Trek to Mooru kannu gudda and Bale kallu

Trek to Mooru kannu gudda and Balekallu

It was my long term wish to trek in the Sakaleshpura region, the Western Ghats of India, I was always mesmerized by its lush green scenic beauty. whenever I travel on the road or train in this region, I could see some view of lush green grasslands as an great quality green colour Kashmir carpets and the clouds moving slowly over it . It was my day to stand (in fact sleep) on that grasslands the July 19^th 2014.

        It was trek organized by the Adventure club of my company, it was well planned and everything was taken care by Aventura India, thanks a ton for them.

I got a mail regarding the trek and I just registered without thinking who else is coming with me , I thought it will be completely different experience to go with an 80+ unknowns ,

Our journey started in two buses one from Whitefield and the other from the electronic city, when I entered the L-center office , I could see people standing in groups and making fun of each other taking loud in joy, but I didn’t know anyone , just parked my bike in parking and entered the reception ,again people were sitting in groups and chitchatting for that moment I thought I shouldn’t have registered without my friends .so, I just went and kept my rucksack bag near one chair and sat on the chair took out the magazine’s which were lying in front and started glazing through the pictures :P but was still  think should I go for this , will it the be the same for 2 days they all have the gang or group, I should go all alone ,for that moment I again cursed one of my character of not mingling with others very soon, or go and start a chat with other , might it be less known or unknown.

The moments were passing, my eyes were just searching for a friend or a known person,  the two guys were sitting behind I just stood up and started looking others I thought  of talking to them but still I couldn’t start the talk , cursed myself again . but a guy said “hai” , I just wanted that start I replied saying “hello”, then we had brief introduction , by that I came to know they do work in the same building in 3rd floor and I work at 9^th , we three had some quite a chat about project our roles and technologies . In just few minutes i found the friends and was happy and ready to board the bus.

We there boarded the buses , they both sat together on the left seats , now again I was in trouble where to sit , all others  were busy in reserving the seats for their friends . I just found a person sitting silently alone, I went and just asked is it reserved for some or can i sit, he replied it’s all yours u can sit, then there was brief introduction, he said he was 10+ years of experience, and our age doesn’t support trek so most my friends refused to join, but as I haven’t done it in my younger age I still wanted give it a try at least now or else it will never be possible in future.

So, finally the journey began from Whitefield and I found 3 new friends. J J

We reached SJM towers where we joined the other bus which came from electronic city, we had small formal pooja started towards the sakaleshpur.

There was a bit of introduction about every one, then little fun, As it was a Friday night , everybody was tired so they fall asleep in no time , and when I woke up and peep through the window it was already morning and raining heavily then just had a look around everyone was still enjoying their sleep. After few minutes the bus stopped then they announced bus can’t go any further, we should go to resort by walk or we shd wait for jeeps, we got jeep from the resort, in which we dumped all our baggage’s and started walking in the rain, after around one Kilometer of walking we reached the Resort called “Wild Wagtail” which is our base camp too.

The resort was just awesome, which was built on the bank of stream there were 3 to 4 building in which one was the kitchen and dining, another two was rooms to retire and other was a common bathrooms, There was already the campfire, so people just started to sitting around chatting then we got the some instructions that all girls can take the rooms in the resort and for boys there were tents at 3 different places we went and settled in tents along with the two persons who I met already.

Then when I went back for the breakfast I could see many known faces and only one very well known because she is very good friend of mine from first day of engineering, As they boarded the bus in E city i was unable to meet them till then, we just had little formal chat while having breakfast and rhen we palyed few games in the rain itself like volleyball, badminton and bow n arrow. The trek organizers started giving instructions about the trek, what to do and what not to do in certain circumstances.

After the briefing from the organizers, we started our trek carrying packed lunch for the afternoon. As we just started walking a few steps the rain drenched us completely, so we thought wearing a rain coat/jacket is of no use and marched forward by crossing a slow flowing stream , it was formed due to heavy rain so water was muddy . We just followed the guide because we don’t even know on which direction the peaks are; as it’s raining heavily they stood covered.

As we move forward we saw some houses and their Areca nut plantations, then we started climbing the peak but we could not visualize how the peak looks, just we went conquering little heights and its beauty.

After conquering the some height’s, till where the jeep trails were there they asked us follow one by one .There was not route we just need to follow the in front person and was slippery too due to small pebbles .finally we reached a an leveled grassland place. where we waited for the rest to join us. We don’t just stand quite right we started take some pic’s , group pic, Selfie,DP’s

 

Then we marched straight towards the peak and finally we conquered it, but unable to beautiful view as was complete covered by fog and raining heavily.

Below is the pic at the top.

After taking some pics we started our journey towards Balekallu Peak. The most difficult and risk this was getting down from the peak , as the wind was breezing heavily it was not allowing us to stand if , if we stood up it would take us with it, so we made a chain by holding each other’s hand and getting down when gets little slower.

The way to balekallu was bit tougher and risk some still we need someone’s hand to move forward. On the way small streams were flowing, it was just awesome to cross those stream but couldn’t stand longer on the stream due to the fear of leaches, but  still the leeches were less than expected .

We had the packed lunch standing and still rain was drizzling, so I think few drops of rain was also there in our food :P 

 

After lunch we started to climb the other peak which is the view point of balekallu ,it was bit sloppy and it was raining heavily still we managed to conquer the peak,but noting was visible from the view point due to the heavy rains and then we started descending the peak, guide said we would get a small check dam on the way so everyone was excited to play in water even in that heavy rain.

After walking for anhour we reached the checkdam it was just dam awesome.

Then after playing in the water we returned back to the resort, we were so lucky that we hot bhajji’s after drenching for nearly 10 hours in rain. We had some cool dances  around the fire had lunch and went to bed in our tents.