Kudremukh national park / Thirumaleguppi

Waking up at 4 am in the morning for a trip is only "right", when you are organizing it;). Otherwise you are allowed to sling abuses at your dear organizer friend, who woke up early so that you can sleep for precious 30 more mins. So you can guess that my recent trip to Chikmagalur was really helpful in enlightening my soul or whatever equivalent part I have. We went for 2 days to this absolutely beautiful resort called Eagle Eye . The prices were really reasonable (coming from a marwadi, you better believe it), and the service was perfect. Hopefully one day I will get money to put all these advertisements in my blog.

Anyhow this post is not about the Chikmagalur trip :P , it is about a trek in Kudremukh National Park. Because of the Chikmagalur trip I realized that instead of watching western ghats from a distance, actually trekking on them will give me an excellent opportunity to have nice Facebook profile photos. So once again I looked at BMC calendar and found one more way to waste a weekend.

We left from Bangalore at around 10 in the night and reached "Samshe" village at 6 am, where this board confirmed that we were not lost. Kudremukh means "mouth of horse" in Kannada. Before we could memorize the name, Krishna told us that we are not going to climb Kudremukh but the peak named Thirumaleguppi (Krishna is the name of our guide:)). Instead of learning the new name, now I am content enough to copy-paste it from the BMC website.

From there we had a 5 km jeep ride to Mullodi which fulfilled all my fantasies about Essel world and Fun Kingdom. Below there are some photos to give you an idea. We had breakfast and left our excess luggage at the base camp ( Satish's house in Mullodi village). The trek started at 9:30 in the morning and it didn't even took us an hour to commend our choice for the weekend. We had an additional guide Raghunath from the village. His specific job was to eradicate any doubt that we have completed significant part of the trek. We climbed four peaks one after another having steep slope, with constant rain, wet grass and slippery rocks helping us all the way. The views were absolutely breathtaking with clouds and green mountains fighting for our attention.

One of the main attractions is the special ecosystem there. There are huge meadows interspersed with "rainforest" of very small width. It seems that harsh monsoon winds don't let anything grow over the open faces except grass, but the valleys hidden from these wind
s having abundant water behave like rainforests. Passing these weird natural creations we reached the peak "Thirumaleguppi" at around 1:00. Amid constant rain, wind and tiredness; simple rice tasted much better than all the Shahi Paneer and Dal Bati :). We returned to the base camp at around 5 in the evening.

We were greeted by tea and hot bhajji (hot in every sense). By the way there is a restaurant "R.R." in bangalore famous for its birayani, also called "Roaring Rectum" :). Since constant rain extinguished (literally) any chance of campfire, we decided to play DumbC. We were clearly losing until one of our teammate gave the movie
The Assasination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford
Our team never looked back, and scored a comfortable win ( lets say atleast a draw). The time before dinner was filled with customary Antakshari, where a single guy "Gopala" won against all of us:P.

Since there was only one toilet for 20 of us, so we decided to go to waterfall ... for taking bath. As a small puzzle try to find the 4 people in the photo on the left. Anyway after having breakfast we had the same adventure ride again. Our stay in Mullodi village was pretty pleasant. The food was simple but nice at Satish's house in Mullodi, and the place was well kept andclean. His phone number is 08263-249595/9481074530. This is another blog about trek in the same area.

Gabbar, Ramnagar and Hrithik Roshan

I watched "Lakshya" few weeks ago and decided to emulate Hrithik Roshan. Not the "main aisa kyon hoon" part (has been through that phase lot of times), but the intense rock climbing bit shown in the end. There is a nice organization by the name "Bangalore Mountaineering Club", which organizes lot of outdoor trips every week. The prices are pretty reasonable and a great way to go out as soon as your friends start ignoring you.

So we decided to go for rock climbing trip organized in Ramnagar, where Sholay was shot. Hence the trip was filled with numerous moments, where people hanging from the cliff, trying to look cool, praying to the god/guide, would shout "kitne aadmi the". All in all trip was real fun with four different activities. We started with rappelling down a cliff. Then moved on to Chimney Climbing, which was by far the most exciting part of the trip. The idea here is to climb two perfectly vertical parallel cliffs close to each other. It takes lot of shoulder and leg strength, courage and firm believe in Jackie Chan.

