Tadiyandamol Trek and HANGOVER

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flow into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. ~John Muir

God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars. ~Martin Luther

As TV channels showed clippings of notoriously Unpredictible yet essential Indian Monsoons hitting the coasts of kerala, i felt increasingly restless about our weekend plan to scale Coorg's tadiyandamol. Monsoons meant slippery grass, leeches and more importantly thunderous rainfall for which our group was ill prepared for.

After consultations and discussions, however, we unanimously decided to Go ahead and do the thing.

So the customary marketing and enlistment turned up 7 volunteers.

Me(Bodybuilder),

Sunil(Body breaker),

Karthik ( Expert Photographer),

Ajith( Yoga Expert),

Babu ( Founder member of our group),

Harsha( Karhik's best pal),

Deepak( My gym mate).

Toyota mahesh, raghu, tiger babu and others missed out for various reasons.

We quickly assembled on the designated Friday night at the "Satellite Bus station" on the Mysore road. Apparently , all busses on route to Mysore ,coorg etc were now being serviced from this station instead of the "Majestic" one.

Me, sunil, deepak and Karthik had dinner at this Fast food joint near the bus stand, however the quality of food was far from satisfactory. Later we met up with the rest of the gang at the Bus Station and quickly alighted the waiting bus to "Napoklu". Since our travel Policy strictly forbids "Luxury" , we settled for a Rajahamsa bus which is sort of stretching the Upper limits of our acceptable travel in terms of Comfort.

The Bus ride was rather uneventful, with only exception being the lovely coorgi ladies sitting beside Karthik , who lost no time to attract them with his Yankee accent and over the top accounts of his Stay in USA.

Karthik and I have similar policy when it comes to girls, "No matter what the odds and how disgusting it may seem, attracting a beautiful gal is definitely worth it"

We hardly got 5 hours of sleep as we were dumped into this quaint little Bus station in Virajpet at the wee hours of Saturday.

We quickly made good use of the Bus Station's Taps as we refreshed ourselves and made ready for the journey ahead. Karthik got increasingly fond of a haggardly looking chap and got busy taking his snaps while we redistributed the load and repacked the bags.

Later, not without my persuading, we moved out of the station and started walking to a nearby Private Bus station from where another bus would take us to Kakkabe.It was here we met a certain Macho man from coorg, about 4 feet tall, who lived all his life in coorg but apprently wouldnt know the route!

Eventually we found this dreary looking private bus station where i took a quick nap while others made local forays doing everything from buying vegetables to drinking local Tea.

It was still around 5 Am in the morning and only living things apart from us were the rather plum looking dogs of coorg.

As dawn broke , we had tea and breakfast at the local station , took a couple of pictures of increasingly cloudy coorg, relieved ourselves beside a picturesque lake , had a quintessentially coorgi breakfast and then Boarded the just arrived bus to napoklu.

Around 30 mins later, we were dropped nearby the "Aramane Cross" from whereon we were to ascend the peak of tadiayandamol.

The road from the cross to Palace is a tarred one, and with its slight gradient, was good enough to warm us up while we enjoyed the exquisite beauty of the place.

The Tarred road it seemed was punched right throught the thick maze of flowers, trees , grasses and tiny animals , and we felt quite elated at the prospect of better things to come.

What dismayed us, however, was the increasing commericialization of the place with several Concrete Resorts springing up aside the lovely road.

As we reached the Palace, we noticed tadiyandamol chain of mountains in background, and needless to say, were awed by the nascent beauty of it. There was a pretty little school aside the "Palace", which although closed momentarily, was pretty functional. It could be straight out of Malgudi days it seemed.

We lured all the kids playing around the school playground with the prospect of a "Picture" and took a snap with them.

I promptly sought out a cute girl in that group and held her hand while we took the picture.

It is my Avowed policy to help protect the endangered girl child and to give her the requisite tools to combat discrimination which is so rampant in this country.

Then we frantically searched for drinking water, and failing to do so decided to buckle up and get ready for next phase of trekking.

The initial climb was rather steep, but since the trail was still tarred, we felt it was unnecessarily laborious. The Steep Tarred trail started sucking the wind out of certain members of our group, as i too felt uncomfortable with the heavy backpack that i had.

As we reached the end of the Tarred trail, the regular muddy trail took over and it was time to have fun.

We noticed a small mansion on the right side of a forest department employee complete with gardens and fields.

We marched on along the rather broad trail (indicating its been pretty run down) as we met certain "Suicide dude". Apparently this guy was dressed like a beggar, had a physique that would shame a TB patient, but spoke excellent english in the most depressing manner known to mankind.

After seeking his advise on the trail ahead, we kept marching.

Lack of good breakfast started having its toll , as we rummaged through the bags of everyone gobbling up everything from chips to chocolates.

We occasionally took pictures of the group as we kept the pace ahead.

As the dense foliage cleared at certain point, what we could behold was the most glorious sight a man could see. It was a dense chain of mountains clothed in the most intricate of greens.

