Monsoon Trek to Nishani Motte/ Betta

Not sure how many leeches have bitten me and not sure where and all it attacked. Certainly it was one of my most difficult monsoon treks as of now. The rain, wind, steep ascend and the leeches made it tough, for all my buddies. Did many treks earlier in monsoon, however this was the one where I got leech bites all over my body. You might be thinking introduction itself is started from leeches! Of course during the course of the two days, everyone was more concerned about the leeches.

Nishani Motte / Betta is relatively unknown peak in the range of Bhagamandala (Talacauvery) range, Coorg. The trek distance from the base point Talacauvery is around 14 to 15 kilometers. We can enjoy the 360 degree panorama view, which is wonderful and most beautiful. Layers of the hills covered with clouds and mist is awesome. We can spot the villages, across the Kerala border, if the view is clear.

Our planned trek route was:

1^st Day: Talacauvery to Nishani Motte (Betta) – Night Camp at APC

2^nd Day: APC – Kurudi – Bhagamandala

27.06.2014

We started our journey with 21trek friends, at 10.45pm from Shanthala Silks, in a mini bus. Many known faces and few were new. This was my first trek with Vinay who organized this event. The journey was pleasant and reached the Bhagamandala around 6 am.

28.06.2014

Before this, I had been at Bhagamandala, thrice. Each time the weather was pleasant, greenery everywhere and had seen the entire range flooded with small falls. The Triveni Sangama was in full flow each time. Unfortunately, this time I was disappointed; understood from a local that, since a week, there was no rain in this range. 

After getting freshened up in the morning, took Sri Bhagandeshwara Swamy darshanam and headed to have breakfast at a nearby hotel. Packed pulav for lunch and had idly-vada for breakfast. Meantime Vinay purchased the grocery items, for the preparation of the day’s dinner and the next day’s breakfast. Our guide Jayaprakash & his colleague (another forest official) joined us and we finished the necessary formalities for the trek, at the Bhagamandala Forest Office.

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Trek to Bhagamandala Forest

This trek was motivated by Nitin's blog i.e. http://questsofavagabond.blogspot.in/2009/08/nadumale.html
This was my first trek organized through BASC.

Place: Bagamandala is a village situated at a distance of 24 miles to the west of Madikeri and connected with it by a good all-weather motorable road. Bhagamandala is the name well known to every pious Hindu. It is here that the sacred rivers, the Cauvery and teh Kannike meet. Tradition has it that Sujyothi, a subterranean stream, joins these rivers here. Hence the place is popularly known as "Trivini Sangama". Madikeri is around 250 kms from Bangalore.

Plan: Our plan was to start the trek from Talacauvery towards Nadumale, night halt at Nadumale, (13kms trek). Next day trek towards Kanoor side (11 to 12kms trek)  and exit. But the actual trek went through a different route after we begun the trek from Talacauvery.
The team: Srivatsa, Devendra, Ramkumar, Anoop, Niranjan, Manoj, Sudhir, Girish, the Gujju, Deepak Jain, Deepak HK, Tulasi GV and myself.
We started from Bangalore on 21st Dec night.
22nd Dec: We reached Bagamandala by early morning 4:30-5 O clock. It was little chilly and quite dark. Somehow we found out the range office and parked our vehicle there. No one was ready to get out of the vehicle as it was quite cold. Soon we finished our breakfast at nearby hotel, packed our lunch and bought all the necessary raw materials for preparing dinner. Thanks a lot to Tulasi, Niru and Deepak HK for assisting me. A special thanks to Tulasi for giving us a perfect idea of the raw materials. It was 8:30 AM, me and Deepak HK went to forest office. I was in constant touch with the RFO Mr. Uthhappa. We paid the trekking fee and the guide fee and left the forest office. The TT got jam packed as the RFO sent two guides named Jayaprakash & Ayyapa. Soon we reached Talacauvery. In a jiffy, we prepared ourselves to begin the trek.

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