Monsoon trek to Mullayangiri

[14-15 July 2006]

It has been a long time we had gone for a bike trip or a trek and we were becoming restless. After browsing through our list of the places where it would be nice to go for a bike ride cum trek during this time of the year (the monsoons), we decided to do the Mullayangiri - Bababudangiri trek in nearby Chikamagalur district during the weekend of 14th-15th July. This place is not very far from Bangalore and we expected the trek to be also not a very tough one either. Six of us initially decided to do the trek – myself (Santanu), Kunal, Shishir, Sunil, Vidhu (Sunil’s son) and Venky. Manthram, who is usually one of the regulars for our treks, was unsure of joining us till the last day and finally he decided to attend a lecture rather than going for the trek. We had a slot for one more person and we roped in Raghu for the trek and that makes it seven people. Our plan was a very regular one - start off from Bangalore on Friday, 13th July afternoon/evening, reach Chikamagalur by night and stay for the night there. Next day morning, i.e. 14th July, start the trek from Sarpadari, reach Mullayangiri and proceed towards Baba budangiri. We planned to camp for the night somewhere between Mullayangiri and Baba budangiri amongst the hills, reach Baba budangiri on Sunday morning and get back to Chikamagalur by noon, have lunch there and start for Bangalore in the afternoon. Kunal, Venky and myself decided to travel to Chikamagalur on our bikes, Kunal on his bullet and me on my Yamaha RX135 with Venky as the pillion whereas the rest of the gang would travel in Sunil’s Palio. We had already booked our stay at Planter’s Court, Chikamagalur for the night of Friday, 14th July. I had stayed in this hotel earlier in my previous trip to Kemmanegundi and it is economical and neat. The only thing you have to take care is that if you are used to taking a hot water bath, you have to take the bath before 9.00AM in the morning. All the arrangements for the trek were made before the D-day: two tents, rucksacks, sleeping bags, food and other regular trekking accessories. All of us took our rain gears anticipating rain since it has been drizzling in Bangalore for the last couple of days.

Chikamagalur is around 210 kms from Bangalore. One can reach this place either via Hassan or via Tumkur. On Friday, 13th July, Kunal, Venky and myself decided to start for Chikamagalur around noontime to avoid driving our bikes in the night. But we ended up starting only around 3:00PM. After encountering heavy traffic on Tumkur road, we hit Nelamangala and took the Hassan route. We took the left on NH48 towards Hassan when a light drizzle started. We had already put on our rain jackets expecting the same. We started driving at a constant speed of around 60-70 kms with occasional breaks in between till we reached Kunigal. We decided to drive on and have a slightly longer break with tea at Channaraypatna. When we were about 10 kms from Channaraypatna, I started hearing some sharp noise coming from my front wheel. Somehow, we managed to reach Channaraypatna at 6:00 PM and after having tea, decided to consult a garage for the noise in my bike. The problem was diagnosed to be with the speedometer gear and we lost an hour repairing that. In the meantime, we called up Sunil and team to check whether they have started from Bangalore in his car. They were just about to start, so we expected them to reach Chikamagalur around 11.00PM in the night only. Finally we started from Channaraypatna for Hassan at 7:00PM and we decided to do the entire stretch to Chikamagalur non-stop. The drizzle has increased to some extent and we are fully wet, still we went on driving so that we reach Chikamagalur around 9:00PM. We reached Hassan well in time and headed towards Belur. One has to be slightly careful about the diversion to Belur from Hassan. After confirming our road, we continued our drive in the rain towards Chikamagalur. The roads are in excellent condition and the traffic was very less. We drove full throttle and reached Chikamagalur around 8:45PM. After enquiring the location of Planter’s Court, we were right at the hotel’s reception desk at 9:00PM. We finally ended up reaching Chikamagalur at the right time. It took us around 6 hours for the trip including the hour for my bike repair. We were drenched to the skin and once in our rooms, we had a good shower (note: with cold water) and we were just deciding to have a peg of brandy at the Planter’s Court restaurant when we decided to call up our friends in the car to check where they have reached. That’s when we heard the unexpected. Sunil’s car has met with an accident at Hassan. Sunil drove the car right over a speed breaker and thank god, none of our friends got hurt. The damage to the car was pretty severe and there was no chance of Sunil, Shishir, Raghu and Vidhu reaching Chikamagalur during the night. It was tough to get a mechanic at that time of the hour and so they decided to stay over at Hassan for the night and consult a mechanic in the morning the next day. That was it. All our tents, rucksacks and sleeping bags are in the car.

