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