I was thinking of doing a rainy season trek from the past couple of months. But due to a lot of work at office, I could not plan for a trek. Another reason for not planning is many of my friends who were accompanying me for the treks were not interested due to the promotion or demotion they got in life, i.e., marriage :).
Two of my friends in office were planning to go out from Bangalore for the weekend getaway with their own bunch of friends. Sandeep had planned to go to Hampi with 2 of his friends, as there would not be much harsh beating from the sun during this time and can easily roam around Hampi with rented motor bikes. Manjunath had planned to trek to Brahmagiri with 10 of his friends. So, quickly I decided to go either of the places, but due to the strong urge of doing the rainy season trek, the decision became obvious. To my luck, Manjunath & friends had booked an 18 seat bus, there were plenty of seats available and I jumped into their plan at 8-15 pm.
Journey to Irpu :
Without any planning & preparation for the trek, I was ready and left home at around 10-30 pm on 10, June, 2011 with minimal set of things in my bag; joined the other guys (Prasanna, Shravan, Umesh, Sabith, Harish (Boyz), Harish (Finnie), Sayi) in the mini bus at around 11-30 pm at Corporation Circle. In an hour, the bus entered the Mysore road from Rajarajeshwari Nagar main road picking up the remaining guys (Manju, Ragh, Nitin, Shiva) on the way. The bus was heading to Srimangala and soon after the bus hit the Mysore road, I was dozed off. Bumpy roads of Srimangala road woke me up in the morning and could get glimpse of the inner Coorg region for the first time. It was raining outside intermittently. As the bus was moving closer to Srimangala, the lush green cover on the road side was increasing and could get a glimpse of fog covered unnamed mountains on either side of the road. Reached Srimangala at around 7-30 am on 11, June, 2011 when the town had just woke up from the cold, chill night.
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| Timberland seen from Srimangala town |
Srimangala is a small town in Virajpet taluk in Kodagu district of Karnataka, surrounding couple of beautiful rain forested mountains blessing the town with a mind blowing view. It hosts a couple of government offices including the forest office from where we have to take the permissions for the trek. Near to the forest office, there is a neatly maintained Inspection Bungalow where we finished our morning rituals. Had it been a trekking season, we should have reserved it prior by contacting the guy who maintains it (His house is adjacent to the bungalow). We had our breakfast at Mangaladeep hotel near by the bus stand. We packed the food for lunch too in the same hotel. By then, it was 9-00 am and time for the government offices to open. We got the permission for the trek, unlike other places, they charge a lot here, dropped a bundle of currency here.
Our engine started to Irpu through SH89 and took a deviation from the Kutta road (SH89) to Irpu Temple after 4 km on the Kutta road. The road leading to Irpu was mesmerizing due to a couple of hairpin bends in a skidding road. If it rains continuously I doubt whether non 4 wheel drive vehicles can return from Irpu with ease. We got ready with our gear and got down near the Irpu temple. We contacted the office, to talk to our guide/guard, he was surprised about the permission we got for the trek and he was not ready to guide us in the rain. Unnecessarily he wasted our couple of hours and finally he agreed with lots of pleading from us.
Trek to Brahmagiri :
We started moving on the trail to Irpu falls, which is the starting point of the trek. It was a simple walk on a concrete path with steps and in 10 minutes, we reached near the falls. Here we could get a glimpse of the beautiful falls inviting us to take a bath.We prepared ourselves for the leech trek by applying tobacco, salt, volini etc on to our legs. Finally, here we go! We stepped onto the trail which takes us inside the forest. In no time, leeches started gripping onto the shoes and slowly started climbing up on the body to suck blood. In the first half an hour, I promptly removed all the leeches for every 5 minutes of walk, but later I realized it’s an impossible task of reaching the peak without donating a single drop of blood & I decided to de-leech the body for every half an hour. We crossed the first stream in about 45 minutes and we could take a short break here. Usually the density of leeches is less near the stream as they won’t find the dead leaves and also because of rocks. So these will be the places for the legs to stop from a continuous movement. The trail from here was taking us to the dense forest and on the way, I could find a lot of wild mangoes, and its aroma could be sensed from a very far distance and these mangoes are used for preparing MambaLa (a recipe prepared commonly in South Canara). Another 30 minutes into the trail, we reached the second stream which is bigger than the previous one and another break reduced our tiredness to some an extent. Immediately ahead of us was steep climb, followed by a grass land, with good scenic beauty. We could see a lot mountains covered by fog, so could not guess the heights of it. By now, I was totally tired, moving an inch was a tedious job. Finally at tortoise speed, I started ascending the grassy mountain. In another half an hour, we reached the guest house. My watch was showing 2-55 pm, de-leeched our body & gobbled lunch we had packed. We decided to go to peak the next day as it is ~6 km away. We wanted to go to Munikal Caves which is at a distance of ~3 km. It is called as Pakshipatalam in Kerala and it lies in the Kerala part of the hill. Guard was not ready to take us there and he gave a weird reason that if we climb from the Karnataka side, we cannot go there as we have to cross the border! So finally we ended up resting on our chairs in the guest house. We played cards and dc till 8-30 pm. We had delicious dinner with 3 pieces of bread and some biscuits. We rested for the day.