Over several pegs of brandy, the three of us decided to cut short our trek. Instead of trekking the entire stretch from Mullayangiri to Baba budangiri, we decided to climb Mullayangiri peak only from Sarpadari and come back. We three had a good night’s sleep and woke up around 8:00 in the morning. We finished our breakfast by 10:00AM and called up Sunil to inform them of our plans and also to know their plans for the day and the progress in car repair. Since the car repair would be over by evening only, Shishir and Raghu decided to come to Chikamagalur by bus and then do the Mullayangiri trek. But they would take some time to reach Chikamagalur, so we went ahead with our plans and told them to start their trek from Sarpadari whenever they reach. The climate was not very good and a continuous drizzle kept tormenting us during our ride to Sarpadari. Sarpadari is on the way to Kemmanegundi from Chikamagalur. You will see signboards on the way so one won’t face any trouble in locating the road. After around 10 kms, you will reach a fork, where you have to take the left towards Kemmanegundi. We took the deviation at the fork, continued for around 6 kms before we could see a tar road going up on the left. That’s the road, which can take you to the Mullayangiri peak if you don’t want to trek. Slightly ahead from this turn one can see stone steps going up on the left side of the road. There’s an arch right at the start of this stone step and this is the starting point for the trek up to Mullayangiri. We decided to park our bikes on the side of the road. It was 12:00 noon when we started our climb from Sarpadari. The weather was not very good for a trek - moderate drizzle continued with light winds generating the feeling of an environment similar to the lower reaches of Himalayas except that there’s no snow. There are stones on the track, which will show the path ahead of you. After climbing for around 15 minutes, we could see a bifurcation on the route and the tracks were not very clear. We decided take the route on the right side and proceeded for another 15 minutes or so when we found out that we had taken the wrong decision. Meanwhile the speed of the wind has become sufficiently higher and it was becoming difficult to stand at one place without holding on to something. We back tracked to the position from where we took the deviation and took the path on the left side. This was the correct track since we could notice the stone steps within a short while. We kept on climbing up encountering heavy wind and rain. Occasionally, we came across big rocks, where we could protect ourselves from the wind and rest for sometime.

