My travel tale to Kodachadri

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could sleep on a flower bed, in the lap of nature with a small campfire beside you?”-was the exact description given by Nature Walkers for the kodachadri trek.This was more than enough to trigger my thirst for an adventure.
As my semester holidays were going on, I asked my friends if they were interested well initially they did show interest, in the end, could not make it. But I could not resist the majestic mountains, the allure sunset and the magical waterfalls of kodachadri and therefore decided to witness it by myself. I had already been to tadiandamol trek with these caring and enthusiastic NW team therefore without even a second thought I booked my tickets for the trek.
The pick-up point was from MG road at 9pm.The organizers -Amrita, Hemant and Manoj, picked us up and gave us a brief introduction about the trek. They did mention about ‘no littering policy’ which they follow in all the treks. After this we had an ice-breaking session where each one had to introduce themselves and answer a set of crazy funny questions. I really loved this concept as it made all of us blend with each other easily. The organizers are really sweet and down-to-earth because they made sure that all of us were comfortable.
At 8am, Kodachadri welcomed us with her spectacular beauty. We had to walk for another 5 min to reach the homestay, on our way, the blazing Sun splashed its molten-gold beams on the sparkling water of the stream. It was a soul-swelling experience for me.
After freshening up, all of us sat together to eat mouth-watering breakfast. It was a delight for me to have breakfast amid the Nature. The homestay in which we stayed did not have much luxury but just basic amenities, I guess because of this we got to interact with the localities which definitely added more flavor to the travel. We clicked a group picture and left for the much- awaited escapade.

We walked through beautiful lush green valleys. On our way, we found a small hut situated in the middle of the forest which served the tastiest buttermilk. Later we had to walk through a narrow path stretched across paddy and sugarcane fields, jump over fallen trees and crawl under the tree trunks. During our journey, between the gaps in the forest canopy, the Sun peeped in to say “Hi” to us.

After some more time of hiking, we saw the most attractive feature of the trek ‘Hidlumane falls’. The waterfall looked like a wall of blue satin threaded with silver. As soon as I dipped my feet into the icy cold water of the roaring waterfall, I could feel the connection with Nature and realized that this is where we all human beings dwell but often forget.

After taking a rejuvenating bath, we continued our trek, from now on it was an uphill battle as the slope was too steep. This place has many other smaller peaks, as our legs were tired climbing we decided to take a break on top of a small hill. The view was just phenomenal from here. After which we had to ascend and descend many hills, adjacent to us was the dense green forests.

After huffing and puffing we joined the jeep tracks. It was baking hot as it was afternoon and the scorching Sun drained all my energy. With constant motivation and support from the organizers and friends we reached Bhattara Mane where we had our delicious lunch.After we filled our bellies with lunch we headed back to the trail to conquer the peak.
The temperature had cooled down, I could hear birds chirping in the background and crisp breeze rustling through the leaves of gigantic trees which made our trek even more wonderful. On the way to the peak there is a small Ganapati temple. As the peak was approaching there was an adrenaline rush within me which made my legs move faster.
Hurray! Yes, we were finally there at the peak worth the tired legs. The peak greeted us with a very old temple of a rishi surrounded with the most stunning and mesmerizing panoramic view ever!

We were all thirsty as it was sunny and none of us had carried water bottle, while coming back we saw an ice-cream vendor to whom we all ran like children. For us it was an oasis in the middle of a dessert. We did click a lot of pictures and made funny boomerang videos.
On our way, back to Bangalore we visited goshala and had our lunch in Shimoga. In the bus during the journey we did play one of my favorite game ‘mafia’! Later shook our legs to the latest songs.