HOGENEKKAL - THE NIAGARA OF INDIA

Date of Post: 09th July, 2006

Destination: Hogenekkal Falls in Dharmapuri District, Tamil Nadu
Hi folks.. it's me again blogging after a long break. To be honest, I've been a little lazy to pen down my blogs, but just active enough to achieve my monthly target of travels. Had been to lush green villages of the God's own land (Kerala) this May, followed by a bike trip to the green valleys of Yelagiri this June.
Well, now back to the purpose of this blog, my trip to the vicious, volumnous Hogenekkal falls (i'm running short of adjectives here :-p).. oh yeah and I admit to that Niagara in the title.. it was a little exaggeration from my side.
Hogenekkal has always been on my agenda, just didn't materialise. It was a Friday evening, Senthil, Durai and me suddenly decided that we should make it Hogenekkal this weekend. We shortlisted Sunday to be our ideal day to ride our way down.

Saturday 8th July'06, Bangalore
I did my share of homework by reading blogs of other fellow travellers who'd been there before (thanks to Anurag Jain for his informative blog). Took printouts of the details, finalised the agenda with Durai and Senthil and dozed off at midnight.

Sunday, 9th July'06, Bangalore
Woke at 4:30 a.m., half sleep, hoped that I could continue my sleep rather than making it to Hogenekkal (how very wrong I was !!!) Forced myself off the bed, bathed in cold morning water and was ready by 5.15.am. Ratheesh was too tired to make it, and opted to sleep the whole day off. Senthil and me packed our bikes and started to our Office in Kasturba Road to meet up with our fellow travellers for the day - Raj, Durai and his wife Viji. We gathered by 5.45 a.m., Senthil and Durai smoked up their cigarettes (something they did the whole day long ....phew !!) and off we were to our bike quest to Hogenekkal at 6.10a.m . Last thing I wanted was a race against time on our way back, which eventually we ended up doing.
Our first pit stop was at Hosur 7:10 a.m after 50 kms of travel for a tea break. Didn't wait long, filled gas in the bunks around (saved a few bucks due to price difference between Karnataka and TN :-) ..), started off immediately to our next league of journey till Krishnagiri. The road between Hosur and Krishnagiri and an iPOD is any Bikers paradise (and mine too :-D..). Went enroute to Dharmapuri after Krishnagiri (42 kms from Hosur) , had our next pit stop to sip tender coconut juices. Started to Dharmapuri where we would halt for our breakfast. The road between Krishnagiri and Dharmapuri is one of the worst stretch with 42 kms of pot-holes. Somewhere in between my bike was almost knocked off by a 20 wheel truck, was a miracle we stayed on road (the even still gives me jitters...!!). Grabbed a hearty breakfast at Dharmapuri and took our last stretch of ride before reaching Hogenekkal - This was a stretch of 49 kms of really good roads for this part of the state. It was a single lane road but a cruise. Our bikes had fun overtaking each other throughout the stretch, and an hour later, we were there.

Hogenekkal, 11.00 a.m.
We had to pay a toll fee to get into the roads leading to the falls (Rs. 10/- per bike). We could see the dense forest and mountains in the backdrop of this toll gate, had no idea what breathtaking views were in store. We rode along taking pictures , and suddenly we were riding the Hair pin bends of the moutains getting deeper into the forest. At one point I could not proceed with the dream scene around me. I was looking into what would have been a CANYON formed by the mighty river flow. Well now the missing element in this Canyon was the river. A 10 minutes ride took us to our destination. We were halted by cops at the entrance who checked our licenses, and thanks to a wantonly stupid question by Senthil, cops laughed and let us continue (cops love feeling intelligent !!) The boatman accompanied us from the village start to the parking lot and now we found ourselves negotiating to make them our guides (started at Rs.1500 and finalised at Rs.700/- for 5 of us, thanks to my bargaining skills - believe me I am really bad at it, and this deal is still on the higher side).

