Coorg - April 05, 06 - 2008
What started as a plan to go to Kudremukh turned to a trip to Coorg.
We initially were planning to go to one of the peaks in the KNP range.
Then it was the Agumbe - Narasimha Parvata trek we set our sights upon.
Due to rains and some other issues, we had to abandon that.
We also abandoned plans to Kuringal GuDDa and Brahmagiri due to some permission issues.
(The actual reason was that we were all very busy to prepare for these other treks)
Finally, booked a vehicle and six of us went off to have a fun relaxing weekend!
The team: Param, Naveen, Kid, Harshu, Maddy and me!
Since this was a three day weekend, we were sure that the main attractions in Coorg would be crowded
beyond measure and wanted to avoid these.
We would anyway avoid these on any other days as well because these are really not worth visiting.
Day 1:
We reached Madikeri in the early hours of saturday and were greeted with this sight!
Our destination for the day was Tadiyandamol.
Tadiyandamol:
This is the highest peak in the Coorg district. Its height is about 5250 ft or 1750 metres.
It is located in Virajpet Taluk in Coorg. One can reach there by going towards Virajpet from Madikeri.
Take a deviation on this route to reach a place called Napoklu. From Napoklu, 10-15 kms away is a place
called Kakkabe. 1 km from Kakkabe is the place where you need to get off the bus (if u are traveling in one)
in order to start trekking. If you have your own vehicle, you can take that deviation and travel as far as
the asphalt road will take you. There is also a palace on the way which you can visit.
We got off our Tavera at the palace and decided to walk from there. A few hundred metres from there is a small
source of water trickling down from above and we brushed and freshened up there. After a brisk walk of half an
hour to the place where the tar road ends, we stopped to have breakfast. Bun-jams bought from a bakery at Napoklu!
There was a large gang from i-flex who were also doing the trek and they had a considerable head start on us of
about 30 mins. Considering that this is a 2 hour trek, that was a lot! There was no way we were gonna let them reach
the peak first. So, me and Harshu stepped up the pace and got separated from the rest of the gang.
We actually did not have to wait long to catch them up! We found a bunch of them at a small tree covered area
with some water complaining about some leeches and still standing there! Smiling to myself I decided to push on.
One of them did have some sense. He was standing a little distance away from the trees in the sun and was yelling
at the others to come and join them. Poor guy! Nobody listened to him.
The Kid who was not far behind us heard a few very nice ideas from them about how to go about removing leeches.
"Make some fire and bring the leg close to it!", was my favorite one.
After a while, me and Harshu caught up with the remaining bunch of their gang near that big boulder.
(A landmark that might be well known to people who have been to Tadiyandamol before)
Now that we had our lead and they did not look like catching up, we eased up and reached the peak from there
in another forty five mins.
We were soon followed by the Kid and later by Param.
Naveen and Maddy took their own sweet time and landed up with the i-flex gang. (I can only imagine why)
Again, if you know Naveen, you might have easily predicted this owing to the fact that there were a few girls
in that troop. But why Maddy hung around with him is what boggles me.
After a few snaps and a little bit to eat we decided to take a nap among the clouds.
It was cool and refreshing and I instantly fell asleep only to be woken up by Param and Naveen who believed
that it would rain there and wanted to leave the peak immediately. After cursing them for their lack of
knowledge on clouds and rain we were on our way down. Well, guess what! They were right! It started raining
heavily by the time we reached the foothills of the mountain. It however stopped soon and we reached our vehicle
half drenched.
Talacauvery:
Since it was still overcast and it was raining a little, we had to abandon the plans of camping near Mallalli falls
in the night on this day. We decided to head off to Talacauvery from here.
Talacauvery is the birth place of the river Cauvery and is located 44 km from Madikeri, on the slopes of Brahmagiri Hill.
The foothills of this place is a place called BhagamanDala.
There's some significance of this place also, but am not sure about it. There's a Bhagandeshwara temple here.
We stopped at BhagamanDala for our lunch and then reached TalaCauvery at around 4 PM. (or maybe later)
We visited the birth place of the river. There's a small pushkarani there which is supposed to be that place.
Where the river goes from there is not known to me. There are also a couple of temples there and a small peak from
which you can see the Brahmagiri hills.
After this, we returned to Madikeri and called it a day.
Day 2:
Mallalli Falls:
Mallalli Falls is not a very visited spot in Coorg. This is the best thing about it.
It lies on the foothills of Pushpagiri from the Somwarpet side.
To reach here, we headed to Somwarpet from Madikeri. This is a very beautiful road to travel upon.
After reaching Somwarpet head off on the road towards Kukke Subramanya. After sometime you need to
take a deviation to head off towards Pushpagiri. A couple of kms before a place called Bidalli (where you start
the Pushpagiri trek) is a jeep track heading towards Mallalli falls. A couple of kilometres walk will get you
to a large open space and right after that you'll see the Mallalli falls below you.
The Kumaradhara river falls from a height of more than 200 ft which forms the main attraction of the falls.
One can go to the top of the falls as well as to the bottom. Other than the main falls, there's also a bunch of small
falls along the path which one can explore.
Other than having the usual splash in the water, we attempted some rock climbing and also tried some exploration
into unknown cavities (read: rabbit hole). After a lot of censored photographs (which I'm obviously not going to
put up here) we headed back from the falls.
We also had carried a bat and a tennis ball for our entertainment and played a little "catch-catch" and some cricket.
On our way back we had some excellent vadas and menashinakai bhajjis (slurrppp!) which suited the weather immensely.
We also stopped in the middle for a while to take some "gaaLipaTa" snaps.
