Sigandhur Siting

4 bikes, 1 Maruthi 800 car and 11 enthusiastic drew to sharvathi valley to spend our week end. As we had already been to this region expectation was to spend time in water, kayaking, boating & lots of fun.  The happy journey started with 2 Thunder Birds, 1 Hunk, 1 Pulsar and the chariot Maruthi. Uday, Vinay, Dasa, Rahul and Ach occupied the rider position of the vehicles.

Twist came in when our hero Thunder Bird’s tire was kissed by some pins and resulted in puncture. This resulted in finding mechanics who can remove the tyre and do the puncture. It took almost 1.5 hours to complete this task. Finally journey started again when sun is looking at laughing “its hot summer guys”.

We had decent road till a village called Sullali (near Kollur), then started the status of real Indian roadsJ. Nitin took over our trip’s another hero Mr. Hunk to drive and Dasa who was sitting behind had bumpy ride for a 40 Km’s.  Our hero “Mr Hunk” also had to drink adulterated petrol due to wrong estimation of his ownerJ. Finally we reached our destiny @3 pm.

The dentist (trek planner) and his people were waiting for us for a long time. When they served simple lunch comprising of chapathi, sagu, rice, pickle and butter milk looked like we are having food in some 5 star hotel. Hungry stomach really enjoyed the food.

After packing all the luggages, we moved to river bank which was around 7 km from the place where we stayed for lunch. As we had luggages, we had to make 2 bike trips. Vinay missed the road and created some fun moment at that time period. Finally we reached the river bank, where we decided to stay back. We put life jacket and rush to water. But the vendor had provided us very low quality of life jacket where in even after wearing 3 jackets, person was not floating in the water. This resulted in limiting our options spending time in water. Surprisingly there was only one Teppa and a Nada Boat for our usage and we were all disappointed. Everyone enjoyed playing Mafia in water and putting up tent in the river bank. Then suddenly it looked like the rain is going to start soon. There was lot of lightning and cloud gathered around the place where we were staying. Luckily it only drizzled and saved us from some more disappointment. 

After having bajji & coffee in the night along with camp fire, we started telling ghost stories, IPL discussion and Indian politics and off course Mafia game. To add to our disappointment the vendor mis understood someone statement of afternoon lunch, we can have similar options for dinner too and he got the same lunch items for dinnerJ. We did not had any other option and after having dinner, people wanted to sleep in tent. Then some people wanted to count stars and get tips on how to impress girls from love guru’s etc. Finally most of them slept outside the tent at around 12.30 am.

It was early morning and woke up when people started creating noise and finally after packing all our items went back to our dentist home stay. Couple of them even went for boat ride in the early mooring. After taking bath & breakfast, we departed to Sigandhoor temple which around 7 km. All devotees were busy praying and people like Nitin and Dasa just visited the temple observing all other people. Then we decided to have fresh cane juice and most of them had at least 2.  Then we decided to continue our journey & stop in Sullali.

There comes another twist in our travel, Dasa and Rahul who were riding in front of all went ahead and our 2 heroe “thunderbirds” and super hero “ Maruthi 800” took a diversion in some other place as per milestone without going to Sullalli. Thanks to our all telecom operators who are only interested in developing cities and our villagers have been deprived of talking in phones even in 2011. It meant we are not able to communicate each other and resulted in lots of confusion. Finally decided to wait in Kollur tea stall where we had stopped when our hero Thunderbird was kissed by some nails.  All of us who reached early were enjoying the hot bajji in the tea stall and here we have entry of angry young man Dasa who was angry on allJ.

Finally we decided to catch up in Surtkal beach which is near to red rock restaurant. Our friend started searching for red rock near to the beach and finally he came to know it’s not the name of beach, it is the restaurant name which is near to beach. It was fun to watch the tug of war match practice of some local gym members, beautiful sunset and lots of fun with friends.

Over this entire trip was disappointment when it comes to adventure activities, it looked more like a picnic. But of course, it was the Gypsies who went out so there was no shortage of funJ.

Gypsies participants: Achalesh J, Vinay Adiga, Nitin Kumar, Fahad A. R, Ashwin R. Kamath, Vinesh John, Udaya Sheshadri, Vijaydas, Rahul Raghavan, Murali.V.G, Angadbir Singh.

Date: 9^th/10^th April 2011

Route: Mangalore – Kollour – Sigandhoor road (Approximately 170km)

Requirements:

·         Torch Lite

·         Route map

·         Sleeping bag & tent

·         Hat / Towel / Extra pair of clothes / Shorts / Swim trunk

·         A warm clothing / jacket

·         Camera

Conquering Kodachadri

A group of 13 jobless people started from Mangalore on a Saturday early morning. Reached Kollur via bus, had lunch there and then hired 2 jeeps to take us to the Kodachadri base.

We started the hike at the odd time @ around 2.30 in the afternoon. The stomach was full and asking for nap and at the same time the sun was straight up on our head shining as bright as it can.  We took around 3.5hrs for the hike. Few of us had to really sweat it out to reach the peak as the tent material was pretty heavy. But, there were couple of places on the way where lime juice and butter milk was available to quench our thirst.

When we reached the peak, there were already around 20 people waiting for the sunset view. Since there was ample time for the sunset, we concentrated on setting up the tent and collecting some firewood for the fire in the night. We were so energetic that we collected fire wood that would last for couple of more nights even after our useJ.

After the sunset we climbed down couple of kilometers to the small hotel to have the dinner. Now the weather had completely reversed. It was really hot in the afternoon but by night it was very chill and windy. It was so much windy that all the light weight objects in our bag including the half-filled water bottles were flying off. Then we sat around the fire and started playing mafia. The game continued almost till 12 in the night. Kannan would have enjoyed it the most as every time we voted him out in the first round itselfJ. We had to do a lot of work put off the fire before we sleep as it was surrounded by dry grass.

The real problem was sleeping. We had only 2 tents, smaller one which can accommodate 4 people and a little bigger one for 5 people. Nitin, Vikas, Dasa and Don opted to sleep out. The wind was getting lot of sand with it which was falling on our face. Later in the night Nitin entered the tent as 6^th person not being able to sleep outside. Don was found sleeping with his cooling glass on to avoid the sand stormJ.

Next day we got up early for the sunrise. This is one of the good things about this place; one can see both sunrise and sunset from here. Then we came back to the same hotel where we had dinner, but this time it was for breakfast. The return journey was quick and we reached the base within 1.5hrs. We called the same jeep guy to take us back to Kollur. The delay he made to reach us helped us to play few more mafia rounds. We had lunch @ Kollur and headed back to Mangalore with lot of pleasant memories.

For most of us it was n^th time @ Kodachadri but it was very much enjoyable. Lot of jokes, witty dialogues and leg pulling sessions made it yet another memorable journey for the GypsiesJ.

Gypsies participants: Achalesh J, Vinay Adiga, Nitin Kumar, Sudhir Dongre, Ashwin R. Kamath, Jayakrishna KR, Udaya Sheshadri, Vijaydas, Kannan, Murali.V.G, Vikas Bodke, Prem P, Bala Manikandan.

Date: 29^th/30^th January 2011

Route: Mangalore – Udupi – Kollur (Approximately 130km)

Requirements:

·         Torch Lite

·         Sleeping bag & tent

·         Hat / Shades

·         A warm clothing / jacket

·         Camera

·         Petrol (for lighting the fire @ night)