Partners in crime: Santonu and Santanu
Trekologue author: Santonu with some additions and limited editions by me
The same is available also at the following link:
http://santonu.blogspot.com/2006/12/cool-coorgtrek-to-tadiandamol.html
Blame it on Thursday! Yes, because that was the night we decided to disappear from the IISc campus and travel to Tadiyendamol. If you give a google search you will surely land up on hundreds of pages delivering several details about Tadiyendamol. Hence, it is quite evident that the place must be infested with trekkers. It was not good news because most of the times we become busy in collecting the plastics or other junks ‘sensible’ trekkers throw on the way. We had a different plan for the trip, we wanted to travel to Coorg by bike. It wasn’t an easy job since it was 300 km away from Bengalooru and major part of it was a drive through hills. Santanu is an able rider and was too confident about making it happen. Hence we caught a couple of hours of sleep and started out journey towards Kodagu district in Coorg.
There are different routes to reach Tadiyendamol. For the first route one can take a right diversion just after Srirangpattanam on the Bangalore-Mysore highway and travel towards Virajpet, this route goes via Gonikoppal and Hunsur. Once you are in Virajpet you have to take a left to reach Kakkabe. It is near 25 km from Virajpet. Kakkabe is well connected to Virajpet, though Bangalore is not so well connected to Virajpet. The second route is to go to Madikeri and from there you can come to Kakkabe through Nopoklu. This distance is 37 km. Madikeri is well connected by bus from Bangalore and currently the road from Bangalore is in excellent condition. Once you reach Kakkabe you have to look for the Naalkunaadu Palace! It’s not a very big one but this was sort of a mile stone from where you start your trek towards Tadiyendamol. We took the Virajpet route. Kodagu district welcomed us after we crossed the Mysore industrial area; the forest check post announced the area to be under Rajiv Gandhi National Park. The road was beautiful; wide 4 track black tar road was tearing apart the green forest which soon ended up in the coffee plantation area. The area appeared to be quite rich; we were in Coorg after all. The beautiful coffee estates were really a treat to watch, from Virajpet the road turns up to the hill and nice valleys started appearing on the screen. Kakkabe is a very small village, typical Coorgy in nature and we reached there around 12:30PM. The Mahindra jeeps and different attires of females will surely catch your attention. One of the admiring sights was to see Coorgi ladies driving open jeeps and going around the place. We did not stop anywhere except for asking for the route, Jackies’s steady hands made the travel a comfortable one. We had couple of plans, either to stay at the hills or reach Madikeri and stay there. Near Kakkabe there are many coffee estates which provide ‘home stay’ accommodation, but most of these places were very expensive. We had planed for one such place called Honey Valley next to Kabinakad post office. The place is around 3km up the hills, and we found it difficult to take our bike to the top, hence we started looking for some other place, There is another place called Palace Estate near the Palace, it’s a beautiful place but very costly for our budget. Then we found a place slightly cheaper than the other cottages. Most of the cottages there bear a sign board but not this one! You can identify it as the cottage just next to a so called resort called Coffee County and named as Twins Cottage. The owners of that place, Mr. Ashok and his wife allow people to stay there and provide nice food too. We paid around Rs. 800/- for both of us for two days. It was a nice place and we found a shelter, now we had to arrange for our next days’ provisions for the trek. We decided to travel to Madikeri. The road which took us to Madikeri wasn’t the kind through which we traveled till then, it was quite worse, lots of hairpin curves, so it took us more than an hour to reach Madikeri. We had a nice lunch there, it was good and cheap, and since we had time we had decided to see Abby falls. Its not far from Madikeri, the road was good and picturesque for the forest and hills. We both had visited Abby falls earlier so not much charm was left for us, still it was nice to come back to find the same place. I came here with our TMS gang, and had a major game session in the open field near the Abby falls, unfortunately that open area no longer exists, there are plantation, it is hard to find that beautiful grass meadow. Then we started back to Kakkabe, it took us 1 hr. from Madikeri to Kakkabe and it was already dark when we came back to the warm shelter.