A couple of meters ahead we met this amazing little dog who relished the sight of us. It was a Bitch and karthik promptly named it "Julie". We got pretty fond of julie and it started following wherever we went. As we marched alogn, sometimes it made a mockery of our pace by racing ahead and then watching , impatiently it seemed, us joining it.

Then we reached this clearing on the foot of the mountains which was most certaintly a Base camp. Remains of numerous campfires could be clearly seen and i had read accounts of a certain water source nearby too. I requested babu and ajith to seek out this water source and report me the finding. They managed to do it within minutes , not of course, without a few leeches sticking to thier boots.

Having decided to Camp at the place tonight, we decided to march ahead to the peak which was visible ahead. Dense and amazingly endowed with vegetation, it was almost hidden by the lovely veil of clouds as it bewitchingly allured us boys to scale it.

As we marched ahead, we met a point where 2 trails emerged , and as luck would have had it, we choose the wrong one. This one led right into "Leech Zone" identifyable by the numerous trees and fallen leaves with wet moist layer of dew coverign them. As we traversed through it, ajith and babu screamed out that they had been taken by leeches. As we emerged out of this forested zone, most of our shoes were sprawlign with leeches.

Ajith became all the more vociferous about leeches, and resorted to ametuer theatricals to convey his point, at one time holding up entire group with his shoes in hand. Babu had to calm him down with his profound litany of unmentionable expletives.

After rummaging through grass trying to find way ahead, interspersed with ajith's "expert" guidence of route ahead, we decided to back track and retreat back to the camp.

At the camp, karthik now screamed out like a ravaged woman pointing to leeches on his shoes.

Sunil too started screaming vociferously as he noticed a few leeches feeding on his socks.

Me and babu were incredibly calm as we admistered salt to everyone in group before turning attention to ourselves.

Later I and babu checked each other for leeches and oddly enough, found none.

We quickly regained our composure as we decided to reseek the trail from the crossection ahead.

Incredibly,as we reached the intersection, we realized that we had missed a staright forward trail ahead!.

As we took the right trail now, we quickly ascended into the most amazing view i had ever seen. Nestled amongst mountains, tadiayandamol was almost covered fully in clouds now. Julie kept faitfully following us as we kept halting at picturesque "Pitshops" along the way.

We felt it apt to reward her with a part of our precious chocolates and biscuits, which was approvingly lapped up by her.

As climb got steeper, Deepak found it increasingly hard to sustain his energy levels thanks to an incident of diarrhea a week earlier. Mahesh babu, who does excellent job of making sure the rear of our group never gets lost, requested us to let go of deepak while he camped below with all our gear. Facing no other option, we decided to dump all our gear with Deepak as we marched up ahead.

This is where the climb got challenging , and reminded us of kumarapavata in terms of gradient. We passed through another leech infested forest again, but having learnt our lessons now and without heavy gear, we managed to quickly pass through it without attracting the creepy crawlies.

As we emerged out of forest, what we saw both excited and dismayed us, the the original "Peak" revealed several larger hills behind it and the real peak was much further than we thought.

Now the trail was typical Tropical savanna, low lying grasses and shrubbery. As we traversed the hillocks, i fell behind as a fitter ajith and babu took lead and reached the peak a few seconds ahead of me.

What we saw on peak was the most incredible sight we had ever seen.

It was pure geography in action.

It was a wall of clouds trying to get past the glorious mountain ranges of western ghats of which we were part of, and being unsuccessful, pouring all the moisture they have on the plains below.

The area behind this "facing" side naturally was so called Shadow area, where rain was scare and vegetation scrubby.

It was almost as if gods were playing games on a celestial scale and we , mere mortals, getting a chance to view this miracle first hand.

After fully living the ecstasy derived from scaling the peak , we took a few cursory pics as we contemplated what a Wonderful world it was. Me and karthik unanimously agreed that modern advents like TV had basically ruined people's lives, with most preferring to park themselves firmly in couch instead of being part of this wonderful real world that god made for us.

Ajith at this point plucked out his phone and played a song, something which was not appreciated by me back then.

Nature has a way of conveying messages through its perennial peace and tranquility i felt, and should therefore not be polluted with the cacophony of modern gadgets.

As we reluctantly descended from the peak, we met another group of trekkers from chennai, who seemed to have wind driven out of thier sails quite effectively.

We met up with deepak and our faithful dog julie who kept watch over him and recollected our bags. We descended back to base camp where our weary bodies quickly scaled Campsite's "ROCK" before playing dead for a couple of minutes. A couple of us then headed out to a little stream beside the campsite and got lost bathing and frolicking amidst freezing waters.

As we headed back to camp after an hour of fun and frolic, we found guys starving and least amused by our recent travail. We quickly cooked food on our carried stove as winds tried thier best to douse the flames. After a quick meal, i ordered the tents to be pitched up, which were, considering the discipline of our group, done quite well. I made sure the pitched up tents were up the mark, by correcting the deficiencies and drilling the nails to the ground.

