Trekking to charmadi in monsoon

It was a rainy day when I got the call. Kabir had called me to inform about a trek to charmadi ghats and Ballala rayana durga .’ Mostly it won't be possible as the heavy rains may disrupt traffic and all no?’ I asked .  Kabir reasoned that we would take a Toyota qualis and that we had never gone trekking in rainy weather and it would be a great adventure . That much coaxing was enough for me . I joined the group.

 We left at 6 30 am on Saturday morning . Our team had 10 members which was quite big . . Most of them were my class mates in high school or pre unis . I hadn't seen them for years . So it was like a small reunion . We had breakfast in Ujire. And we bought snuff powder and tobacco leaves in a shop. From our previous experiences, we had learnt not to go trekking without some stuff to get rid of leeches. We also bought some snacks .

 It had started to drizzle lightly by then. We had expected heavy rains but this weather was ok .  As we slowly progressed through the hair pin curves , we saw many beautiful waterfalls just beside the road . We stopped in many places to take photos. Then we also saw the beautiful alekan falls , which is also on the way. The weather was getting chilled . There was  thick mist  everywhere.

                                                                     (alekan falls)

We reached kottigehara by 11 a.m. Its a small town situated above charmadi ghats . From this place we didn't know the way up properly. So we asked bystanders for directions . We had to reach sankasale and climb from there. All the people were astonished to see us going there in this time. We were curious about this , but soon we found out why.

As we reached near B.r.durga , road became narrow and after 10km there was only mud road. We went 5 kms more in that road and parked our vehicle. There was still 5 more kms to walk. Suddenly the sky turned dark grey. And within few minutes it started to rain heavily. We got a bit discouraged but we expected this so we put on our jackets and started our trek.

It was not too long before someone shouted ‘leech’!!  suddenly everyone started looking at their legs..!! some of the team members were getting this ‘leech therapy’ for the first time so they were cursing these slimy, bloodthirsty creatures. I remembered my first encounter  with the leeches. I too was terrified by them at that time but now after many trekkings I had few tactics which would give me some advantage. The idea is to stay ahead and not to stop anywhere. But after some time my shoes were also covered with crawling sticky leeches. So I stopped at the middle of a small stream , removed the leeches one by one patiently with the help of tobacco leaves. If you hold the leaf over the leech, it will stiffen and get dislodged. Mud road came to an end when we reached Hori Khan estate.

From this place we’re supposed to see beautiful view of Ballala rayana durga, but nothing was there to be seen. Everything was covered  by mist. We found a place relatively free of leeches and discussed about our next step. We had come this far and nobody wanted to go back simply so we decided to move ahead.

What we entered next was pure hell…

Full of leeches and other creepy crawling creatures,  Thorny bushes everywhere also big logs obstructing the path. In fact there was no path as such. There was very little light creeping inside the thick canopy. It was a humid and wet climate with constant rain. Obviously within few minutes we were lost inside the deep forest. We didn’t know how to go forward now.

Then we saw two dogs following us, probably they were from that estate so we let them move forward, showing  us the way . They  did move smartly for some time but afterwards they  went on two different directions confusing us. All of us were quite tired by now .. then, we saw the remains of the fort wall..

There were some pavement or something above our route. So me and Kabir took a detour  to examine it. As we went near it I heard the most terrifying sound I’ve ever heard! Some wild animal was very near to us and had warned us not to come near. Mostly it was a wild boar or a bison I don’t know for sure. The moment we heard it, we panicked and ran for our life!! After 5 minutes we met the other members and told them to change the route. Now we moved along a stream , slowly climbing upwards over slippery rocks and we reached the top of the hill. We could see the vast view only for few seconds before the mist covered all of us again. We couldn’t find the main entrance in that fog…hell ! we could hardly see each others faces!! We tried to move over the old wall in hopes of finding the entrance but sadly it too ended shortly. We saw there was no sense in moving ahead, we decided to go back..

We were almost there…had reached the top but couldn’t get that sense of fulfillment. We will climb it again , some other time, to conquer it again..

We came down very slowly and by the time we had reached our vehicle, it was 3 p.m.  We were exhausted and hungry .  We had steaming hot neer dosas and mirchi bhaji in kottige hara. Then we started our journey back home. Thus it was  the end to our adventure.

 team: Bharat,Kabir,Sharath,Karthik,Pradeep,Vineeth,     Nishanth,Ramachandra, Gautham (L-R)

me and my cousin