If you are a trekker based in BLR, am sure you would have heard about this particular stretch. Every trekker desires to walk on this path, or rather the railway track. The stretch stands to its name “Green route”. Forgive the sun and the gravel on the track; you would enjoy every step of it. There is so much info on the web regarding the stretch that, if one were to compile them, a fat book can be made out of it. We happened to choose the 3 day weekend to trek this track, unfortunately I didn’t foresee that we would have company. There were more teams on the track than the trains which run on this stretch. We were lucky enough to have had all decent teams.
My home was the rendezvous point. Abhishek, Anirudh, Arun, Pramod, Shankar and myself were the team. Our journey began from the Bus stand. The bus journey is worth remembering till Sakaleshpura. The windows of the bus simply weren’t cooperating with us. They had more fun making us shiver in the cold weather. As we were thanking the Almighty for helping us reach the destination early, we had some surprise in store. We got down in the bus station. A few seconds later, the surprise became more evident, the chill weather gave us a nice hug. Quickly we had a glass of hot tea which warmed our body to some extent. We flagged down a bus which took us to Donigal village which is around 10 kms . A road side hotel employee gave us the directions to the track. We walked down 2 more kms on the highway to reach the Donigal station situated on the right side of the road.
The first sight of the track charged up our minds. The Donigal station hosted us breakfast (mind you, it was carried by us). In the mean time, two more teams arrived in the station. We started our walk. The initial walk of close to 2 kms wasn’t exciting as we always found ourselves in a sort of a valley with the hills covered on both sides.
Spotting the first tunnel excited us. Quickly we all got into shooting mode with our cameras out. The length of the tunnels varies from 50 meters to some 700 and odd meters. Some straight, some curved, some stinking. We spotted a lot of gang men who were working on the railway track. Many of whom were surprised or rather puzzled on our appearance with heavy rucksacks.
A worker did ask why we do this, our team got into education mode and enlightened him with the trekking gyaan. Throughout our walk we saw many birds of varied sizes and colour. Capturing them on the frame was a challenging task as they constantly moved from one place to the other. The sounds made by the birds were pleasant to hear which created a good atmosphere.
In the midst of all this we realized that we were walking at a speed of 3 kms per hour. The speed was too low; blame it on the rubble on the track. It wasn’t easy walking on the track, so we managed to maintain half the normal speed. After a walk of 17 kms, we happened to see the yedakumari station. Finally we were at our first day’s target. Every soul was hungry as it was well past 3PM. Quickly we had our lunch and took a nap. When we got up we saw the crowd of the size of Cantonment station, thanks to the 3 day weekend. It seemed to me that every trekker of BLR was here. The whole evening was left for us to relax.
The day 2 started by preparing hot tea and noodles for breakfast. It was yummy, thanks to Pramod, Shankar and Abhishek who cooked. We set out for the second leg of the trek. Our target was much the same. 18 kms to reach Shiribagilu station. Many more bridges and tunnels greeted us every now and then. Some tunnels were pitch dark, without a torch it was impossible to move around. Birds number was higher than yesterday. We happened to take many pics of them.
While crossing the longest bridge, a spectacular scene of the landscape was in waiting. I spent a few minutes admiring the beauty of the nature. Anirudh and myself were lagging behind as we were busy capturing the birds in our cameras, surprisingly none of the other team members complained. Thanks to their co-operation. We did a lot of photo shoots en-route, while doing so we realized that we were slower than yesterday. We were covering 2 kms an hour. None of us were in a hurry as we had decided to halt in Shiribagilu. We took our own sweet time. We were the only team which halted here.
The night sky was very clear. We decided to sleep in the open and do some star gazing. The other team members were trying to figure out which constellation they belong to of which I had no clue. A long night passed by. It was very warm than yedakumari as this station’s Mean Sea Level (MSL) is much lower.
Day 3 was the Republic Day. Believe me, this Republic Day would be remembered for long. We hoisted the Flag in the station. I mean, who would get an opportunity to do that. The staff brought the Flag, the pole was ready, We prepared the Flag for hoisting and requested the station master to do so. The labourers were keen to see the hoisting. The staff distributed chocolates and then we thanked them all. We started our descent to the road on a jeep track which was around an hours walk. All of us were delighted to trek on normal ground. The two day’s walk on the track was indeed a pain in the heels. By early noon we were down. A tea stall on the road side near the exit of the jeep track tempted us to visit. Surprisingly we found a yellow coloured tender coconut. When asked about it, the vendor called it “Ganga Yelneeru”. He said they are grown in the Mangalore region. The water was very sweet. Each of us had two. We boarded a bus to head towards the river near Subramanya. The bath was very refreshing though the water was cold. The rest of the day we spent loitering around the temple town and boarded our bus in the night for our return journey.
Note: Most of the blogs say that there are missing planks on the bridges and it is quiet dangerous to walk on them. We never found any missing planks as all the bridges had metal sheets in the middle which assist you in walking. The concrete slabs which hold the rails do hurt when you walk on it for a long time. Make sure that your shoes are intact, as they are put to high end test (mine almost gave up). We saw a few teams who didn’t carry any food along with them. Remember that there is no source of food anywhere nearby. Two day meals have to be carried along.
Click on the link below for more pics:
http://picasaweb.google.com/sunilbabuvk/YedakumeriTrackTrek20090124#
