Start of Year Trekking

11, January 2003, Saturday morning 5.30

We thought we were late to take Gummidipoondi train that started from Chennai at 6.10AM and rushed to the railway station. Palayam had asked us to be at the railway station at 6AM and I had asked everybody to be there at 5.45 AM, giving ourselves enough time to be late. When we reached station the time was 5.45AM. The moment we entered the lounge, we saw Karthik also enter with his friends.

After the initial introductions, Karthik and I came to the entrance to see whether Palayam was waiting there for us with his friend. He was nowhere to be seen, so we went back to the lounge. Meanwhile, Guru went to get some medicines, general antibiotics while Bharat and Victor were hanging around in the vicinity.

A stranger approached us asking if we had anything to do with Cygnus. He introduced himself as Manoj, Palayam’s friend and conveyed that the latter was on his way. By then, the time was 6.15 and we were sure that we had missed our train. So, Victor, Bharat, Uthra and I went to have our breakfast in the station’s Saravana Bhavan restaurant. As we finished our breakfast and descended the stairs, Guru came looking for us saying that Palayam had come and they have bought tickets for 6.50 train.

We boarded the train at 6.50 AM and reached Kavaraipettai, a station prior to Gummidipoondi, at 8 AM where Vijayan, a villager who accompanies Palayam on all his treks to Nagari Hills, was waiting with a jeep. After loading the luggage onto jeep’s top, we drove through villages for the next 2 hours. On our way we stopped near a lake and had our breakfast. We had packed idlis, Karthik had got some cream buns, cakes and bread. Palayam had brought Veg Pulav and Pooris. So we decided to keep some for lunch instead of cooking something fresh.

After breakfast we drove to a place called Sathyavedu where Palayam picked up warm bedspreads, plastic sheets, bedrolls for the night. Then we reached T P Kota village, where he picked vegetables and utensils for cooking. The roads were not too bad but in some places, there were only dusty patches that had lots of potholes. We reached the base camp at 11.30 AM.

In case we had taken a bus to T P Kota village, we would have got down at the terminus to walk up from there to the hills and this would have taken at least an hour. But since we had taken the jeep, we reached the foothills in 15 minutes and started our trek immediately. At 11.45AM, we began our trek into the forest.

The initial part of trek was very comfortable, as we followed the sand trail that was soft to our feet with natural-avenue like path. Once we entered the hilly bottom of the forest, there were lots of small rocks. Of course, after this there was no path that we could take. There were many thorny plants on both of our sides, so we had to be extra careful lest get pricked by them for we didn’t know if there were any poisonous ones among them. But Vijayan was carrying an axe, which looked more like a sickle. He, along with Palayam, led us through the thickets clearing the shrubs on his way. Manoj was behind us seeing to it that no one was left behind.

After a trek of 20 minutes we came to a clearing. A part of the stream that we were following from our base camp appeared like a narrow river stretch here. We rested for a couple of minutes and walked deeper in to the forest. Another 15 minutes trek brought us to the entrance of a cave. The entrance was narrow but we were told that the cave was big and tall from inside. Looked like the naxalites used this cave as a place to store their supplies when they went on a looting raid!

We trekked for over an hour and reached the base of the waterfalls. The place was full of boulders and rocks with water taking an unhurriedly serene course. We had our lunch of Veg Pulav and Pooris here. Though it was 1.30 in the afternoon, we didn’t feel the heat of day – there were lots of trees to protect us from sun and of course the cool breeze blowing was magically wiping away tiredness from our muscles. What a very pleasant ambience for a bewitching trek!

We climbed, scrambled, hopped and trotted from 2.30 till 4 PM, and reached our bedroom – the place we would spend our night. This part of trek was tedious. It was an uphill climb where we, carefully, had to tread near the corner of the hill. To our right, hills were falling into a valley. We could sense the altitude increasing as we moved up. We didn’t raise our heads up to see where we were for the fear of tumbling and falling all the way down. This path was full of small and big stones that were shifty. A couple things that I learnt during the trek are a) we need to concentrate on our walking, b) if we concentrate we can avoid the mishaps that could happen otherwise.

Our bedroom – the over hanging cave was huge to let at least 20 people to sleep in. We dropped our bags there and climbed 10 steps up where the stream became source of the waterfalls. There was one spot where this waterfall flowed into a 30meters-deep big pool. There, the guys went off to have their bath and we girls were shown another pool which looked like a natural Jacuzzi lest for hot water. Though the water was only chest high we were apprehensive but once inside we had a wale of a time. We were asked not to use soaps to avoid polluting the waters. We spent an hour in there and scrambled up our way to the kitchen, which is where we had earlier assembled.

There was hot tea ready for us (courtesy Vijayan) and then began our chatting session. Karthik, being a hotel management guy awed us by his vegetable cutting skills and gave us a short intro on the differences between chopping and slicing of vegetables. I got to know how to prepare Szechwan fried rice from him. Though he claimed that he has lost his tempo for cutting vegetables (he works for an online advertising company called Bridge Over Troubled Waters), he held our rapt attention through out. Then Bharat, who has completed his PG in life sciences was talking about lichens – a combination of algae and fungi, this is used to find the age of a rock or tree on which it grows. Victor, with his atavistic nature was entertaining us with stories of his trekking experiences. Then we settled down to talk about literature and Manoj was rambling about Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie and Dominique LaPierre and Alvin Toffler etc. Guru gave his opinions on the writing styles of Indian writers and discussed theatrical works that were happening in the city.

