Trek to Mullayanagiri

Trek to Karnataka's highest peak, Mullayanagiri, (1930mts), July 2-3 '2011

KGR Vamsi

It was Friday everything and I went through a final run of the checklist sent by organisers of the trek. Yet, I felt that I was missing something. Eureka, it was some natural food like apple and orange. With that my packing was all done for the trek to Mullayangiri , the highest peak in Kanrataka. We all assembled at the Kacheguda Station for the journey to Bangalore. Once the train left at 7pm, we realized that Sarvani, one of our trekkers, missed the train. She immediately got into a bus and was on her way to Bangalore.

Next morning, we had our breakfast and began our journey to Hebbe waterfalls about 350 kms via. We reached Chikmagalur, had our lunch and started to Hebe waterfalls, 35-40kms. On the way we spotted many coffee plantations as well some arecanut trees. We reached the base spot of the Hebe waterfalls and we did a 7 km trek to the top of the waterfalls. We have explored some of the unfamiliar shortcut routes to the falls with the help of a GPS tracker. We reached the top point by 5.30 pm and stayed there for around 20-30 mins appreciating the natural beauty and the cool breeze emanating from the waterfall. And it was then we realized that we had to leave soon. The reason - Leeches.

They were are all around that place and ready to attack our feet. Most of the team members got leeches bites and i got three of those creatures on my feet and i got to know that after i walked half a distance from Hebbe falls to the base point. The team got divided into three to four teams depending on the slow and fast trekkers and i stayed with the last team to help the people who were a bit slow. We switched on our torch lights as it was getting dark and to top it all it was raining and we could hear different sounds from the forest. It was a very different experience for me and seeing the surroundings, i was confident to an extent and the rest was left it to God.

We walked for around for another four kms and the rest of the team was waiting for us and then we started our walk towards the base point. From the base point to Hebbe water falls we could not trace the shortcuts which our GPS was indicating. Our GPS was showing us the right path but we did not want to take any risk and we stuck to the road path. We kept on walking and at last we reached the base point from where we kept moving to Chikmagalur, which we reached by midnight.

We started by 6 am from Chikmagalur to the base point of Mullayangiri, a distance of 30 kms. We had some warm-up exercises and then started trekking up the hill. The rocks were slippery and dangerous and the low clouds along with heavy winds made things tough for us. It took us three hours to reach the peak we learn a lot about the place. We had a briefing of the trek so far and also got to know about the history of the Lord Shiva Temple at Mullayangiri.

Then, we started down from another way and soon we discovered that trekking down the hill was tougher than climbing. It was a dangerous path, specially when you walk on the edge of the hill. We all made it safely despite heavy winds and rain. We had our lunch at Chikmagalur and reached Bangalore by 5 pm. There we had a small walk around to Isckon Temple. By the time the train to Hyderabad started moving, our aching body was lulled into a sound sleep.