Thadiyandamol trek

Every year, To get a break from daily routine work, our team plans a trek to explore the nature and to relax themselves. This time we choose a trek to Thadiyandamol. After a week long analysis and HUGE discussions, we decided our final plan.

On the awesome evening of 15th July, we started our journey and decided to stay in Ambli resort in Srirangapatna. Drive till that point was awesome as being a weekday, we didn't find much traffic.
After reaching the palce, we got welcomed by rabbits, hen and 2 Ostrich kind of luking birds in Ambli resort. We had our snacks, drinks and later dinner there and went to our rooms at 10.
But gathered back in 10 mins in one room for cards.... We started with Bluff as thats the most easiest game for software engineers who are playing cards first time! Those 2 games goes ON till 2 and then we decided to pack as some of us has to drive next day till our final destinations! We all decided that we will start our journey by 8 so everyone has to get by up 6 or 6:30. and Thats the end of first part of our JOURNEY!!

Next Morning: 0605 or 0610 hours!!
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Got up from my bed and went to balcony to stretch myself. But view from that place stretched my eyes to the both sides. It was a east side facing balcony ...So a YELLOW sun was in front of me, partially in clouds and on ground, i saw a long stream of Kaveri river without any ends. After seeing this view, i can't stop myself to go down there and started jogging along the river side. Nice breeze, a little hot feeling of sunrays and the voice of water is not allowing me to stop at that point. I saw some of my mates are there and enjoying the nature with the same passion. Then we got back and had breakfast. Importantly, cards didnt stop chasing us as we had some delay of 1 hr to strat from that place so we started "UNO" - another card game. It was fun as players are making fun on each other's moves!

Then finally after saying goodbye to all rabbits and hens of that resort, we started at around 10 from that place and reached at the basecamp of honeyvally reort i.e. kabbinikad junction. A local person told us that that we have to park our vehicle here and have to go up in owner's jeep. Wondering what could be the reason as road seems to be OK for our Innova but we did as per the direction given. In few minutes we saw a Mahindra commander coming down with an Englishman on the driver seat. He greeted us and asked us to sit in his vehicle. With in the first 2 minutes of ride, we got the answer of all our questions that why we were asked to keep our INNOVA on the base camp.
Sorry for the thought.... and let me tell you about the journey in the owner's jeep!

When we 7 people in jeep excluding driver who might have thought that this is a trek and gonna be a cool ride in between the forest, will see nature on its BEST and will click the animals on our way.
But all our dreams started shivering as the jeep started rolling on the track. There was no road. We can see the imprints of wheel on the muddy road and driver was just trying to put his wheels on the same spot to save our back, neck, legs ..... mean to say WHOLE BODY. Sometime we can see a long inclined rock in front of us ..while sometime we can see the road going down at an angle of almost 60 to 70 degree. I dont know about others but i got 3 times banged with the ceiling of jeep and got all my good memories back at their place! People took out the camera to make a video of that path and i was laughing on them that why they want to engage their one hand while i was using both my hands to save my sweet memories from more BANGS.

sorry for the next line in advance....

Girls were crying..boyz were laughing and in between of all these emotional exchanges..driver was trying to explain something! Saw a resort on one side of the road( so called) and driver told that owner of the resort has gone to LEH for his trip. :-O
after the 30 mins of that shaking journey, we kept our feet on grounds. Driver was our attendent and showed us our rooms. He said food will be ready within half an hour. While others are busy in exploring their rooms, I set out to explore the vicinity of our resort. I asked someone about the nearby location which i can visit in quick time. he told me about a view point at a distance of 30 mins walk. Since i was very excited about the place because of that THRILLING jeep drive. I started running in the direction of lake view. Don't know which short cut i took, which all insects i stamped, and which all bushes I ramped. But finally, I was standing on a edge from where I can see only two colours. BLUE on top and GREEN on bottom, in various shades. I thanked GOD for showing this part of earth to me.
After breathing 10 minutes, i set back as i felt some rats jumping in my stomach. Rushed back to the place and had my lunch. Lunch was good and the sweet too!

after A little rest, we decided to have a walk so that we can finsih one spotlight of the area on that day itself and will continue our trek on the other day. As we heard about a nearby view point. we started moving to it, BUT then rain...sorry drizling started. But we all are so excited to explore the place that we pack ourselves with raincoat/umbrellas and started the FIRST LEG of our trek. the whole team ws heading in the same direction which i had already explored. But after reaching a DRY POND ( it was just a small pit..nothing else) we choose a route which was suppose to lead us to a VIEW point. We started following the path and found insects of different colours. The scenery was awesome. The drizzling brought the mist which makes the view exciting. The term exciting means We saw a beautiful waterfall on another side of mountain but by the time, we could show that to our mates, it was invisible!.. in the mist. we continued our journey in search of that VIEW. I was sure that it's not the same place where i visited earlier and my partner was sure that we are not able to come back from this palce. as it was getting darker and none of us had torch either! But we keep moving forward as we want to see the view. After ging through many Ups and downs, we found a waterfall. Which means that instead of taking VIEW POINT cut, we took WATERFALL cut from that so called DRY POOL!
but even this was not bad. atleast we finished one spotlight of the area. Suddenly we heard a scream of "OH SHIT" twice from one of our team mate who was apart from these screams... was busy in counting the number of leeches on his legs. This spreads the panic among all people and everybody started searching the leeches like a HERO search for villain in hindi cinema. After removing all parasites( we thought so), we headed back to our rooms. return journey was as exciting as the earlier one. we are back to our room by 6:30. Before entering into the room, everyone started checking ourselves to make sure that those PARASITES won't be able to suck our blood in night! Again people started testing their counting by the number of leeches found on their body. They were everywhere... legs, arms, bely, back, neck and even on one's head too!! we removed them and kept all our wet clothes outside the room.
Suddenly heard one ore scream as some1 yelled that girls are coming to our room. We joined the screaming person to shoooo away the ladies until we get back in our stain free attire!

next part was dinner as the person has assured us for the perfect dinner of chicken and PORK!!!! As soon as we enter in the dining hall, i smelled that we are gonna get our best of pork cuisine here and importangt thing, we are only 4 NV people out of 11 people. rest all are enjoying their chapatis, sabji and curry. frankly speaking, food was awesome but pork has marginally advantage over chicken because of its masala. Then we had wine - home made wine which tastes like grape juice only. some people preferred vodka after that while others preferred to continue the card game.

After a while, One of our mate ASHWIN gave us the best entertaining night of the trek as he started behaving nautoriously after having his 5 drinks. Some are trying to calm him down while others are trying to make FUN of him. I was on the third side party, who are just enjoying this TUG OF WAR.. ;-)
Finaly people managed to end our entertainment and everyone move back to their Bed. A awesome day, a perfect evening and a belly full food! What a Beautiful day it was. With the same thought, I went to Bed.

Next morning, we got up and planned to wind up our journey. By 10, we are all ready to start our return journey. We start thie "U" turn with that mind churning, belly woggling and a perfect head banging ride on that MAHINDRA. Some people tried to extend the plan for another day but courtsy to all the female members of the team, we sticked to our original plan. By evening, we are in bangalore!

It was my first trip with my team. Still, i enjoyed it a lot. Be it my chase of scene in restricted time or our head banging session in JEEP, SPICY pork in dinner or that special home made WINE. Moments of cards session in Car or the funny moments of Ash in resort.
With all these memories, signing off this blog with a wait for the next year trek!