Ombattu Gudda Trek: Day 1

Oct 2nd, 2008: As discussed we reached the Kachiguda railway station, at 5:30PM, first to reach was Shiv and then the others streamed in. Everyone had a story to tell, so we all settled in nicely. Train travel was not that bad, in fact it was quite comfortable, if you can just ignore the lingering smell. We reached Banglore around 8:30 AM, checked into a dorm, and after the morning chores and a heavy breakfast in Kamat caught the bus to Hasan from Majestic. The bus stop is pretty conveniently located in front of the railway station, the back pack was beginning to feel quite heavy, with all the walking around, I just hoped somehow magically I would be able to carry the load during the trek.

The drive to Hasan was pretty good, it was a national highway so the road conditions were good enough to maintain a good speed. Karnataka has a pretty good public bus transport station, very basic but very good, I am told thats it is the case with all the other southern states as well. Another interesting thing to note was there were lady bus conductors, which is just not possible in North. The passengers were all well behaved,decent, and the lady conductors looked quite confident, and later during the trip I found lady bus conductors for late night buses as well. It was so nice to see that.

I never buy the feminist crap, there should be reservations, there should be separate things ...separate queues... blah blah blah, what i think is required is a little respect , and confidence on the fairer sex, and they will rise to the occasion. They can walk shoulder to shoulder do what men do. They dont need any kid glove treatment, in fact no one needs, all that we should aim for is equal opportunity. That way we dont have to compromise on quality and we will have confident workforce. Being a bus conductor is a pretty demanding job, and they were doing it so comfortably.

On the way we exchanged what ever research each one has done so far. From the various blogs that we had read, it certainly looked like a difficult trek. There was a good chance of getting lost, and all the groups seemed to carry the survey of India maps. we didnt have those. There was also mention of elephants and bears, perfect challenge we thought, though the mention of vipers in some of the blogs made us a bit uneasy.

We finally reached Hasan around 2:30 PM, had lunch in Kadamba restaurant, that I am told is a govt run restaurants at bus stops. Again the food was basic and we were hungry anyway.The plan now was to travel to Halebidu and Belur temples and finally to Sakhilaspura, which is on the Banglore Mangalore highway. Early morning we are supposed to catch a bus to Gundaya check post and from there the trek will begin.

Halibidu was spectacular, much better preserved than other temples, we spent about an hour there and took lot of pics. As usual there were great number of peoples around. When you come to these historic monuments you realize the population problem in India , there are just way too many people everywhere you go.

From here we hitched a ride on an auto and started for Belur, the ride was through typical western ghats landscape, greenery everywhere, clouded skys and an orange setting sun for company :). We spent the evening at Belur temple, tried to take some pics without a tripod :(. And we were ready for Sakhilaspura. The last bus was around 8:30 PM, but we had a problem.WE were supposed to get 105 rotis for the trek. 3 meals will be roti based, carbohydrates required during trekking, rotis with picles, jams or rajma masala. We are expected to reach Sakhilaspura by 10:30 it will take at least 2 hrs. and shops wont be open to cater to the rotis. SO they had to be procured from Belur and we had 15 mins with us to do so. Myself and Ravi went for the rotis , we split up and managed to get 70 rotis from 2 restaurants, rushed back to the bus stand in time to catch the bus. Meanwhile LSP had procured 18 bread packets, 3 each from a local bakery and 12 dilpasand (some kind of snacks stuffed paratha shaped like pizza). We had more than enough now, the backpacks are going to be pretty heavy but we had enough food for any kind of emergency. WE finally reached Sakhilaspura around 11 PM.

Once there Ravi myself and Sridhar went scouting for a lodge for the night stay while others scouted for a hotel for dinner, We managed to get 5 beds in a lodge, anyways we had to catch the bus to Gundaya in 3 hrs time, so a short nap was all we were expecting to catch. After dinner everyone was given their food packets and we went to 'sleep'. Woke up around 2 AM in time to catch the bus to Gundaya check post. The drive was as bumpy as I had ever experienced , still managed to catch some sleep holding on to the seats. Reached Gundaya around 5 AM in the morning and slept by the road side, till daylight for the trek.