And finally by midnight we had reached our home all ready to celebrate Ugadi the next day.
We initially were planning to go to one of the peaks in the KNP range.
Then it was the Agumbe - Narasimha Parvata trek we set our sights upon.
Due to rains and some other issues, we had to abandon that.
We also abandoned plans to Kuringal GuDDa and Brahmagiri due to some permission issues.
(The actual reason was that we were all very busy to prepare for these other treks)
Finally, booked a vehicle and six of us went off to have a fun relaxing weekend!
The team: Param, Naveen, Kid, Harshu, Maddy and me!
Since this was a three day weekend, we were sure that the main attractions in Coorg would be crowded
beyond measure and wanted to avoid these.
We would anyway avoid these on any other days as well because these are really not worth visiting.
Day 1:
We reached Madikeri in the early hours of saturday and were greeted with this sight!
Our destination for the day was Tadiyandamol.
Tadiyandamol:
This is the highest peak in the Coorg district. Its height is about 5250 ft or 1750 metres.
It is located in Virajpet Taluk in Coorg. One can reach there by going towards Virajpet from Madikeri.
Take a deviation on this route to reach a place called Napoklu. From Napoklu, 10-15 kms away is a place
called Kakkabe. 1 km from Kakkabe is the place where you need to get off the bus (if u are traveling in one)
in order to start trekking. If you have your own vehicle, you can take that deviation and travel as far as
the asphalt road will take you. There is also a palace on the way which you can visit.
We got off our Tavera at the palace and decided to walk from there. A few hundred metres from there is a small
source of water trickling down from above and we brushed and freshened up there. After a brisk walk of half an
hour to the place where the tar road ends, we stopped to have breakfast. Bun-jams bought from a bakery at Napoklu!
There was a large gang from i-flex who were also doing the trek and they had a considerable head start on us of
about 30 mins. Considering that this is a 2 hour trek, that was a lot! There was no way we were gonna let them reach
the peak first. So, me and Harshu stepped up the pace and got separated from the rest of the gang.
We actually did not have to wait long to catch them up! We found a bunch of them at a small tree covered area
with some water complaining about some leeches and still standing there! Smiling to myself I decided to push on.
One of them did have some sense. He was standing a little distance away from the trees in the sun and was yelling
at the others to come and join them. Poor guy! Nobody listened to him.
The Kid who was not far behind us heard a few very nice ideas from them about how to go about removing leeches.
"Make some fire and bring the leg close to it!", was my favorite one.
After a while, me and Harshu caught up with the remaining bunch of their gang near that big boulder.
(A landmark that might be well known to people who have been to Tadiyandamol before)
Now that we had our lead and they did not look like catching up, we eased up and reached the peak from there
in another forty five mins.
We were soon followed by the Kid and later by Param.
Naveen and Maddy took their own sweet time and landed up with the i-flex gang. (I can only imagine why)
Again, if you know Naveen, you might have easily predicted this owing to the fact that there were a few girls
in that troop. But why Maddy hung around with him is what boggles me.
After a few snaps and a little bit to eat we decided to take a nap among the clouds.
It was cool and refreshing and I instantly fell asleep only to be woken up by Param and Naveen who believed
that it would rain there and wanted to leave the peak immediately. After cursing them for their lack of
knowledge on clouds and rain we were on our way down. Well, guess what! They were right! It started raining
heavily by the time we reached the foothills of the mountain. It however stopped soon and we reached our vehicle
half drenched.
Talacauvery:
Since it was still overcast and it was raining a little, we had to abandon the plans of camping near Mallalli falls
in the night on this day. We decided to head off to Talacauvery from here.
Talacauvery is the birth place of the river Cauvery and is located 44 km from Madikeri, on the slopes of Brahmagiri Hill.
The foothills of this place is a place called BhagamanDala.
There's some significance of this place also, but am not sure about it. There's a Bhagandeshwara temple here.
We stopped at BhagamanDala for our lunch and then reached TalaCauvery at around 4 PM. (or maybe later)
We visited the birth place of the river. There's a small pushkarani there which is supposed to be that place.
Where the river goes from there is not known to me. There are also a couple of temples there and a small peak from
which you can see the Brahmagiri hills.
After this, we returned to Madikeri and called it a day.
Day 2:
Mallalli Falls:
Mallalli Falls is not a very visited spot in Coorg. This is the best thing about it.
It lies on the foothills of Pushpagiri from the Somwarpet side.
To reach here, we headed to Somwarpet from Madikeri. This is a very beautiful road to travel upon.
After reaching Somwarpet head off on the road towards Kukke Subramanya. After sometime you need to
take a deviation to head off towards Pushpagiri. A couple of kms before a place called Bidalli (where you start
the Pushpagiri trek) is a jeep track heading towards Mallalli falls. A couple of kilometres walk will get you
to a large open space and right after that you'll see the Mallalli falls below you.
The Kumaradhara river falls from a height of more than 200 ft which forms the main attraction of the falls.
One can go to the top of the falls as well as to the bottom. Other than the main falls, there's also a bunch of small
falls along the path which one can explore.
Other than having the usual splash in the water, we attempted some rock climbing and also tried some exploration
into unknown cavities (read: rabbit hole). After a lot of censored photographs (which I'm obviously not going to
put up here) we headed back from the falls.
We also had carried a bat and a tennis ball for our entertainment and played a little "catch-catch" and some cricket.
On our way back we had some excellent vadas and menashinakai bhajjis (slurrppp!) which suited the weather immensely.
We also stopped in the middle for a while to take some "gaaLipaTa" snaps.
And finally by midnight we had reached our home all ready to celebrate Ugadi the next day.