WHAT'S OUT THERE ???
We followed our boatman to wherever he led us, actually to the Cauvery river side. They were 2 of them, Kumar - the masseur (our guide) and Prakash (the parisal pilot) (Parisal - Tamil word for a round boat) along with the 5 of us. First bought massage oil and then started off in the Parisal, taking pics all the way. Once on our parisal, our pilot showed us some boat stunts by rotating the boat, more of a head-spin than thrill. In about 15 minuntes we neared a shore, witnessed small whirl-pools in the water(obviously harmless). We got off the parisal at a location. The river here flows in a shallow wide stream of water flowing through countless boulders before continuing its usual course. We took a few pictures and started stripping off to get ready for the massage. I was the first victim, next 15 minutes were cruel, unpredictable stretch and pull from all sides. Then I retired and watched Raj, Durai and finally Senthil going through the same. Physically I felt a lot of difference, more of a relief actually.
Now it was time to get into the water stream. The water force was really intense at certain points. We avoided most of them looking out for safe spots. Each one of us got under some rocks facing the force of water. It was amazing how we struggled to cross even a 2 metre stream of water or sit under a 6 feet waterfall. Many times we were thrown off our grips but luckily clinged onto some piece of rock and survived the one hour. We were more of BASKING in the water for an hour before sensing Viji getting restlessness who was gaurding our belongings. We packed off, and had to walk a few hundred meters through this stream before reaching a more crowded location. It was now, while crossing one of the streams my leg tangled into a rock and I fell into the water, hurting my knee and wetting all my stuffs :-(. After reaching our next pick-up point, we ordered our lunch, (boatman ordered it for us). Some fish curry and fried fishes. The boatman guided our parisal towards a point in the water which was the center of attraction of a majority of crowd. The pilot had a very tough time guiding the boat through this stretch, but finally managed to drop us safely.
THE WATERFALL: From far we could see mist generating from between the river. A few hops between the rocks towards the mist let me into one of the most breath-taking views I've ever seen. It was a U-Shaped valley with water gushing into the depths with forces that could crush metals with ease and the noise was deafening. We took a few pics, I could not help but just looking into the fall and doing nothing else. There was this Rainbow created out of the splashing water droplets everytime the sun shows up. On one such occasion, I could see the rainbow starting from me :-.. atleast I thought so.. Spent about 30 minutes at the falls, before we packed off to our next destination - LUNCHING.

THE LUNCH:
Lunch was prepared by local women, our menu combined Fish Curry and Fish fry, poor Raj, all the women asking him to eat, none realised he was a Brahmin, well not their fault, he lacks all traits of a Brahmin..

POST LUNCH:
Now I had begun to realise that our return journey was going to be a race against time, something which I did not want to happen. Hurried to our coracle and we headed to our last stretch of boating. The pilot interested us with some more options around Hogenekkal, a trek into the Forests. So we have our options open the next time we decide to come here. Now he steered our coracle to about a kilometer away and this time headed to the other side of the same waterfall that we earlier witnessed. This one was little less intense than the earlier set of falls. The guide showed us a few locations where movie scenes were shot, the most famous one being the Coracle scene in "Chinna Chinna Aasai" (Tamil lyrics) from the movie "Roja" (a Tamil movie), others being a song from "Rythm" (Tamil movie, haven't watched it myself). Took a few pictures around, and the clock ticked 5.00 pm, and I knew we were terribly late. We would have only 2 hours of daylight to ride and nearly 200 kms (125 miles) to travel. We settled our payments to the guide and Pilot (Rs.1000/-) and off we started. Picked our bikes and wanted to try the Karnataka route to our destination Bangalore.

THE RETURN...
Our guide earlier mentioned that the distance through the Karnataka route was around 110 kms, which would save us 90kms had we taken the Tamil Nadu route !!. I was really skeptical about this distance, because this was too less a distance to be true. We decided to take our chance and take the Karnataka route. Start was bad, I dropped up a stranded fellow with a tyre that he got fixed, by now I had realised why his bike tyre gave up. The next 6kms were bad roads, with patches of tar, making the travel pathetic. We were worried for 2 things basically, what if the road going to be like this forever, and which one of our bikes would give in to these roads. Luckily for us, none of it was true !! The roads got much better after 6 kms. It was a single lane road through the forest, we climbed up and down countless moutains, and we were maintaining a decent speed. The awesome views of forest via the mountain roads never let us realise our fatigue. It was slowly getting darker too, and we averaged our speed up. I showed a bike stunt to our fellows on the Hair Pin bends on the mountain, just lean the bike at the turns, lean it so much that my knee touches the road !!! This is something I like doing a lot. We travelled 80 kms before we took a break at a village about 25 kms from Hosur which was inturn 40 kms from Bangalore. I grabbed a plaintain and off we started, this time knowing for sure that our last stretch would be in the dark. It was tougher than expected, the helmet lens glaring the high beam rays, so had to expose my eyes to high speed and flying insects. My sincere advice to bikers, never do a night journey on a bike.
We missed the road that joined Hosur but managed to join the National Highway to Bangalore somewhere near Attibele, which was well into Karnataka. Now we were getting into the city through the Hosur Road, this was even more painful. By now I was exhausted too. Finally reached home at 9.00 pm after 3.5 hrs and 140 kms. I wanted to crash into the night after almost 400 kms travel in a day.
I'm sure everytime I think of the gushing water force of Hogenekkal falls, it will give me a rejunevation of a new kind. Hope in future I can spend more time at the falls.
Add this to your must watch list !!
Already looking forward to my trips to Delhi&Agra this month-end and to Goa next month ;-)

