Trekking to Honnavara and Yaana

Two days before the trip,

Well this trip of mine was totally popped up at the last moment. My friend Srivatsa had came to my house to give gift as he had gone to US and I was not there in my house, so when I came home I came to know about the gift so I called him to say thanks, then I came to know these guys are going out on trek to gokarna, I had been planning this for a log time and every time it used to get cancelled due to some bizarre reason. So I was not going to miss on such an opportunity so I told even I would be glad to join them. I felt that time planning of trip is waste as it never succeeds, so I started gearing up for the trip.

Finally went for a trip,

The time came to start trekking journey. It was conveyed that we had all to meet up in MindTree office in Banashankari at 8pm. So I had reached there by 8:10 late asusual, some of them had already came there. Some of them even late than me, it was obvious as everyone had their office work. Srivasta and Rahul had gone to some food world to get first aid things as well as water for all of us. They came by 8:30 and finally 17 trekkers boarded the bus and started our journey. Everyone was bubbling with enthusiasm. We had a round of self introduction so that everyone gets to know each other. This reminded me of the self introductory session that I had in my office, it was very good all of us had a unique way of introducing themselves. The bus was small not anything near comfort, but it was no problem for some of us as we were not comfort seeking people. In the middle the bus driver stopped for refueling and then he drove without getting the bill after 2km he realized that and he stopped and asked the person near him to get it after he had been 2km away from the petrol bunk. Further the driver had such waste driving skills that he stopped some where near Shimoga for about 50 min as he wanted to take nap. This made all of us furious, we felt it was that we better drove the bus instead of him.

We reached Sharavati view point by 10 in the morning 4 hrs behind schedule all thanks to the sleeping driver. The view point was awesome, the Sharavati river passes between the hills in the western ghats, and with the reflection of the sun it was looking much more beautiful. It looked as if a golden snake was passing by. I was feeling that no matter how porche environment we live in nothing in the world provides the comfort to us the way nature provides us at free of cost. From there we went to Honnavara and booked a hotel where we all freshened ourselves up and had our breakfast and started off for the beach trek from Haldipura to Kumte which was a 10km trek.

We had no idea about the place called Haldipura was, nor did the driver had. We asked one pedestrian there and he told us that we had to take a left at hotel Vikram. We were looking for a right turn near hotel Vikram and we never got it. Then we asked other pedestrian and he told we had to go back 1km as we had traveled ahead of the place. So we came back and then saw it was not hotel Vikram but it was Vikram wines, we were all laughing as those people called a wine shop as their hotel. So then we finally landed on the beach and it was the cleanest beach I had ever seen in my life. I used to go to Juhu beach in Mumbai but it was very filthy with loads of people it used to make me sick. This was a great experience and a wonderful place to trek. So we all took our entire luggage and started trekking.

The beach was awesome with a hill near it, I had never seen any beach had a hill so near to the beach. As we were walking by the sea shore people from behind started screaming dolphin and to my surprise it was actually dolphin which was swimming alone near the sea shore. It was rare for a dolphin to swim alone as they always moved along in groups. We were all very excited to see that dolphin. Then we continued to trek and we had to cross the hill to reach the next beach, as we were crossing the rocks we saw loads of black crabs coming on to the rocks, the rocks were volcanic rocks which were black in co lour and some even had sharp edges and had slits in them which provided excellent camouflage to them. Then with relatively no effort we managed to cross the hill and then we came across to the next beach.

This beach was even more beautiful than the first beach, there only a 1 fisherman hut there but there was no one to be seen. So we finally came to the end of beach 2 and I and Rahul thought that the hill at the end of that beach was easy to climb but boy was I wrong. The was tapering towards the top and we realized it after some of us had climbed near the top. While climbing down I saw the view and was scared for a few moments as I saw how steep it was from the top and it led to some rocks and then into the sea which were deep from the shore. Then some how we all managed to come down, we were bitten by big red ants while coming down. After coming down few of my friends found another way through the rocks, it was exciting and we went though those rocks in between the water to the second hill. The second hill was steep right from its foot and it had rocks which made it very slippery to climb. After reaching the second hill we got a view of the sea and its surroundings which i guess is impossible to forget by all of us. It was great, there was green grass which was bordered by black rocks and with a clear blue sky in the background on one side and the beautiful sea shore with waves with the white colour acting as a border between the sea and the sea shore on the other.

