Trek to Kemmanagundi

It’s been a couple of weeks since we went trekking in this beautiful hill top region nestled in the Chickmagalur region of Karnataka but I got time to make a blog entry only now.

With very little prior preparations a group of us from office set out for this picturesque hill station on a Friday night around 220 kms from Bangalore. Info available on the net indicated that the best way to reach the place is by your transport and so we hired our own private vehicle. The journey went pretty smooth and it took us only 7 hours to reach the place! This was amazing cos many other places I've been to in Karnataka require almost an entire night of tedious bus journeys. Needless to say we hardly slept:) We were also lucky to have a fabulous stereo system on board!

As most of us were not really tired we set out for the trek to Hebbe Falls early morning after a refreshing cup of tea. The lodge by the Forest Horticultural Dept is well maintained and you can almost be assured of a room booking without earlier confirmation. Initially the trek route was pretty even with hardly any flora and fauna. You could find few isolated trees and lots of barren land. It was only much later that we realized we were completely on the wrong track! There were hardly any folks around and after a detour we managed to find the right path to the water falls. In between we had to cross many small rivulets of water while also ensuring that we don’t loose our balance on the wet rocks :)

The water falls itself was stunningly beautiful! Gushing down from a height of 168 m the droplets of water streaking our faces was incredible. But sadly the water was freezing cold!! Except for a few spirited guys none of us managed to get into it! We waited until noon hoping that the temperature of the water would rise but no luck :(
we just enjoyed it from afar!

None of us were in any shape to make the return 12 kms journey back to the lodge by foot :P and hence we hired a jeep. Had a nice bumpy jeep ride back. Luckily for us the lunch at the lodge was pretty good and made up for the lack of breakfast. In the evening we decided to skip the trek to the famous "Z" sunset point and instead just wandered around in the beautiful hilly region. Lazy people us :)

After a rather huge dinner spread at Chikmangulur we headed back and reached Bangalore during the wee hours of Sunday morning. All in all a good break from the daily activities and what made it truly memorable was the natural beauty of the place. A must visit for people who have never been there before!