Every girl is a story in herself…Caught in between a
thousand things – she is always looking for that one chance where life takes
her to a very ‘filmy-mode’..in the sense – go out to a place she has never been
before, explore new people, live out that tiny little weirdo in her – in short
– be herself, at least for a while! And then one fine day, in the middle of her
monotonous life, a mail pops into her mailbox about an all-woman 2-day trek.
She runs through her trail of thoughts, signs up for it, and then waits…
Well, every girl is a story in herself J Caught in between a
thousand things and emotions – she is always looking for that one chance where
life takes her to her personal freedom..she has her own tiny wishes, wants to
feel and experience different things with people she wishes to. Putting everything aside, one fine day she
plans to step out of the monotonity, plans up stuff, announces an all-woman
2-day trek, and then waits…
Time has come. The shortlist is out. The wait is over. She knows it's time to live-out-loud. She packs up...
.....
Time has come. The shortlist is out. The wait is over. She knows it's time to live-out-loud. She packs up...
.....
12 such women, technically called ‘Wowies’ :P meet up at the
Shantala Silk House on the night of Friday, 7th November. The trip is : in and
around Chikkamagaluru. The main destination is ‘Mullayanagiri – the highest
peak of Karnataka’. And the actual trip
story begins here….
.......
In that hustle-bustle of a typical Friday-night Bangalore
traffic..
Even before Moyee or I could give instructions, the team of
wowies were already done with luggage-loading inside the TT and were all-set!
Waaahhh – berry quick – I was amazed!
The group had a mix of first timers and familiar faces.
After a team pic at the start, we started our journey from
Bangalore, towards Kemmanagundi (Chikmagalur). Most of them had seemingly busy
days with meetings and stuff; and hence chose to take a nap during the journey.
(guess I was the only one irritating everyone with the apples that I had got
for dinner, at every other halt :P) Moyee and I took rounds of ‘stay-awake’ during the journey, as watch-women :P
.........
Day 1: Saturday
Early Morning: Entry in the Homestay and yum breakfast!!
Somewhere around 4.45 am the next morning, even before the
sun had risen, we reached the Homestay, and received a very warm welcome from
the Homestay couple. After unloading the luggages, we took rest for a while in
our respective rooms, and then gathered for a chit-chat during the sunrise-time.
Three of my most-pampered enemies joined in the chit-chat: Nono, Popo and Popi
(very fondly named by li’l Champ Vaishnavi) ! Ok – so these are (not-so-for-me)
friendly doggies of the Homestay owners – that freaked me out every time I
found them around me!
Stories of dogs, and then adventures, beach trekking and biking
brought us into the spirit of trekking…and then made us discover the word ‘Assomme’
:D Post a lip-smacking, yummy breakfast from homestay, we headed out to
Kalhatti falls with our Homestay guide. Nono and Popi also followed us
throughout. Pit-stops, helping hands, pic-stops, jokes happened all the way
through the falls when we finally reached the peak. Somewhere on the way is
when we modified the term ‘Assomme’ (that sounded little awkward) to ‘Kickassomme’
(thiss! Really has a punch!:P)
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| Team chilling at homestay, before breakfast : Day-1 |
 |
| The super-cool kiddo! |
Kalhatti Falls & the Fun:
Introduction – after spending over 12 hours together, we finally
conducted the formality of the introduction round. Keeping in mind the range of
age groups, we included ‘favorite color,
favourite fruit and hobby’ as a must-talk-about in this round [Moyee
discovered that we were a lot of ‘aam’ junta – I mean, ‘mango-liking’ people
among us :P]
No sooner did the introduction round get over, than we found
the roars of the waterfalls calling us ;). Juby was the first one to hop and
reach the falls. Motivated by her, a few of us (including me, myself!) hopped
in too :D and Gosh!! The ice cold water of the falls, literally gave us a chill
down the spine – purely a WOW moment of the trip. After experiencing total
numbness and absolute shivers at times, we successfully found a way to counter
the freezing chill water – called as ‘Phubying’ (named after the participant
from whom we discovered this :P) [well, its nothing but an art of blowing air from
your mouth :P] With a literal ‘super-cool’ experience and photo-sessions, we
headed back to our homestay for Lunch.
 |
| Trek to Kalhatti falls |
 |
| Kalhatti Falls |
 |
| Ice-cold water!! |
 |
| Well - that's Phubying ;) :P |
Lunch: The Homestay food was one of the highlights of
the trip. [so yum that we organizers even considered slashing out the rest of
the day’s plan and have a nice sleep for the entire day!;)].
Rose-garden and Z-point: Post lunch, we headed out for
the Rose-Garden late in the afternoon, at Kemmangundi (that was half an hour journey
from the Homestay) and our ‘animal-instincts’ suddenly woke up wide. On
reaching the peak of the garden (yeah it has a small elevation, from where you
can view the Z-point at a distance), we posed like we were never human beings
and what more – gave a free entertainment to the public who were watching us
now and then [but then, who cares – life’s
truly filmy at times – jo karna hai kar lo ;)].
After spending some time at
the view point; we moved back to our route and trekked to the Z-point (about
1.5 kms)! Somehow, our timing turned out to be accurate, and we happened to
reach the peak dot at the Sunset J
[Mission accomplished!]. After spending few minutes at the peak posing for pics,
we descended to the base at dusk and then started our journey back towards the Homestay
where Fooooood-n-Fun was awaiting us….
 |
| A team pic at Rose-garden peak |
Camp-fire, wedding stories, dance-n-dinner:
It was the twilight hour. Back at the homestay, the girls
had now refreshed from the entire day’s fun. But the ‘raat was still baaki ...and so was day-1 ka picture, dost!!’ ;). And, it continued over the camp-fire; plates
of bhajjis and Manchurians; when our lady, Moyee, opened her favourite topic of
-- ummm…well…errrrr…‘shaadi’
:P The next few hours turned out to be sweet and touching, when the girls freely
shared their unique and interesting wedding-stories (some love, some arranged).