Thick mist covered the whole valley the next day morning with flesh piercing chill that led us to start for the trek a bit late. The breakfast at the house was quite heavy and we, at once, realized that it would take some time to digest, but again I liked the coffee more. From Twins cottage, we had to travel to the Palace. The road is a tarred one and so one can take their vehicles upto the palace. My imaginations ran wild regarding the palace, but this palace was a small one and enough to disappoint me. So we practically started walking towards Tadiyendamol from there. There was a tar road where it was possible to travel by one’s own vehicle, but we decided to walk; calm, steady and experienced legs were moving at a speed we are so used to. The tar road is through a rain forest covered hill and goes by the side of a small stream; we were thoroughly enjoying the silence. The trek rout is very clear; in fact it is possible to travel by jeep for one third of the trek route. The tar road stretches for 3 km and then the mud road starts, there are diversions on the way but the trekking rout was very much in sight. After crossing a couple of more streams, we could see a glimpse of Tadiyendamol peak at a distance. We were right in guessing that it will be almost 6 km away from the end of the tar road. So we continued our journey on this bright winter morning though the endless grass land with cool breeze and nice sun to keep our tempo up. After an hour of walk we stood near a big stone and decided upon further journey details! 
You should remember that, at this stone, you have to take the trek route on your right to reach Tadiyendamol. Once we started climbing up, the wind started gaining speed. The chill wind became unbearable after half way climb, till we entered the jungle. This trail for trek never enters the forest except a small part and I can assure you these are the dense most forest in Western Ghats, once you are lost inside, it requires GPS or a mobile phone to track you down. 10 min walk inside the forest was enough to give us this feeling. It was very similar to the one we experienced during our trek to Agumbe. The time we reached near the peak it was too windy. We reached 
the peak around 10:30 a.m., it was breath taking, if there is a place called heaven, I sure it wont be better than this. We chatted for a while there; gossiping at 1748 meters was a rare opportunity. Airtel welcomed us to Kerala with a full network signal in the cell phone at the peak; it was a worse feeling to be in touch with the world even there. We were told by Mr. Ashok that on a clear day, one can see the Arabian sea from the peak. Unfortunately, we could not see anything because the far sky was full of thick clouds. The wind was not allowing us to sit there, so we started climbing down and planned to climb up the other smaller peaks in the vicinity of Tadiyendamol. It was too early for lunch. When climbing down, you will reach a place where a boundary wall of some sort is there. We decided to climb the hill on the left of the trek route adjoining this boundary wall. This hill is slightly steep, but not a difficult one to climb. Once we were up on thi
s hill, we could see several other smaller hills joining this one. We trekked the hilltops around and had our lunch on a rocky hill top below which there is a steep gradient. It was standard lunch, cucumber! We couldn’t eat the bread or tomatoes we took with us. The breakfast was still going strong. It was probably around 1:00PM when we decided to climb down. We had plans to travel to Madikeri again and spend some time there. It was December 16th, Saturday; we expected several trekkers to be around, but we crossed a group of only 6 trekkers on the way back. We walked back to
the foot of the hill and cleaned ourselves in a small stream inside the forest. We reached the palace around 2:30 p.m. Since Jackie was insisting we went to see the palace, it was disappointing and I was happy that now visitors are not allowed inside (it was under renovation). There is a school near to the palace and I saw some kids playing some game, I took the picture, can you guess the game? Hockey!!! Of course and amongst them, a small girl was playing better than her boy mates. Surely IHF will have a morale boosting. The night was very calm at Twins Cottage, except for some noise created by a small group of people who were playing Antakshari outside around a bonfire. We were also in 
good mood and we also started singing while lying on our beds. The only difference was that we were singing all old Kishore Kumar numbers, mainly the powerful sad ones. Mr. Ashok and his wife’s hospitality again touched us. It was a beautiful experience staying with them. The next day morning, we had breakfast again and started our way back to Bangalore. Jackie’s steady hands on the bike made the 300 km journey like a 20 km one; the tough roads didn’t affect him and his driving much. The bike did not give much trouble either. We came back to Bangalore by 3:00 p.m to witness India’s fight back in South Africa and my usual place where everyone was worried and complaining for disappearing without any information and there was somebody oblivious to all the happenings.
