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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Monsoon Trek to Nishani Betta & Kurudi in Coorg

Trekking in monsoon is always difficult and challenging one. Leeches, Heavy rain, Extreme wind on top of the Hill, Misty weather & lots more that will give you a special experience. I wanted to experience it so as soon as I saw the event registration page in BASC website I registered for the event. Here is  my experience of this trek with BASC.

7th June 2013:

Our event organizer Niranjan along with 20 members of BASC started from “Shantala silk house (Majestic)" around 10:50 PM on a mini bus. I joined them at R.V.College of Engg and we started off towards our destination, Bhagamandala.

We knew that it would rain heavily as it being peak of a monsoon season and the place which we decided to trek is famous for its heavy rains. We were well prepared to face the challenges during the trek. I had done enough preparations as per my capabilities and kept my luggage as minimal as possible so that trekking goes smooth.

8th June 2013

We reached Bhagamandala around 5:30 AM in the morning. We freshened up while it was too early for the city to wake up and so had to wait for another hour & half for hotels to open. Our breakfast was Idly & vada at Kaveri darshini hotel in front of Sri Bhagandeshwara temple where we also packed Pulav for lunch.

Forest office opens at 9:00 AM so we got into introducing ourselves to the rest of the group & this way we could also kill some time. Meanwhile all of us geared up to face leech bites. By the time we said Hello to each other, our guide Jayaprakash joined us. After all the formalities of forest department, we started in the same bus towards Talacauvery which was our starting point of the trek. It was now around 9:30 AM.

Main intention of this trek was to enjoy every bit of monsoon rather than breath-taking views. It was mist everywhere and we couldn’t see anything at all. It was raining heavily and to add to the trouble there were leeches in plenty waiting to suck our blood. We started trekking to Nishani betta around 10:00 AM and it was joy of walk. Forest is full of leeches and trying to escape leech bite is always the most funniest part of a monsoon trek. Blood donation was happening in full swing!!! Everyone was donating blood.

On the way we found a stream. It was also noon by this time and a perfect spot for lunch. We had half an hour time to relish our lunch. It was around 1:45PM we started our trekking again. The factor which troubled most of us specially girls were the leech bite than the rain. It was 4:00 PM when we reached flag point which is the Nishani betta summit.

Extreme wind pushing us and heavy rain on top of the hill made weather more pleasant. I felt it is one of best moments of my life :) Loved the weather!!! that's why I always tell “Trekking is an experience" and one should be ready to face any challenges during the trek.

We relaxed for half an hour and started to descend towards camping site around 4:30 PM. Reached camping site around 5:30 PM which was at a small distance of 2 kms. It was raining badly and once reaching camping site all of had a proud feeling of achieving something BIG in our lives.

We relaxed at camping site while few played Mafia games. Niranjan, Ram and Govind were busy preparing dinner for us. They prepared Tomato rice for dinner. Around 8:30 PM it was time for dinner and we surrendered to sleep by 9:30 PM. It was a big group and the space was small to accommodate all of us but we managed to find some place to stretch.

Our second day plan was to trek till kerala border via Kurudi which was 22 kms from the campsite. Jayaprakash, our guide suggested us to drop the day’s plan and return back to Bangalore as there were heavy rains which would make the rivers crossing difficult and the danger from leeches always persisted.

9th June 2013:

All of us woke up around 6:00 AM and few of them slept till 8:00 AM. After freshening up, everyone shared whatever they brought for breakfast. Niranjan & team prepared yummy Maggie for all of us..:). After breakfast at around 9:30AM, we started towards the main road to catch mini bus. It was jeep trail and 6 kms of walk took us to main road. Endless photography all the way while we reached the main road. Around 11:30 AM, we started back to Bangalore. On the way we stopped for lunch at Hotel Neel sagar, Madikeri. Around 2:30 PM we started from Madikeri and reached Bangalore around 9:00 PM.

I want to thank Niranjan Kumar for organizing the event and also appreciate his efforts to accommodate us on this trek in spite of the extreme weather conditions. Hats off to him...:).

Keep exploring and enjoy the mother nature!

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Written by: Gautham Baliga
Date: June 8th & 9th

Composed by: Sana & Vinay

Event organized by: Niranjan

Image Gallery: Niranjan

The Crew: Niranjan, Girish NL, Deepak HK, Ramkumar U.N, Govind, Pradeep GK, Sunil Kumar O.G, Surendra, Anshul , Chaurasia, Samarth, Gurva Reddy, Shivakumar S, Supraja M, Vishwanath, Krutika, P.Padmavathi, T.G.Shilpa, Gautham Baliga, Navneet, Vijay, Darpan, Pallavi H.G.

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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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