And the yet-to-be-married ones shared
their totally amazing ‘partner preferences’ (well, let me
not get into details here:P) [I told ya in my previous blogs, that women do
bond over Food and family :P].
To seal the session with more energy, we had a round of
dance and thumkas; again random photo-session and then sat for Dinner [the
mention of the homestay food itself is enough for mouth-watering!!!]. Over the delicious
food, we discussed plans for Day-2 and then retired to our beds…
Kickassome Day-1 ends….
Day-2 begins here….
The Mullayanagiri
Trek:
With a filled tummy and a heavy heart, we checked out of the
Homestay, post breakfast (of course, with a heavenly memory of the foooood!). Our
Day -2 destination was – the Mullayanagiri peak (the highest peak of Karnataka).
Due to some incorrect directions from the localites, we landed up at the base of another
hill adjacent to Mullayanagiri viz. Sitayanagiri; instead of Sarpa-dari (that
was our intended start-point). However, in order to not waste much time traveling in TT , we decided to start our trek from Sitayanagiri itself (post sufficient
enquiries); and made our start-point (Sarpa-daari) as our target-end-point :P [There is a path that connects both the hills, and so if u land up at the wrong hill, dont worry, you've just earned a bonus trek - just like we did :P]
Throughout the trek it was an amazing team work. The girls
spent 5 awesome hours covering the double-hills of Sitayanagiri and Mullyanagiri
by - Holding hands, cracking jokes,
dancing to jab-we-met songs, breaks for food, route tracking by the leads
(Moyee, Juby and jayasree), few breaks for pics, hilarious crisis-management of Rashmi’s peeled
shoe-sole; and yoodling like tarzan (just for fun ;)) – it was truly a ‘be-totally-yourself’ time for the girls!!
:D. The sweeping team reached the Sarpa daari base by 4.00pm – and with a
victorious photo-session, we headed out for the next destination – Baba Budanagiri.
 |
| Thats Mullayanagiri |
 |
| and that's Sarpa-daari (yayyy...we reached !! :D) |
Baba Buddanagiri and Maanikyadaara:
We reached the Maanikyadara falls in the evening. This is a
small water-fall that comes after crossing the Baba Budanagiri hill. After
spending few minutes outside the falls, we took a snack-break in a stall at the
Fall entrance [the group hadn’t had a proper lunch break and were now hungry :)]
Post the snack-break we travelled back to Baba Budanagiri to
visit the dargah (also called as Datta peetha). Some of us went inside the dargah to experience a peaceful ambience
and collected balls of the red-mud (that is believed to heal skin problems); from
a dedicated spot inside the dargah. It was dusk again..our trip was almost
coming to an end..With some mixed feelings still inside us, we started our
journey back to Bangalore.
Chickamagaluru and return:
On our journey enroute
Bangalore, we stopped at Chickamagaluru to kill some time strolling around; and
then have dinner. Well, every lane of the town had a golgappa stall; and by the
time we crossed the 5th or 6th lane, most of us got
tempted to intrude into one such stall [WOWies by default are bhukkads u see
;)]. After strolling for some more time into the unknown streets, we entered a
restaurant for dinner (again the girls had a great time laughing-for-no-reason during the wait time!!). Post-dinner, we
walked towards our TT, had a feedback session, settled inside the TT and then continued
our return journey to Bangalore – with wonderful memories in mind, and mixed
feelings inside our hearts…:):)
 |
| Veg foodies... |
 |
| Non-veg foodiess... |
....................
Monday morning: Back to Bangalore and she winds up her trip with loads of memories..
She just had an unbelievable weekend! It was more of some sort of 'dream-come-true' - it felt unbelievable to think that she'd just did all those things over the weekend that just went by - explored a place she had never been before, met new people she had never seen before! Again, with mixed emotions, she hugged and bid adieu to her fellow travellers and made a promise of meeting them some other time in some other travel..
With this, she prepared to coil back to the routine and the same old e-mails [perhaps, waiting for another such e-mail that would change her life for a weekend atleast ;)]
She just had an unbelievable weekend! It was more of some sort of 'dream-come-true' - it felt unbelievable to think that she'd just did all those things over the weekend that just went by - explored a place she had never been before, met new people she had never seen before! Again, with mixed emotions, she hugged and bid adieu to her fellow travellers and made a promise of meeting them some other time in some other travel..
With this, she prepared to coil back to the routine and the same old e-mails [perhaps, waiting for another such e-mail that would change her life for a weekend atleast ;)]
Well! Every girl is a story in herself….:) Some of her chapters just have a 'WOW' flavor to it ...:) \m/
 |
| BTC-WOW touches the highest peak of Karnataka - at Mullayanagiri peak! |
Credits:
--> Sreemoyee (for
having waited an entire day; for my confirmation on this trip – would have
definitely missed something big, if you hadn’t waited – Thank You! :) ).
--> Channa and Chaits – for all the
offline support in planning and organizing this trip. Wouldn’t have been a
success without your timely advises and supportJ.
--> Captain Ajju – well, I’ve got nothing
to explain here. This trip was dedicated to you!
Photo credits: Juby
Cheers!
Swatz...
Cheers!
Swatz...
