Sakleshpur Trek #7
Sunday morning, when all honest folk are in church nursing hangovers, we were miles from civilisation. Gary rose and shone a little before the rest of us. He apparently had to get to work the same day and Sat, Sid, Reena and Yamini decided to go along. If only India was full of people as conscientious...
The rest of us relaxed, had a nice cold bath under the waterfall,
had a light breakfast and packed up to leave camp by about 10:00
AM.
There was steep descent from behind the railway station to the valley. We made rapid progress here and reached the river below in record time. The water level was quite low, and the river was just a couple of feet wide in some places. We jumped right across it. On the other side was a jeep track along the river, which led to the Hassan-Mangalore highway.
We followed this track further on, till we hit the same river we'd
crossed earlier. The highway was visible on the other side, only
this time around, the river was all of 50 metres wide, full of
rocks and ranging from knee to waist deep. Gary and gang were still
there trying to cross over. Apparently they'd followed the jeep
track in the other direction and lost thier way. Poor Gary's
diligence, all to nought.
There was a bridge across this river, and the ruins of this bridge were still standing tall amidst all the greenery. The local public works department are planning to re-build again, and we actually ran into a group of locals taking surveys and measurements of the place.
But back to reality. We needed to cross the river. And quickly.
The locals chose to wade through the waist deep water, whereas the
trekkers were struggling through the knee deep rocks. We decided to
go with the waist deep . The four guys, BC, Ujjal, Shriram and I
got across with our backpacks first. I had to hitch the backpack
over my head to avoid getting it wet.
We then crossed over again, and took the girls' backpacks and 2 of the girls (Archana and Usha) across. We went back a third time for the remaining girls. What was waist deep for most was neck deep for Maryam and entirely too deep for Sapna. BC had to hitch Sapna up on his waist to cross the deepest parts.
Well, just across the river was the highway, and we had to wait
about 3 minutes to hitch a ride back to Sakleshpur. BC and Sapna
headed the other way to Dharmastala. 2 hours atop a rickety truck
and we were nestled comfortably in a busy restaurant in the crowded
Sakleshpur bus stand.
There were no delux buses to Bangalore with seats available, so we took the standard KSRTC red bus. They say that these buses are uncomfortable and cramped, I didn't notice anything. I was busy involved in my favourite hobby... sleeping. 6 hours later, we breathed the familiar Bangalorean carbon monoxide, with only about an hour to spare for Maryam's train back to Madras.
Bangalore is home and I love it, but if I had a chance to spend the rest of my living days amidst the natural unspoiled beauty of the ghats... we can all dream, can't we ? Meanwhile, it's monday morning, and if that wasn't bad enough, I haven't been fired yet.