Meanwhile, Vijayan was cooking yummy sambar and rice for our dinner. Palayam had brought lots of apples, oranges and bananas with him. Karthik, Cheenu (Palayam’s junior photographer) and I were helping Vijayan by cutting fruits for the dessert. At 8 PM, we had a sumptuous dinner and settled down under the overhanging cave for a campfire.

Uthra and Rekha, my sister-in-laws sang good film songs when Bharat also enthusiastically joined in to sing a couple of songs. I did a few chorus stuff, was not actually in a mood to entertain, as I was more than happy to be entertained. Then the quizzing wizard Karthik started to shoot trivia questions on us. He also told us the history of Madras, which was a good learning experience for all. Meanwhile, Vijayan and Cheenu had spread the sheets / bedrolls for us to sleep and we slept at 11PM. The overhanging cave protected us from the mist, which we found difficult to bear near the waterfalls. We snugly slept with very little disturbance. I awoke only once in the early morning finding the place cold, but sleep fairy took over my senses once again.

12, January 2003, Sunday morning 7.15

I was wide-awake listening to the chirping birds and gurgling waterfall. The peaceful morning sun lighting the hills, giving an ethereal effect, looked very beautiful to be wasted sleeping. Palayam, Manoj, Bharat, Cheenu and Vijayan were already up. Manoj was ready for his morning tea after a refreshing bath in the waterfalls. Vijayan was busy preparing tea and coffee. Palayam was helping Vijayan cutting vegetables. Cheenu had vanished into the waterfalls for his bath and Bharat was lounging on the boulders basking under the sunlight.

We brushed our teeth and had tea while Manoj and Palayam were preparing to teach us a few basic lessons on rappelling when the breakfast was ready. We had our breakfast of maggi noodles, idiyappam with sugar and bread with jam. The time was 10.30AM when we decided to take a trek to another waterfalls and have the rappelling class during another trekking trip.
Our next stop was an hour’s walk away from our resting-place. This part of trek was tough. We had to climb on boulders that were slanting and almost vertical. But by this time, we all had a feel of how to walk on the slippery boulders. So this was an enhancement of our trekking lesson, rather than a life-risking tight corner.

The worst part of this trek was the scores and scores of red ants. They were everywhere, on the boulders, on the plants, on the ground, everywhere except in the waters. The trekking path was on the corners of the waterfalls, which traveled on the level ground. So we had to duck in and go to avoid the red ants to feast on us. Manoj was of great help here, he was there whenever we needed help for support as there was no level ground at all and we were hopping on the slippery boulders quickly before the boulders could give in to ditch us into the waters.

We made it to this place at 11.45 in the afternoon. It was again a cave overhanging with a wider stream flowing to its right. On its left was the rock face of this cave, which rose to about 30 feet above. We had our tea here and were led to a rock that looked like the one, shot in the movie – The Beach. To reach this place we had to either swim or wade through the waters. We waded through the waters. It was deep in the center and the streambed was slippery with small stones. So we did a little rock climbing to reach the other side of rock face. We waded in thigh high water to reach the strip of land.

A single rock stood in front of us in the middle of the waters. There were gaps on both the sides of the rock and the rock face of our cave was on its left while another rock face was on its right. It just looked amazing and we thought all the effort were worth it to see such a magnificent beauty. The guys decided to have their bath there. Here again we had problem with red ants. So we quickly left the strip of land where we stood to watch the ‘beauty’ and hurried back to our meeting place.

We went downstream, which led away from our meeting place and plunged into a small natural reservoir. There was a stream that flowed like a waterfall into the huge vessel containing us. The whole tub was only chest deep with water and we could walk across without much difficulty. We stayed for an hour in the waters splashing and playing like small kids. After a sweating trek, the cool waters were so heavenly that we didn’t feel like getting out. We came back to the cave where all had assembled and had our lunch of sambar, rice and appalam. After lunch we took pictures and left the place for our trek back.

We started our trek back at 3.30PM and reached the base camp at 6PM. This was a tedious trek because we had to cover the distance that we covered the day before in one stretch rather than with one break of 2 hours in between. We didn’t take any breaks in between as the jeep was waiting for us at the base camp, near the temple and we boarded along with Vijayan.

The constant companion throughout the trek was our faithful dog, whom we have christened Mount Dog. The dog was always there with us when we were a group. And when any of the girls were left alone somewhere, it will accompany and stay alert all along, till the person joined the group. It ran all the way to T P Kota village with us chasing the jeep. After that we said bye to our dog.

On the way back again we were singing and Karthik, Victor and Manoj were enthusiastically encouraging everyone to join in. We reached Kavaraipettai at 8.30PM. The train to Chennai was at 8.45PM. We took the train at 9PM and reached Chennai at 10.10PM. After the final good-byes and partings, we reached home at 10.30 in the night and had a quick dinner to crash on the bed.