Belligundi Falls

Well i wasnt so well and that was when i was still undecided whether to make it or not for the Belligundi trek

After a lot of thinking i finally decided to go ahead with the trek.

Location : Belligundi falls
Route : Deep inside the forest -Sharavathy valley
Rating : Tough




Team members : Shivakumar,Rajesh,Sachin,Prasanna,Jovin,Karyn,Parag,Arjun,Mohan and Shashidhara

We all reached Kargal by the sleeper bus at around 8 am.We were joined by Karyn.So in total we were 10 people ,had breakfast at the resturant and started our journey to Kaarni which is about 45 kms from Kargal.From here we enter the forest ,some real dense forest.

This area is somewhat peculiar ,has some strange razor sharp climbers that one has to be careful with ,else it will just make a cut on your skin ,i experienced it :( .

We then trek along the river bed for quite sometime ,we are enveloped on both sides by very dense forest.Each of us are in our own world ,by now our friend Rajesh shows that he is real guy who has a flair for water :).We stop over for little over an hour for lunch at one such beautiful place in the middle of nowhere .Some nice hot and inviting sambar rice.To our surprise our cooks have estimated the correct amount of food for the entire group ,since only very little was left over after all of us had sufficient helps.
Then we trek along the stream bed.Sometimes it becomes really tricky to cross over the stream bed since it tends to be slippery one has to be careful.Around 3:30 pm we reach the water fall,the entire team go down to enjoy except me,Mohan and sachin since we were all dead tired by now and we still had not reached our destination.

After the boys had a splash at the waterfalls we decided to head to padubeedu ,again this starts with a slight ascent,I was damn tired by now ,we reached the sunset point near padubeedu and relaxed with a cup of tea.i was damn tired and decided to sleep now .The entire team where enjoying a great round of antakshari .I woke up around 9pm and joined them.Soon it was time for dinner and we retired for the day.

The night was colder than i expected and managed to get sleep in batches .Narayana though he was kinder to us ,intially he told that he would wake us up at 5 am ,woke us up at 6am .We got up and finished our ablutions and we had breakfast -upittu ,we started at 7:30 am to our destination -Belligundi falls.




In an hour or so we reached the day 1 waterfalls ,from where we need to trek further into the jungle.We started our long and ardous trek.This trek was interspersed by walking on the boulders as well as walking in the jungle.Some of it was ascent and some of it was plain trek.And then we all reached the starting point of the descent.This is the most treacherous part of the trek.We need to trek about 1.5-2kms down hill with a rate of angle of almost 80 degrees.Most of the forest is covered with falling leaves below which might be one or two loose stones.so one had to be careful.

I still remember the faces of my fellow trekkers when we started the descent ,how would be trek back such a steep ascent on our way back.Behind me was sachin and both of us exchanged glances on more than a few occassions when we saw that huge stones rolled down the hill when narayana was climbing down ahead of us.

Finally at around 10 am we reached the bottom of the falls of Belligundi.Hold on,if you think the trek is over there is more ,lots more.We had to climb up hill through the rocks.Water flows down from the waterfalls.It is quite tricky to climb up this rocky streambed.I took my own time and one of the last to reach the falls.Since it is summer water was less ,but it was ideal to have a bath.I couldnt resist myself and soon i joined the gang below the falls.The experience of standing under the falls is just awesome ,really enjoyed it to the hilt.We were there near the falls for about half an hour before we decided to head back.We decided to have lunch at an upstream on the way .So we all headed to a small stream ahead.We soon had our lunch.I must mention the dog here which followed us right through our trek.We made sure that the dog had lunch as well,since it was going to be a tough uphill trek on the way back.

The uphill was really steep.Huffing and puffing ,i was one of the last person to climb up :).At about 3pm we had a break to rest for a while.Narayana was kind enough to take us in a shorter route on the way back.We reached our destination at about 4pm after taking sufficient breaks enroute to padubeedu.Finally on the back ,when we were just about 3kms away he dropped the bombshell when i asked him the distance,he revealed that todays trek was only 24kms :).But i enjoyed the trek to the hilt for the following reasons :

1)Dense forest cover(we hardly encountered any sunshine on the way)
2)Wonderful co-operative team
3)Excellent time management by our guide Narayana
4)Above all the awesome Belligundi falls made it all worthwhile :)