A visit to doddamakali

We recently visited doddamakali. There are good number of pictures in the previous blog postings.

I am going to keep the trip report small and readable.

The day of the trip did not start well. I was supposed to be picked at 6:15 AM, I was picked up by 7:00 AM and then our vehicle ran out of fuel. After having a great breakfast at Kamat (on the highway), we set of for doddamakali. We arrived at the camp at 11:15 AM, after having driven down the hill to the mighty river Cauvery. The path requires that a 4x4 be used to drive down.

Trek1

Our first trek took us along the bank of the river. The path has a combination of sand and rock. Finding your way down and up the rocks can get difficult, especially when the rocks get hot. It is difficult to grip on to anything. To make matters worse for me, I carried a bag, a camera and a stick.

I did not rest enough and drink enough water, the result -- I felt like I was de-hydrating on the way back. It is one of the worst feelings I have had in a long time. I could not stop losing water, I could not rest at a place and I could not stop using the rest-room. I gathered enough energy to reach back the camp and had a lot of lemonade, it took a lot of lemonade and some good rest (for about an hour) before I could stand up again.

Lunch

The camp people served lunch. The lunch was well cooked, but I avoided lunch and only took curd-rice and some sweet. Of-course with a lot of lemonade.

Boat Ride

Initially we were refused the boat-ride, the folks at the jungle mentioned something about crocodiles. After lunch, we were adamant on the ride. The result, of came two boats and 10 life jackets. The forest people insist that we were life jackets (which is a good thing). One of the boats was leaking, so they use a metallic stool in it to avoid getting wet.

You will see in the pictures that one boat has people seated on the boat and the other boat seated on a platform. The boat ride lasted about 15 minutes, the fun part of the ride is when the boatmen turns the boat in circles to everybody's cheer and joy.

Fishing and Trek2

One group decided to stay back and fish, the other (including myself) decided that it was time for trek2. The fun part about trek2 was that there is no trek path. There are thorns and bushes and the trek is steep. The view from the top is amazing, some pictures of the view are available in previous posts. On the way back, the grass helped us from falling, everyone gripped on to it. But no-one reached the camp without a fall. I had a big thorn that entered my thumb and broke inside. The forest official used his pin to get it out of my hand and offered a band-aid

Coming back

We stopped at Maddur for some maddur wada (which is very delicious) and reached home by around 10:30 PM.