Route Info:
Route-1: Bangalore - Hosur(50kms) - Krishnagiri(~50kms) - Dharmapuri (~42kms)- Hogenekkal(~42kms) - Approx time with breaks: 4 hrs
Route-2: Hogenekkal - Attibele (~100 kms) - Bangalore (~40 kms) - Approx time: 3.5 hrs

N14 - Trip to the Nagala hills (01 Mar, 2009)

What a way to start this March. It was my resolution last year to continue my treks, but unfortunately didn't do any. This year trekking was not in my list, and here I am just back from one of the best treks I've ever done.

Nagala hills (aka Nagalapuram) is a group of hills located about 100 kms North of Chennai on the Tamil-Nadu Andhra border. I hadn't heard of this until about a few weeks back, thanks to Chennai Trekking Club (CTC). I joined this group a few weeks ago and was monitoring the activities closely. This one day trek suddenly caught my attention, and there was nothing much on my agenda the following Sunday, so I saw myself enrolling to this one. This trek was christened N14, as this was the 14th time the group was trekking this hills.

11.30 pm 28 Feb, 2009: My room

I was busy packing my bags for tomorrow early morning departure. I was packing against a checklist mailed by Peter Van Geit (moderator of the CTC group). I had to catch up some sleep too since I knew the next day would be a long one. Off I went to sleep in a few minutes after packing my bag.

3.45 am, 01 Mar, 2009: My room

I could sleep no longer at the thought of joining the group at 4.30 in Koyembedu. So woke up, freshened up, picked my baggage and hopped on my bike and reached Koyambedu by 4.20. There was just one guy (Sekar from Photon Infotech and later came to know we had 3 common friends !) and we had a 4.30 deadline for 100 of us to assemble, I didn't see it happening though. Steadily people started trickling in and most of them seemed first timers. Then around 4.45, the whole area outside Nathan's cafe in Koyambedu was buzzing with CTC cars and bikes & CTC regulars cladded in shorts, bermudas and trekking outfits. There were some last minute attendance counting going on. There were enough cars so 8 bikes were asked to drop and I promptly did so. In all we were a group of 100 trekkers in 15 cars and 15 bikes.

5.30 am, 01 Mar, 2009: Koyambedu

I got into a car which had a relatively younger crowd, a group of 4 guys, all SRM college passouts. We were prompt to exchange introduction formalities. I remember just the 2 names , Selva and Gokul. In a few minutes, we were hitting the Chennai ring road heading towards the Nagala hills. It was a very pleasant morning and daylight yet to set in, our convoy of 15 cars and 15 bike progressing on the Chennai-Calcutta highway. As we reached the village roads, we rolled down our car glasses. The air had a scent of green freshness, it was the kind that felt suffocating after spending many years in the city pollution. It was now that most guys from the cars peeped out of the cars and waved frantically at the rest of us. This was when I realised this crowd was a daring one, and not the conservative type that I first thought. We finally reached the Nagalapuram village at around 8 after about 2.5 hours of drive. This was where we had to park our cars and pick up our food packs and other baggages for the rest of the day.

I munched a quick pack of "Upma" and "Vada" for breakfast and picked my baggages and followed that crowd that was walking in a direction that led to some mountains far far away. Seeing the distance, I thought we're going to wander around the base of the hills the rest of the day, but that was not what fate had in store for us today. We were told that this N14 had 7 main hurdles to cross, I was already looking forward to them.

The Dam:

After about 4 kms of walk we reached our first pitstop. It was an artificial dam hoisted to prevent mountain waters from flowing into the nearby villages. The first little challenge (not hurdle) was to climb over that 30 ft incomplete dam. It wasn't much of a challenge but the sand-filled descent and poor grips on my shoes made me a little jittery. The entire bunch of 100 crossed over the dam and took the only group picture of the day. It was here that we picked a couple of local guides, village dogs who accompanied us till our first hurdle.

