Though not a regular to treks, I was part of a team that explored this wonderful and adventurous trekking along/on the abandoned railway track near Bangalore! Read on...HARI
Abandoned Railway Track Trekking Adventure:
in simple terms its nothing but walking along the railway line (metre-gauge) with few bridges and tunnels surrounded by picturesque ghats!
After getting bored with the regular week-end routines, myself and my friends decided to do something that would refresh our body and soul. After discussing about various options like picnic, playing cricket etc., we finally decided to "Trek". Inspired by some of our friends' trekking experience reports, we were looking for a right location to try out our first trekking adventure. And we came across this peculiar trekking track that involved tracking along an abandoned railway track from Donigal near Sakleshpura to Yedukkumeri.
Once we heared about the terms like Donigal, Sakleshpur, Yedukkumeri etc., we were all jumping into the web jungle with Google net to fish maximum possible details about the place. Wow! There were so many of them , with few encouraging notes to many discouraging tales! For a week we were all engaged in planning, discussing about possible stress levels etc. Though initially we had apprehensions about the trip, finally we all decided to take the challenge whole-heartedly. The only advise given by almost all of them who went there earlier was "Donot try this during rainy season or night".
Though most of the websites we referred to, described the bridges as heart-attack generators to people suffering with Acrophobia, Allodoxaphobia, or Fear of Heights, nothing of that sorts happened to most of us!
I am not going to explain here about our ticket booking, shopping trekking bag, snacks, torch-lite, batteries, food items etc.
On 2nd January 2004 (Friday) night we took the 11.00 pm bus to Sakleshpur. Early morning we were dropped at a tea-cum-snacks shop "The Picnic" after duly paying the conductor with incentive of 10/head (Look....For government I have a suggestion to make Donigal railway station a official bus-stop and can charge public, than conductors making money) After having a cup of Coffee (my advise to you is never order coffee here...) and a good Tea (Tea was ok!) we started from this place. In the meanwhile one more bus stopped by and a group of 11 guys got-down for the same trek! (In a way these guys helped us.....I will tell abt it later!)
The First Mistake!
From the hotel we have to walk about half-a-kilometre to reach a bridge, after crossing which we have to take a small path uphill to reach Donigal railway station! Pretty simple isn't it! Yes.. it would have been,in the day light! But in the darkness and a fool who guided us on the opposite direction. we reached a small temple (Siddheswara)! We wasted about 45 minutes in this effort and finally reached the station around 6.30 am. After taking few snaps we started our Historic Trekking!
Walk... Walk... Walk!
Walking on the small stones along the railway line is certainly a streneous exercise for your feet! Better wear an old pair of shoes so that you can through them away after the trek. After walking for about an hour or so we reached our first Bridge...picturesque scenary around it. Crossing it was easier than we all thought and taught...Ate some dates and continued walking till we found a small stream to stop by for our breakfast! Ate fast some chappathis for Breakfast, and started walking past some milestones.
We started crossing some good bridges (read small ones) and some bigger ones! Few of our colleagues started crawling on the bridge...due to the fear (You some times feel that you are standing on the bridge and the groubd alongwith the trees beneath are rolling fast)
By around 12:30 we have covered a good amount of tunnels and bridges and were about to cross Tunnel 9 to cross the longest bridge!
Bee-Stings!
This is when our climax happened that we saw couple of the guys belonging to the group that overtook us on the way came running out of the tunnel shouting "Don't come! Run away!" Suddenly i thought that they were being chased by some tiger (or the cheetah we saw on some website) One of the guy was having the bee-stings all over his face. They told that there were bee-hives on the pillars throughout the bridge and it would be deadly to cross it! The only option now is to go back all the way to reach Donigal, which is about 16 Kms away! (Oh...God!) Or to try crossing the river by going through a short-cut 9ha..ha...that's what we thought)
ADVENTURE BEGINS...
One villager by name Swami came for our rescue, who encouraged us to cross the river by going down the hill slope and then cross a bridge that leads to a village from where we can get buses to Sakleshpura! Wow..how simple it looks from the above. But we faced the adventure of our lives when we stared following him. This guy takes us through some real jungle, by cuttgin few trees and branches on the path (actually making path). At one place we felt that we are going to roll down and break one or more of our bones! Yes.. the slope was so steep that we have to hang with some trees or roots like Tarzan!
With great difficulty we reached the river, that followed another adventure. Here the wooden bridge that we had to use for crossing the river was actually abandoned (atleast some 10 years) and hence again we have to cut some trees and plants to make our way.
By this time most of us were totally exhausted and feeling the need for rest! But we couldn't afford to take rest as we have to rush to catch a bus from the village.
Swami told us that it is just few minutes away...but this time we have to climb up-hill (luckily through some jeep-trail).This part of the trek really made me sweat-out all the liquid that i had! And with great difficulty we reached a place from where this guycalled a pick-up jeep to drop us at another point!
Wow...13 of us were stuffed into that small pick-up truck (Bale..Mahindra) We reached a village were we had tea and bargained with another jeep driver (Bale...Mahindra again) to drop us at Sakleshpur.
On the way some of our guys got on to a truck passing by to reach Sakleshpur!
As soon as we reached Salkelspur we all went to Hotel Kamat and had a full meal with excellent butter-milk that brought back some energy.
From Sakleshpur we came to Hasan (thinking that we may get some Luxury bus..) but got a Red bus (Dubba) back to Bangalore.
Reached home at 3:10 am and dived in to my bed! (For next 2 days I had severe pain in the thigh and feet to remind me about how much i have stretched myself)
What a great trek to start the year with!
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