After lunch we went for river crossing on some meadows. The lack of river didn't curb our enthusiasm and we crossed the fictional river both on the upward as well as downward rope. The last part of trip was a small trek to board the bus back to Bangalore. The trip was fun, but would have been more interesting if it had some instructions about how to setup things and tie knots etc..

Also other thing which annoyed us was the garbage thrown around on trails. It seems we exemplify the parasite nature of human beings mentioned by Mr. Smith (popularly known as Agent Smith) in Matrix. I would like to point out few things here.

1. Don't throw polythene bags, instead if u see one, pick it up and use as a trash for yourself.
2. Inspite of the enormous amount of bacteria in this world, the "bio-degradable" stuff you throw doesn't decompose quickly and destroys the beauty of the place.
3. Do not pee ON THE trail. By now even animals can figure out that it is a special section. Given your belief that you belong to higher intelligence, you may as well try.
4. Don't write anything on the trees etc.. I understand that paper is made from trees , but that is not in anyway "going closer to the nature".

I hope to see some dramatic changes in junta's behaviour after this post :P.

Kick-ass route in Yosemite: 4mile + Panaroma trail

The awesomeness of the hike can be gauged from the fact that it made me start my own blog. Yeah, this is my first blogpost/blog where we talk about this kick ass hike in Yosemite valley.
This is the best way to explore Yosemite Valley in one day (you only miss out on Bridalveil Falls).

This hike makes you walk for around 14 miles, and has 4000 feet of elevation change. We took nearly 11 hours to finish this, so early start is recommended. The idea is to start from "4 mile" trail head and go to Glacier point, then come back via Panaroma trail to Yosemite Valley. This way you cover two famous hikes without the hassle of taking shuttle to reach one end of trailhead.
Very nice description of both these hikes is given on Yosemite hikes website.
1. 4 mile trail
2. Panorama-trail

After the technicalities, I will come straight to blatant advertisement. There is no better way to see Yosemite Falls then do 4 mile trail from bottom to top. We parked the car in Yosemite valley and walked to "4 mile" trailhead (10 mins walk, if el-capitan shuttle is running then it can also be used). The hike started at 6. In the first 2 hours we conquered numerous switchbacks, played hide and seek with a deer and watched glimpses of Yosemite fall. The best part is, as you go up, the view becomes more comprehensive and so more brilliant. Before you get tired of the waterfall, Half Dome gives its first appearance. There will always be thoughts as to why not climb the Half Dome instead, but the chains might not be put up yet and it is too late to worry about this question anyway :). After about 3 miles we passed through a gate which is closed in the winters. At approximately the same time, we were stuck by the demise of stamina/leg of our eldest hiker (Age : 30 years). But still he maintained a steady profile and at 11 we reached Glacier point.


The ice-creams were eaten for the incredible feat of finishing 1/3rd of the hike (there is a restaurant at Glacier point). One intelligent person (not me :P), has commented that after hiking Panaroma trail life will be divided into two parts, one before Panaroma, one after Panaroma. So with lots of hope, water and an injured friend we started on the second part of our life.
To say the least that intelligent person was actually intelligent. It is hard to find a hike which provides you yet another amazing view, even before you have finished lamenting about spending less time at the previous spot. This happens way too often and we realized that one day is too less to devote to this hike.

Intially there are amazing views of the valley as you go down. Before going to the bridge, there is a viewpoint for Illilouette Falls (100 feet from the trail). Pronunciation is just one of the fun parts of this fall. Then you reach the stream and the bridge (relaxed on the side of the stream before going over the bridge). That is when the god/trail makers cheat you. They made us gain the elevation which we had lost in last 1 hour. But they make up for it through Panaroma point, here we met our old friend (yosemite falls, not the injured one) again. The hike ends with Vernal and Nevada falls. The last part has few surprises, and I will keep them surprises.



One of the most interesting hikes I have done, and definitely the best in terms of scenery. The hike ends in Yosemite valley. We took the free bus to reach the place where we parked our car.