A Monsoon Tale in Tadiyandamol - Part 1

Text Courtesy - Naveen S L [IAS/IPS]

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 Unpredictable 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 - Naveen (Bodybuilder), Sunil (Body breaker), Karthik (Expert Photographer), Ajith ( Yoga Expert), Babu (Founder member of our group), Harsha (Karthik's best pal), Deepak (My gym mate).

We quickly assembled on the designated June 4 2010 Friday night at the "Satellite Bus station" on the Mysore road. Apparently , all buses 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.



Napping near Virajpet Bus Stand in the wee hours !

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 apparently wouldn’t 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.











Macho Man in the center









Around 30 minutes later, we were dropped nearby the "Aramane Cross" from whereon we were to ascend the peak of Tadiyandamol. 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 throughout 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 commercialization 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, we 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 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 it’s 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 advice 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 along, 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 certainly 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 their 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" identifiable by the numerous trees and fallen leaves with wet moist layer of dew covering 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 sprawling with leeches.



Ajith became all the more vociferous about leeches, and resorted to amateur 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" guidance 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 re-seek the trail from the cross-section ahead. Incredibly, as we reached the intersection, we realized that we had missed a straight 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, Tadiyandamol was almost covered fully in clouds now. Julie kept faithfully following us as we kept halting at picturesque "Pit-Stops" 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.


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 original "Peak" revealed several larger hills behind it and the real peak was much further than we thought.






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.



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 pictures 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 their 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 their 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.



Heating the MREs

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.

Inside the Tents ... Part 2