Thadiyandamol Trek, Coorg

Thadiyandamol Trek , Coorg , Karnataka

Often our decisions are made at last minute similar to this one. Rahul, akshay and me thought of
going to Thadiyandamol for a trek on 20/02/09 and we were accompanied by Mahesh. 3 of us work for TechMahindra and Akshay for Microsoft :) and all of us are from Bangalore.

The route we followed from Bangalore was

Bangalore -> SriRangaPatna -> Madikeri-> Bettagiri -> Napoklu -> Kakkabe -> Nalaknad -> Thadiyandamol

Morning 5:45,Rahul picked us at Kanakpura road and through uttarahalli we joined to Mysore road .All are food lovers and we didn't had our breakfast so our first stop was Bidadi around 7:00. After breakfast we didn't have much breaks in between. Most part of the road is good and one can find trees like below covered with Honey Bee hives.

Around 11:30 we reached coorg.We made all preparation that would be helpful for us to survive a night at the top of the hill. We bought fruits , bread , pickels , jam , Water and curds(never buy
curds there before checking expiry date) and other small things like plates and knife and most
important thing a liter of Diesel for campfire.

Have to say , Coorg is not a good place for vegetarians like me , not enough good resturants.

Now from Coorg we have to go to Napoklu to start our trek.No where inside the city we found wood that could help us in camp fire. So we thought of asking at some place on the way , at last we got wooden pieces :D

From Napoklu we set for palace estate, there the steep was bit high. So we had to park our vehicle near the palace estate and we started our trek from there. At the begining itself we lost our camera pouch ! :( (curse the people who took it in a sec time after it fell from my hand ).

As we were climbing we encountered a board which said "way to Thadiyandamol!" but more than a relief it was confusing , the direction was not proper. We made some guesses and we were fortunate that guess was right and we were on the right track. Few meters ahead we saw a house, there we were warned against having camp fire at the top as forest officials have banned it . But we took our chances and thought of carrying woods and other things until we meet any forest officer :) We got to see beautiful scenes while trekking. As u can see.

So we marched ahead , It was Feb end ! and all the leaves and trees were already dried out. ( Karnataka is suffering badly from lack of rain). It was long time I had trekked and after an hour or so I was already running out of breath. We took as Lil break as possible in the first one n half
hour , after that my energy started to deplete. Fortunate enough that within few meters I could see Boulders where I could rest on. We reached certain flat land and thought is that it??! Is it the end of the trek.

If so this trek is not worth a penny. Then we realized we came just half way. Other half way trek
was awesome as u can see in the pics. The artistry view was amazing and the surroundings never made us realize our efforts in climbing. Finally 3/4th at the top we could see our summit and we just had a conversation with other group as to how far is the summit. It was another 0.5 km ahead. Keeping our spirits up we reached the top and we finished our climbing in 2 and a half hour !! :) U can see the bush in the pic , that was our summit.

At the top we were amazed by the nature's beauty and spellbound by the clouds that were moving in front of us and we could feel it. All of a sudden clouds moved away and formation of sun and clouds were amazing.

Finally gazing through the sky we witnessed the sunset. We were warned by other groups not to stay at the top as it would be too windy and cold. But we were determined to stay as we had made lot of preparation.

It started getting too windy and cold , So it was time for us to make camp fire. But odds were more , It was getting colder and windy . How to lit up the fire!!? we struggled for half an hour to start the fire. Despite having wood , paper , lighter , Diesel it took long time for us . As the camp fire started,It was like an incarnation . Without that we might not have survived It was so chilling out there.

We were hungry and were desperate to eat. so we took out what all we got and started hogging under the sky which were lit by stars.It was no moon day. Oh!! what a feeling !! :) and what a feeling of having bread and pickle and fruits! :)

At 10 O clock we thought its time to take rest as we had to travel back to Bangalore. We got into
our sleeping bags which were rented at wild craft for 100 rs per day and 750Rs advance for each bag.Without sleeping bags it would have been really tough staying at the top . we didn't have Tent and it was totally open air , no protection from any side.

As a nature and photography lover , We took lot of pics.

In the morning 5 o clock despite getting covered with sleeping bags we were not able to sleep
because of cold . All the items around us were wet due to mist , we had few wood pieces remaining .so again we set our camp fire and we were back in life. We witnessed some amazing sky colour and sun rising from the bed of clouds which were covering the hills :)

Morning 7:30 we bid farewell to that place and started coming down and by 8:45 we were at the foot hill of the Thadiyandamol. Everyone got into car with a feel of awesome experience and we were on our way back.

The whole experience made our trek worth a million.