My First Trekking experience..

I guess most of you are having your Monday Blues… So do I… Those who wanna know a real trekking experience go ahead reading it. and for people who are busy 'I went for trek to Dabbe Falls and it was awesome'.  
 

Well, Last year I had a great experience when I went for a Trek to Dabbe Falls.

 

This falls is in a forest in Sagara Taluk, Karnataka, near Shimoga. Srini, two of our friends and I went for the trek.

 

We took a bus from Bangalore to Sagara, reached Sagara by 7.30AM, booked a room and got ready by 8.30AM. We went to the Bus stand, for our shock the 8.30AM bus which was supposed to go thru Batkal road (starting point of the trek) didn't come. So we negotiated (using all techniques taught to us by His Excellency) with a auto guy and fixed up a decent price. In the Auto journey we realized, we didn't get drinking water with us and there are no shops on the way and our man Srini says "Machan Don't worry there is shop from where we start our trek. We will get everything there". We traveled in a auto for 50Kms and reached the starting point of the trek at around 10.45AM.

 

We got down and noticed the shop that Srini quoted was there, but closed. Now, Srini says "Machan we need Cigarette lighter or match box, there might be some leeches". We were thinking 'In this God Forsaken land where do we get a match box?' , finally we begged the Auto Driver and got his Cigarette lighter ( He claims that lighter to be of some German Technology, I have seen similar one in City Sagar). The Auto leaves and we start our trek at around 11.00AM.

 

We walked 200m, and there were two paths I front of us. We all see Srini (Our Leader), Srini says "Machan I don't know". We took one of the routes and we walked for 45mins. The road ends there with a small house in front. We drank some water and filled the empty bottle we had. Enquired the people "How to go?" they said "Go back and take the deviation" we walked back say 0.5 Km and took the deviation. Now we kept walking saw one or two people here and there, we just confirmed whether we were on the right track. It was nice greenery around, we took some snaps and video. Then came the hard part of the trek.

 

The paths started worsening and finally became bad. At one point there was big tree trunk on the path. We were crossing, first those two guys crossed, then it was Srini. I was standing behind Srini and I noticed leech on his pant. We crossed that place and removed the leech from his pant. To have check we pulled our pants up and my God, everyone had leeches on there legs. These bloody blood suckers have drunk so much of our blood without causing any pain. Some leech were 1 inch long. We removed them and kept going. From then we used to have "Leech Alerts" every 15mins and every time we had one our two leeches sticking on to us and we kept removing them.

 

Then we walked for another 45mins and reached a river. We crossed the river on a wooden bridge which was bloody slippery.  Here the real fun started, heavy rains, we standing on the bottom of a hill and we didn't know which direction to take? and we are in the middle of a forest. Our leader Srini says  "Machan we will climb the Hill and from there we can find out how to go?". We walked in the direction reached the hill top and found there was no way to go further. One side was river, one side was a cliff and the other was the side was the side we came from. So we started shouting so that someone will help us. We standing on the top of a hill and shouting. For our surprise we got another voice from somewhere. We weren't even able to see him. We shouted " Dabbe Falls". He shouted "Alli Hogi". Srini tried talking so much and finally nothing happened and we didn't know what to do. We walked back to the bottom of the hill. There was haunted house with no one. It was heavily raining we were standing near a hill. We filled our water bottle from there. After 5 ~ 10mins some one came there. We asked him how to go? He said you have to cross the river and go forward, you will find a path on the other side, take that. We went to the river. Luckily every one of us knew swimming, so we weren’t much afraid. We got into the river. Water was till our knees and it was flowing with full force. We walked in the river for 5mins and found the path. We got in to the path.

 

Now things were getting still worse. This was a thick forest and we kept walking and walking. In between one of our friends fell down and got hurt. The trek continued. We were the only people trekking there. We found more leeches. Leech on a guy's back, leech on the wound. My God. We finally saw a House there. We went to the house and asked them how to go to ' Dabbe Falls', they showed us the way and we asked them to cook some food for us. We went to see the falls. This stretch was little more slippery and sloppy. We went to a place and stopped. We noticed going beyond that was a huge risk. It was very steep slope and it was still raining heavily.

 

Now Srini tied a rope to a tree and started going down, none of others had the guts to do it. It was only Srini who had the guts to do it. He went down and we weren't able to see him also. We started shouting and he replied back, what we used to get back only his voice, which was ensuring us that he was safe. We all freaked standing there. The other side of the point we were standing was a cliff. After 5mins he came back. We asked him "Did you see the Falls?", Srini replies "Machan full mist da". We all started laughing. We climbed up and went to the house. It was 2.45PM.

 

We relaxed for sometime. Freshened up. Had our lunch and left that place by 3.50PM. Now the person in the house accompanied us as we had to go back fast. We came back in the same route half the way and then took another route. As usual more leeches and finally we reached the main road by 5.00PM. Here we noticed that one of our friend had some leech on his leg. The Blood sucker was on his leg just above the socks and it was really big. We got rid of it. Caught the last bus to Sagara which was at 5.30PM and in the bus we found that there was a leech in one of my friends hand

 

On the way the bus went to Jog Falls. We saw Jog Falls and reached our Hotel by 8.30PM. We freshened up vacated the room and left to Bangalore by 10.00PM.

 

Guys, this was an awesome experience for us. We all enjoyed it and thanks to Srini who actually initiated the idea of trekking.

 

By the way the total expense was Rs.863.25/- per head.