We rested there for about 10 min and again started the trek. We came down the mountain and we were happy that we made it safely after having a great and adventurous mountain climb (P.S- not comparing Kumara Parvata). Then we reached the final beach of the trek schedule for that day. It was a long beach, which span around 7 km. Only 6 of us started the trek and the rest of them were taking rest behind us. There were lots of crabs on the sea shore and we took some sea shells which were very glossy, but they were living ones so we decided to place from the place where we found it. Then some of them saw star fish which were dead and I missed them :-(. Then there was an eagle which was carrying a snake in its mouth and was being chased by a crow and finally the eagle dropped the snake by the time we captured its photo, I guess it was giving a pose for photo and was smiling as a result of which it dropped the snake ;-). Then we came to end of the trek where we had to cross a place where the sea and the back water actually met. The local people there said it was safe to cross it before 6 before the tides rose. We managed to make it and all of us were jubilant and at the same time tired.

We took rest at the end and looked at the setting sun which was very beautiful so was all the things we saw in the entire trek. We all got into our bus our Sleeping driver was busy sleeping. We woke him up and went to Kumte town to get ourselves a lodge. The lodge that we was special it had no windows for the bathrooms and it also had a railway track next to it. That night we all were so sleepy that we slept by 10, with some trains screaming past making lots of noise.

Second day of Trekking,

A view of Yaana

Actually the plan on Sunday was to trek the remaining 26 km to Gokarna but all of them decided that they wanted to go to Yaana. So the plan was turned on its heels and we decided to go to Yaana.

On the Sunday morning we were supposed to leave by 8 AM but as usual we left an hour late by 9 AM. In the bus we decided to play truth or dare and jacked most of them, some had planned to jack me but it didnt work out for them ;-). Finally after travelling through mud roads we reached the foot hills of Yaana. We started the trek to Yaana around 11 AM and our route was considered to be a short distance to the top of the hill. There is one more route from Sirsi which is considered to be more exciting and long. All of them went ahead only myself, Rahul, Srivatsa were left behind and were walking along and we saw a small stream flowing. It was a great sight, the water was pure, rocks on the sides, some of the logs of woods had fallen cut across the streams adding to the beauty. We went into the stream and enjoyed the wilderness and took some great pictures. Then we went set along our trek, on the way there was a temple where all the people were offering their prayers. After this temple we could see a huge rock shooting above the canopy of the forest.

After about one and a half hour of trekking we finally came to the top of the hill, from there we went into the caves there. I got lost after entering the cave. It was a sight i guess I will never forget till I die. We explored the entire cave and finally came out from the cave. Then we decided to have an adventure of our own and went into a forest which was behind the cave. There were few scary moments as it was a steep climb and i almost lost my grip at one place but finally made it.

We saw that it was not safe to go further as it was very thick vegetation out there and finally decided to return back as we didnt have enough gears to walk through that part. Then we had our lunch there and came down the hill and then rested for half an hour in the stream. In the stream we played and took all photos and few tried to take different artistic photos of the stone hitting water and the splash after that, only a few succeeded obviously ;-). Then we went back to the hotel and freshened up.

Finally our trip had come to an end and I had a great time staying away from the traffic of Bangalore. We left Kumta around 6 in the evening and came to Bangalore around 6 in the morning, it was chilling in Bangalore even though we had our jackets on and we didnt have proper sleep while comming also we were are all pretending to be asleep ;-). By 9 I was in office again in front of the computer dreaming of the next trip which I will go, the only question in my mind was when and where was my next trip going to be. I know for sure its going to be adventurous, exciting, thrilling like this. Thanks to all my friends who joined me in this trip to make it so memorable.