As we contemplated our surreal surroundings, we were passed over by many weary looking trekkers on the way , and were met by us with usual mix of disgust and fascination.

Some girls too hankered along with one group, and karthik made sure sufficient attention was drawn to us with his dramatics.

Eventually our tents were put to use with the rain coming down all of a sudden. We excitedly barged into our tents while julie bore the brunt of the rain.

Poor little doggy was all wet by the time the rain ceased.

As rain ceased, the guys wouldnt come out and babu had already started on his usual chit chats with guys inside the tent. Apparently the luxury of warm tents had gotten to them. After "persuading" them to shovel thier A**s out of tents, we quickly weighed options of staying here tonight. The monsoons were hitting with full fury, but it was the cold which bothered me. So when the Watchman of the forest dept came along later and said the camp was unsafe because of elephant activity, we really had to rethink now.

The watchman's offer of inviting to his cosy mansion and arranging a campfire eventually turned out to be too much to refuse as we repacked our tents and descended on to his abode.

His place was around a Km below the peak and was a rather picturesque house complete with his own backyard and gardens.

The descent to his House below was quick and uneventful, but by now the clouds were amongst us and it had started to drizzle profusely.

As we reached Tammana's house, we quickly put away our gear and tents as the man himself got busy preparing us "Tea" out of his rather smoky kitchen.

Apparently he had large stash of firewood in his backyard as fuel.

Having drunk our tea, we got down to a more "refined" task of setting up campfire, not a easy task considering the light drizzle then on. However,we eventually got one fire up and quickly gathered around it.

We started off with our usual doses of SOMA and it was then when ALL HELL broke loose.

We opened up and coughed up our pathetic stories of love, retribution and failures.

There was a highly vociferous debate as to whether true love existed with some amongst us comparing love to pure chemistry. Naturally , it turned out to idiotic cacophony interspersed by unmentionable expletives.

We then tried our hand at singing song, which , sadly is the unfortunate side effect of such gatherings. Realizing the futility of this painful exercise, however, we quickly gave it up.

We then sent a message to Deepak's love who was already engaged to someone else, asking for her forgiveness and acceptance failing which he was to, on our "Suggestion", commit suicide.

Luckily the pathetic signal reception there made sure the message didnt reach the poor lass.Karthik meanwhile had to be dug out of the little depression in kitchen in which he fell into, apparently in an inebriated state. I knocked my head on one of the nastily low doors in the house. Sunil kept harping about potential snakes in the room while deepak just couldn't recover from his tragic love story.

It was a scene right out of "Hangover" movie.

Night passed in Tammanna the Forest guard's house rather uneventfully and only thing we remembered next day was the frigid cold the night before.

As Dawn broke, the teetotallers amongst us woke up early and ventured around to explore thimmappa's fabulous outhouses and gardens in which he had reared everything from pigs to acre nuts.

When senses came upon the rest of us, we quickly gathered for Ajith's Entertainment Event.

Apparently it was decided that he would entertain us with his yoga antics,something which invited sniggers as well as admiration from our gang.

As Ajith wiggled and twisted onto his numerous poses, discussions raged as to how it enhanced "Performance" amidst counter claims of it leading to impotency.

Then , it was time for another tea, before and we quickly had breakfast out of our MRE's.

After that , we quickly buckled up and got cracking on our gear, for it was time to head back. After a generous "Tip" to tammanna, we left , rather reluctantly ,his guesthouse and headed back down.

Within a short time we reached the nalknad palace, which now open, provided us ample opportunities for our exploration.

We found a guide in its curator and we happily clicked away pictures of everything from the king's bedrooms to a secret torture chamber below.

After finishing palace detour, we all descended quickly to the cross section where buses to our next destination would show up.

A pair of cute coorgi girls at bus stop invited glares and profound speculations about thier "availability" from some among us, while others washed thier faces under a nearby tap.

From there, As the bus came, we headed out to a discreet place called chey-und-ane. It was from there we embarked on a 4 km Road trek to a rather dissapointing dry water falls called chelavara.

However, such as it was, it offere a refreshing bath to our weary bodies.

The road trek was naturally a bit too much for us so we opted for an Auto ride back to the Point where the bus dropped us.

As we waited then for the next bus to take us to Virajpet from where we were to head to bangalore, we gorged ouselves onto the snacks offered by the nearby Bakery.

So when the next bus came, we readily barged into it.

A delectable gal next to our seat offered plenty of excitement to karthik and i as we reached the destination in about 30 mins.

From there, we were to spend rest of our time in Bus station witnessing a horrific skirmish of local Kodagu landlord and his fellow Laborers leaving the town. We imagine they were treated badly whilst they worked for him.

Eventually , we got on to a bus to Mysore and finally bid Adeu to a wonderful jouney to Coorg that was....