After trekking for another 15 minutes, we came to a small plateau from where one could see a vast open hill slope with the trek path going up. The view of Chickamagalur from this place would have been really wonderful but then heavy mist had reduced the visibility to hardly a few meters. We were just appreciating the vast landscape when Venky’s mobile rang. The call was from Shishir who along with Raghu had somehow managed to reach Sarpadari, the base for the Mullayangiri climb and they were enquiring about the climb and the weather. They were very determined to do the trek even in the rough weather and so in spite of our telling them not to do the trek, they were adamant and so they too started their climb. We kept on going up and within another 20 minutes we saw a few cows above us. Just then Kunal, who was moving ahead of us, saw the small nandi nestled in a stone shed below a tree. This place was very ideal for a small rest and under the prevailing climate, we were forced to stop for a short while. After paying our obeisance to the nandi, we marched ahead. We had taken around an hour’s time to reach this nandi and we felt that probably we should be up at the Mullayangiri peak and at the temple there in another 30 minutes based on some of the blogs we read. We were in regular touch with Shishir and Raghu to know if they were on the right track. We had walked for just around 10 minutes from the nandi, when we saw two huge caves side by side on the right hand side at a small plateau. Kunal pointed out that both the caves might be interconnected, but then when we went inside the caves, we saw that they are totally different caves and there’s another small nandi on the left cave. The caves looked marvelous from outside. We wanted to explore the caves, but due to the inclement weather and the desperation to reach the top forced us to move ahead so that we reach there at the earliest. We started our climb again and within 10 minutes, we were in for a surprise when we reached a plateau with another nandi and a fort like structure. There were nothing ahead of us and after exploring the area we realized that we have reached the top. It was extremely cold here at the top. Rain was falling pretty heavily and the wind speeds too have reached alarming proportions. We were desperate to go inside the temple and warm ourselves before starting the descent. The temple and few other houses were inside the fort like structure and probably this was to shield the temple from the strong winds. We thought nobody would be around at that time because of the rough weather, but after going around the structure, we came across two people who were in one of the houses. One of them seemed to be the pujari of the temple and he agreed to open the temple and allow us to make a small prayer to the deity. That’s it, so we have made it to the top of Mullayangiri. After a short prayer, they offered us to take food there, but we were not very hungry so we asked them whether we can get hot tea. They prepared hot tea for us and it was very refreshing. We had a small chat with them and they mentioned that the caves which we saw below were actually connected to the temple. Also they showed us the trekking path connecting to Baba Budangiri, which was part of our earlier trekking plan. After taking a short rest we got ready to make the descent. Since we had climbed up from the Sarpadari side, we decided to go down using the tar road. One has to descend a flight of stairs before hitting the road. The moment we came out of the temple to start our climb down the stairs, we were hit by gushing winds and it was becoming difficult to stand. Then we decided to hold our hands together and climb down slowly with our backs facing the wind. After climbing down for some distance, the wind speed became less and we could hit the tar road quite comfortably. From here on, it’s just walking on the tar road in total rain back to the place where we had parked our bikes. We had walked probably for about 5 kms when we reached another temple. There were few people around and after enquiring the path, we kept walking. After another 2 kms or so, we saw a tractor trailer going down. We hitched a ride on the trailer till the junction where this road hits the main road. Standing on the tractor trailer was a pain in those rough roads and after bearing the humps and bumps, we reached the crossroad in about 30 minutes time. Then we realized that the distance down from the temple on the way was actually 6-8 kms and it would have taken quite a long time for us to reach there. From the junction, it was around half a km to our bikes (fortunately they were there). We called up Shishir to find out where they have reached. They had still not reached the first nandi. We were hungry by the time we reached down and after washing ourselves in a small waterfall, took our bikes and came back towards Chikamagalur in search of food. We were having food at one of the few restaurants in Chikamagalur when we got to know that Shishir and Raghu have also conquered the top and they were on their way down. Myself and Kunal decided to pick them up on our bikes. We went back on the same route through which we came down from the Mullayangiri peak and picked up both the guys. They seemed to be exhausted but they were still determined to do more trekking. We all came back to Planter’s Court and started planning for the night’s activities. We attacked the Planter’s Court restaurant the moment it opened at 7:30PM. We had our routine stuff and had good rounds of discussions ranging from technology to the romantic professor Matuk Nath Chowdhury. As for the plan for the next day, Sunil and Shishir decided to go to Baba budangiri in Sunil’s car whereas Kunal, Venky and myself decided to start for Bangalore before noon. On Sunday, we started from Chikamagalur for Bangalore at around 11:00AM and reached Bangalore comfortably around 5:00PM. Sunil, Shishir, Raghu and Vidhu reached Bangalore at 7:00PM after visiting Baba budangiri and Mullayangiri in the car. It seems the weather was still as rough as it was the previous day with severe winds and drizzle, but all of us were very satisfied that in spite of all difficulties we were able to stamp our footsteps on the peaks of Mullayangiri.

ABOUT MULLAYANGIRI

Mullayangiri, at 6,329 feet is the highest mountain peak in Karnataka. This peak is part of the Baba Budan range of hills and has one of the most scenic hill stations of Karnataka, Kemmanegundi. One can see nature at its very best here. The taluk headquarter lies in Chikamagalur, which ideally is one of the best weekend getaways from the hustles and bustles of Bangalore. Once you reach Chikamagalur, one can find so many things to do. You can go for adventure treks to Mullayangiri and Baba budangiri, go for short walks to several waterfalls in the region or just leisurely roam around Kemmanegundi appreciating nature.


HOW TO REACH

Bangalore to Chikamagalur: approx. 225 kms

Route: Bangalore – Yeshwanthpur - Nelamangala (on Tumkur Road) – Hassan – Belur – Chikamagalur
Or
Bangalore – Yeshwanthpur – Nelamangala – Tumkur - Chikamagalur

Chikamagalur to Sarpadari (starting point for Mullayangiri trek): approx. 15 kms on way to Kemmanegundi. Look out for the arch on your left side when you are going towards Kemmanegundi. It is just 200 meters after you cross a road diversion on the left going up to the Mullayangiri peak.

Trek Difficulty level for Mullayangiri: Moderate
(60-75 minutes for regulars; 120 minutes for non regulars)