You should remember that, at this stone, you have to take the trek route on your right to reach Tadiyendamol. Once we started climbing up, the wind started gaining speed. The chill wind became unbearable after half way climb, till we entered the jungle. This trail for trek never enters the forest except a small part and I can assure you these are the dense most forest in Western Ghats, once you are lost inside, it requires GPS or a mobile phone to track you down. 10 min walk inside the forest was enough to give us this feeling. It was very similar to the one we experienced during our trek to Agumbe. The time we reached near the peak it was too windy. We reached 
the peak around 10:30 a.m., it was breath taking, if there is a place called heaven, I sure it wont be better than this. We chatted for a while there; gossiping at 1748 meters was a rare opportunity. Airtel welcomed us to Kerala with a full network signal in the cell phone at the peak; it was a worse feeling to be in touch with the world even there. We were told by Mr. Ashok that on a clear day, one can see the Arabian sea from the peak. Unfortunately, we could not see anything because the far sky was full of thick clouds. The wind was not allowing us to sit there, so we started climbing down and planned to climb up the other smaller peaks in the vicinity of Tadiyendamol. It was too early for lunch. When climbing down, you will reach a place where a boundary wall of some sort is there. We decided to climb the hill on the left of the trek route adjoining this boundary wall. This hill is slightly steep, but not a difficult one to climb. Once we were up on thi
s hill, we could see several other smaller hills joining this one. We trekked the hilltops around and had our lunch on a rocky hill top below which there is a steep gradient. It was standard lunch, cucumber! We couldn’t eat the bread or tomatoes we took with us. The breakfast was still going strong. It was probably around 1:00PM when we decided to climb down. We had plans to travel to Madikeri again and spend some time there. It was December 16th, Saturday; we expected several trekkers to be around, but we crossed a group of only 6 trekkers on the way back. We walked back to
the foot of the hill and cleaned ourselves in a small stream inside the forest. We reached the palace around 2:30 p.m. Since Jackie was insisting we went to see the palace, it was disappointing and I was happy that now visitors are not allowed inside (it was under renovation). There is a school near to the palace and I saw some kids playing some game, I took the picture, can you guess the game? Hockey!!! Of course and amongst them, a small girl was playing better than her boy mates. Surely IHF will have a morale boosting. The night was very calm at Twins Cottage, except for some noise created by a small group of people who were playing Antakshari outside around a bonfire. We were also in 
good mood and we also started singing while lying on our beds. The only difference was that we were singing all old Kishore Kumar numbers, mainly the powerful sad ones. Mr. Ashok and his wife’s hospitality again touched us. It was a beautiful experience staying with them. The next day morning, we had breakfast again and started our way back to Bangalore. Jackie’s steady hands on the bike made the 300 km journey like a 20 km one; the tough roads didn’t affect him and his driving much. The bike did not give much trouble either. We came back to Bangalore by 3:00 p.m to witness India’s fight back in South Africa and my usual place where everyone was worried and complaining for disappearing without any information and there was somebody oblivious to all the happenings. ABOUT TADIYENDAMOL
Tadiyendamol is the highest peak in Kodagu district with a height of approximately 1800 m. The nearest village to start the trek from is called Kakkabe. Kakkabe can be reached from both Virajpet or from Madikeri (35 kms) as per your travel directions. The roads from Virajpet and Madikeri to Kakkabe are not in very good condition. The Naalkunadu palace is the starting point of the trek. From the peak of Tadiyendamol, one can have a very good view of the valley and the hilly range.
HOW TO REACH
Route: Bangalore – Srirangapatna (on Mysore road) – Hunsur (take diversion towards Ranganthittu Bird Sanctuary just after crossing Srirangapatna) – Virajpet – Kakkabe (on the way from Virajpet to Madikeri) [around 250 kms from bangalore]
Or
Bangalore – Srirangapatna (on Mysore road) – Hunsur (take diversion towards Ranganthittu Bird Sanctuary just after crossing Srirangapatna) – Madikeri – Kakkabe (on the route from Madikeri to Virajpet)
Trek Difficulty level for Tadiyendamol: Moderate (one – day trek)
great trip, thadiyandamol peak also beautiful place, trekking here, you can feel the real coorg.
ReplyDeleteMy suggest to see this Coorg Tourism
Trekking on hill top is one of the craziest activity done at coorg. I hope the admin would have experienced the feel of it. We had a guide from coorg lagoon resorts in coorg, where we resided. They helped us in completing our journey to the hill top.
ReplyDeleteHi..Thanks for sharing your trek experience from coorg to Tadiyendamol. Mcleodganj is another popular destination famous for its Triund trek and a perfect place for summer vacation. Click here to know about hotels in Mcleodganj with tariff and experience warm hospitality.
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