Into the jungle:

After crossing the dam, we started walking into the forest and this is when I stopped tracking time, and was focussed on enjoying the serenity of the forest around me. It was seemingly quiet, the kind I miss in the city.

The trees were so dense and bushes so bushy, that we hardly felt the sunlight on us during the entire course of the trek. We also noticed several rivulets by now which meant plenty of water up the hills.

After about an hour of walk, we reached our first water catchment. It was cold, clean and sweet. We took turns diving and jumping into the pristine waters. Infact the organisers had to save couple of fellows from drowning on two occasions. Such mountain waters are very dangerous as the rocks beneath make walking on them very uncomfortable and most often they suddenly get deeper. The last time I was in such cold waters was in the Kolli hills couple of years back. After about an hour in this water, we headed to what would be our first hurdle of the day.

The First Hurdle:

It was a placid water catchment between huge rocks. The only way to move forward would be to swim through this 40 ft water. The huge count of 100 members was of little help, because it meant more non-swimmers and more bags to be transported. We were 10 volunteers who got into the water first. With the help of sleeping mats we transported the non-swimmers first and later the bags. My right leg was cramped with too much swimming here. I must have done about 20 laps transporting people and baggages here. I played the role of a sweeper here, ensuring that no baggages were left. Even tried calling our local guides, the dogs to cross, but they seem less interested in coming along. After 2 hours we finally made it through the first hurdle !

Our next question to Peter was, is this the toughest hurdle or more to come. He didn't answer that one.

The later hurdles were not that tough, and included walking through water about 6 ft deep, then crossing rocky boulders with water stream flowing beneath us. A small slip would have landed us into the water stream and down to the rocks and a vertical climb with the support of small boulders and tree roots.

We finally rested for lunch at around 2 pm. After about 30 minutes, Peter came close to where I sat, and I asked him what our next route would be. I was hoping he would point me to a trail right next to where we lunched. But he instead pointed to a 90 degrees vertical hill and the only way to climb it would be by holding to the tree roots. There was about 30 ft to climb. It was not the climb that scared me, but the slippery 20 ft trail later that I had to cross. The poor grip of my shoe bothered me now and I even tripped a small rock that went crashing to the rocks and water stream about 50 ft below. I leapt onto a tree and went further, considering myself fortunate to have made it inspite of my shoes poor grip.

We had already made it through 6 hurdles by now. The seventh was cancelled off as we were short of time. We then walked through the highest point of this hill. What surprised me here was the lush green atop the hills. So far it was a bushy and thorny trail along the water rivulets. Now we were strolling through the bright green 4ft bushy grasses. We walked for about an hour until we reached a water stream where we refilled our empty bottles. By now, I was bruised all over my hands and legs, thanks to all those pokey thorns and branches. There were plenty of red ant bites on me as well. I knew it would bother me tomorrow, but who cares, I had better things to enjoy for now.

The entire group rested here for an hour and then we stared our descent. We reached the first water catchment area, and as before with no second thought, dived into the cold water, which seemed even colder with darkness closing in. We were here till 6 pm. The sweepers of the trek collected all the plastics and burned them off. Our bit to polluting this environment, but then leaving them behind would prove even harmful. The organisers carried on with the account settling process and at 6.30 pm we stared our final descent.

This time I was among the first few to lead the pack. As darkness grew, I realised I did a mistake by not bringing my torch along. Fortunately there were enough torches behind me that helped me move on. The walk back was a long one about 7 km in total. By now, the hurt in my feet began hurting me more.

As I walked in the dark I noticed the moon casting my shadow on the ground. I don't remember the last time I saw my shadow created by the moon. The sky was radiant with the bright stars and could see a bunch of constellations including the Ursa Major and Orion which were brightly visible over my head. I felt wondering what took me so long to rejuvenate my interest in trekking.

Finally we reached the car park at 8.30 pm after what seemed like an eternity of walking. After some last minute account settlement, the convoy started hitting the roads again and back we were driving our ways back home. It was now that Sanju called me to inform that he's become a dad to an adorable little girl. What a fitting news to end a perfect day at trek for me.

What seemed like an end of journey to me, was the beginning of a journey for my best friend !

Highlights of this trip:

Drive till Nagala, Zero Degrees of separation among the 100 enthusiastic members, Water rivulets, Dip in the cold mountain waters, Sweet mineral taste of the water, Red ant bites, Fishes nibbling our skin, Long walk under the starlit sky.