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| Embarking on |
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| Landmass near Irpu Temple |
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| Irpu falls (Lakshmana Theertha) |
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| Entering cosmos |
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| Stepping onto grass land |
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| Trekkers in action |
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| Narimale Guest House |
It was raining heavily for the entire night with short breaks in between. We got ready to uncover the path to the peak; started from the guest house early morning by 7-00 am. Just after a few minutes of walk into the forest, we were in a wide, open grass land with patchy forests in the valleys of the nearby peaks. But the scenic beauty was really refreshing with many of the nearby peaks covered partly with mist. Every time I look around to get the pristine view of nature, it was posing with different scene due to varying combination of wind, mist, rain, cloud. As the time passed, sun also entered the hide and seeks game, though he did not show up clearly for the entire first half of the day. We crossed the first stream after about half an hour from the guest house, crossed another stream in another 20 minutes. This stream is the tributary of the river which falls at Irpu. Enjoying the nature’s beauty and couple of attempts to capture the beauty on the camera (I know it cannot be justified by our photographs); we reached the base of the final peak, Brahmagiri. The trail to peak was very steep, may be with an inclination of 110 degrees. Once the base was spotted, everybody were eager to climb, they were increasing their speed to reach the base of the hill and started climbing to reach the summit first. But in five minutes, everybody could feel the steepness with their heart beat audible to few meters! I was at the end moving slowly; Oh man, it was really steep and slippery. Just to make things worse, it was very windy too. At one occasion, wind was trying to topple my huge body of 6.1 ft tall. Uff.. Every time I look up after stepping for 10 ft, the peak was looking tougher and tougher and wind speed was increasing drastically. Almost at the 3/4th of the peak, I looked down, it was terrible. Immediately my thought to reach the peak looked easy, but the thinking was “How to descend this peak”. With this I was able to move a bit faster, joined everybody who was having their breakfast at the peak. I too had my part. Rested for a few minutes, and then started exploring the peak, though it is a small area, may be 3000 sq ft area. Here I was feeling and sensing the difficulty to stand against the wind. We could not get the broad view from the peak due to fog and visibility was nearly 100 ft. We waited for some time for clear sky and started descending down.
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| Scenic figure! |
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| Break ! |
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| Nothing beyond the horizon |
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| Destined trekkers on their way |
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| Shola forest |
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| Short visits to shola forests on the way |
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| Mistic hills |
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| Landscape with green canopy |
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| Its meee |
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| Feeling the steepness |
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| Almost done |
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| Harish, Shabith, Shiva, Manju, Me, Harish, Saayi, Shravan, Umesh, Nithin, Prasanna |
Return trail is same as the one we had climbed, enjoyed the scenic view surrounding the same path but in a different direction, yet you get a totally serene beauty. On the way we could spot two dears in the nearby hill who were out for their family lunch. We reached guest house at around 12-00 pm. We would have reached an hour early if we had not taken the wrong path on our ascent. We could not spot any elephants, except their dung. In half an hour we packed our stuffs and started descending. Looks like nature had really liked us as we were very nature conscious who do not shout and make noise during the treks. She was very sad that we are leaving her place and she started pouring rain heavily. We had to descend in the heavy rain, fully drenched, in the same path as had we ascended the previous day. We reached Irpu falls by 2-00 pm. We took bath in the falls and we could sit under the falls where water falls on your body from a good height. After the water fall massaging, we were really refreshed and started moving to the civilized world where our bus was waiting for us to dump us back in Bangalore.
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| Peak seen from the base |
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| On the way back |
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| Tributary of Irpu |
Route :
The route was : Bangalore -> Mysore Rd(SH17) -> Mysore Ring Rd -> Hunsur, Madikeri Rd(SH88) -> Virajpet Rd(SH90) -> Gonikoppal -> Ponnampete -> Srimangala Rd(SH89) -> Srimanagala->Kutta Rd(SH89) -> Irpu Temple
We returned in the same route back to Bangalore, but we could get the forest view along the drive which me missed on our way earlier due to night journey. We could spot elephants and monkeys in the Nagarhole range of forests just before Hunsur.
General Information :
- Total trek distance – 5 km to Narimale Guest House + 6 km to the peak from the guest house
- Total cost for an individual (Includes everything) – 1800 INR, It includes the travel cost from Bangalore in a mini bus too
- Contact number of Forest officer, Brahmagiri: 08274246331 and 09481989970
- Trek Difficulty level: Easy in non rainy season, moderate in rainy season
- Carry enough food; you can cook food at the guest house, no need to carry utensils
- There is a water source near the guest house, no need to carry from the stream on the trekking trail
- No need to carry tents, sleeping bag etc
- The details of the forest office charges are below
- The guest house charge for 12 people for 2 days – 3500 INR
- Forest entry fee per person – 200 INR
- Trekking fee per day per person – 75 INR
- The guide charge per day – 500 INR
- The trek permission per person – 350 INR
(Thanks to Manjunath, Raghavendra, Prasanna, Nithin for some of the photos)
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