, Mohan, Vikas, Sukanth, Vinayraj, Adiga, Varun. Finally our journey started. The road route from tiptur to hassan was horrible, hardly nobody slept in bus. We reached saklespur very early at 2 am took a night walk in streets of sakleshpur.We rested there till sunrise and took an Auto to Donigal at 7 am.We got down past donigal railway station. Donigal station is marked as KM49 (guess, its the distance from Hassan),n it is imp to know where will to start and subsequent markings are available in the track, which made it quite easy to keep track of the distance.

  November 2010,sunday morning at 7.30 that we finally started off along the track, the Sakleshpur-Yedkumari train route. For more than an hour, we trekked along the railway track and it turned out to be just a simple track to follow n only small curves starts appearance(around 8degree).It seemed trek was going to turn out boring until we encountered our first bridge at KM52. It was a small bridge, less than 50m long, but was enough to give us a feel of the bridges on the way. We all had the feeling of fear about the getting stuck in between bridge and suddenly train would arrive luckily nothing such thing happened since very few train come in this track. We were like a bunch of excitoveed kids. Cameras clicking away all those moments.

Green sight

This trek is famous for the bridges and tunnels and the lush green environment around you. Next near KM55, we reached the 2nd bridge, followed by the 1st tunnel was exciting but equally exciting were the rest of them . Tunnels actually increased our enthusiasm of trekking. The first two tunnels were small - only around 100m long and were almost continuous. In a pretty long tunnel we were accompanied by a train as well. There is enough space in the tunnels to stand by as the train goes. And we were also armed with torches to show us the way in those creepy tunnels.

We had lunch at a place where there was a small waterfall but forced water. The lunch - Chappathi, bread and jam... Yummmy, YUMMMY...

As if the train in the tunnel was not enough we hear the long bellow again when we were mid-way on a bridge. The bridges had intermediate places to stand by. But we did not trust the strength of the footing to hold all of us so be careful while trekking. Then on, the tunnels and bridges became frequent, longer, darker and higher. But, the scare was gone after crossing couple of bridges and tunnels. The most important thing to carry while trekking is a good, powerful torch... normal torch won't be much useful in pitch black tunnels. Before KM58, we encountered Tunnel 5 which is 254m long.

Had been warned that it is IMPOSSIBLE to trek in the night and that we have to make it to the station before the dark. This issue had been playing on my mind all throughout the planning and in course of the trek. We were really glad that we hit the station in good time with enough light.

Kempuhole falls

After there were workers doing some repair works and suggested us about the'Kempuhole' waterfalls at mile stone 62/800 as we reached this milestone there was a bridge next to which was a tunnel indicating 575m long just before the tunnel to the left there was a small pathway leading to the falls.The waterfall was good, with cold, refreshingly clean water. This is one of the best falls we had seen since the water wasn't much deep and had good space to have fun in water. we got ourselves  fresh here.



Final destination

We continued after a brief rest. There were many sights on the way the beauty of which cannot not be described (can be translated as too lazy to write). The trek didn't seem to end for a while. We had gotten really tired.It was around 5:00 P.M when the big yellow board announcing "Yedakumari" appeared it was our final destination. That was my favorite sight from the previous one hour.

We camped on the platform there.slept and woke up, to summarize things.we enquired for way back and got to know that there will be  kannur express train giving stop exactly for 1 min the next morning at 4 going towards subramanya road. Also  there were 2 to 3 goods train going that way which would give stop but one would have to go to the last boogie to catch up train which we were not able to  since all of us were exhausted and were not in proper position to run.Thus we decided to go in morning train.

                    

             We got up next morning at 3.30 caught up train at 4 .The passenger   compartment was full and we hardly had space to stand and we couldn't even breath as all the windows and doors of compartment was closed. We found trekking 18km was much easier than traveling in conjusted  train. We reached subramanya road at 6am.went to kukke subramanya 14km from there, took bath went to temple and returned back to tumkur in KSRTC bus.

kukke subramanya 

xoxo