Sounds of a moonless night

The violent rocking of the bus, though unlike the gentle sway of a cradle, had put me to a rather, hmm... whats the word... ah right - "deep" sleep, last night. So, when I woke up this morning, I half expected to be in Mangalore. But wait, it was a little too dark to be 6:00 am! The pre dawn deep blue sky rose over the silhouette of a distant mountain range. "Crap!", I thought, "we are still in the western ghats. This does not look good. Not good at all."

Sitting in a bus, where the acronym AC expands to Air Chilling and not Air conditioning can be quite a strain on the delicate urinary system of most mortals. Why would anybody maintain 18 deg Celsius in a bus? Wouldn't 24 be more comfortable? The violent rocking hadn't subsided either. It had only gotten worse. "Looks like I'll be sea sick on land", I fretted as I drifted back to an uneasy morning sleep.

Last night, Googie, Vivek* and I set out from Gandhinagar on two different buses for Mangalore at 2300 hrs. The weird booking was thanks to the Eid and Dassera double whammy weekend and our last minute booking. Googie and Vivek were on the Ideal travels Volvo and I, on the Manjunath Road Lines Volvo. Googie, VMK a.k.a WeeWake a.k.a. Vivek, Paddy and I were to proceed to Kodachadri from Mangalore. Dynamic plan i.e. no plan was the plan!

The usual route involves negotiating the Shiradi ghats on the Hasan - Sakleshpur - Upinagadi route. However, oil laden multi-axel vehicles and an unrelenting monsoon has mauled it to Swiss Cheese. The road literally has holes in it, not potholes, just enormous gaping pits strewn with rocks. Even the roads to Leh would score higher on the motorable quotient! Understandably, the bus operators use the longer Mysore - Hunsur - Madikeri - Sulia - Puttur route to Mangalore these days.

The road upto Madikeri is a dream. Dual carriageways for most part, make the 250 kilometer ride possible in a little under 3 hours in the Volvos. Then comes the bone shattering, and bladder bursting 200 kilometeres, which took nearly 8 hours. Yes sir. Eight freaking hours. Anyways. The roads, although better than Swiss Cheese, are threatening to surpass the raggedness of the lunar landscape anytime soon. Every rain drop is like a prehistoric meteor crashing into the moon - the birth of a crater or a pothole in our case.


My biological clock sends me a call from the commode at 0630 hrs on most days, and today wasn't an exception. I could feel the pressure build up inside me. Not the urinary type! So I tried moving my legs around.... ah avoided the seat in front of me; reclined a bit further, spread my knees... and viola! the pressure subsided! Subsided immensly! But hell, my posture was that of a pregnant woman about to deliver... hehehe... I was confident I could wait for an hour or so, yet the thick green foliage of the passing country side was tempting my bladder to empty itself. The driver, on the other hand, was in no mood to stop the vehicle, and so, the shake fest continued unabated.

After two long, really long hours of self control, I asked the driver, "Yelladaru cha - coffee ge nillasi saar." ("Why don't we halt someplace for tea/coffee?").
"Mangalore is only an hour away", he tried to bluff.
"There are women and children on board", I countered.
That got him. "I think I remember seeing a hotel somewhere near Puttur. I'll see what I can do...", he promised.

At around 0900 hrs, he spotted a road side hotel near Puttur, where he mercifully stopped the bus. And I gleefully took the opportunity to unload a lot of things into their septic tank. Here is also where I received two SMS's - one from Paddy and the other from Googie. Paddy wanted to know the program for the day and Googie wanted to know my whereabouts. After appropriately messaging them, I got onto the cold bus. Googie, had reached Mangalore at 07:30 am, and had finished two rounds of breakfast, or so he claimed. "That bugger", I muttered under my breath, "...aaarrgghhh... No way I am going back to Bangalore by road. Dimaag ka falluda ho jayega"

Without any more problems, or adventures, the driver took us through Puttur and onto B.C. Road and Pump-well, which they call "Pumpaile", onto Jyotis, and towards PBS. At PBS, all the Udupi/Manipal bound passengers were asked to change buses. All but one got out. Yeah, right - that one was me.

"How strange, how very strange magga", I thought, "If this was four years ago, I'd have been switching buses too... hehe... Phew!"
At this point, the driver came up and told me, "Saar, I will take you to Lalbagh by Qualis. This bus is leaking A/C fluid".
"That is what you get for freezing my balls", I muttered under my breath.

In the short ride from PBS to Lalbagh, the driver gave me a non-stop briefing about all that ails the transport industry, the contents of which I shall reserve for another blog.

Alighting from the Quallis, and standing before the familiar Pabbas Ice cream parlor I felt, I had reached my destination. But, we had miles to go, and hills to climb before we could call it a day. And so, I trudged over the short distance to Lady Hill and my parents' apartment.

It was only at my folks place, that I realized how tired I was. I was too tired even before the trek. How cool was that. Anyways, from 10am to almost 2pm I was generally chatting with Mum and Dad.

At 2 pm, Paddy and Googie informed me that they were waiting outside the apartment complex, and we were to hurry to the airport to pick up WeeWake, who was arriving from Mumbai at 2:20 pm. And true to their word, they were waiting outside the apartment in a white Indica.

As we sped towards the airport, Paddy launched his commentary on the quirks of the car -
"This car has bald tyres man!"; "Sala! Keechtha hi nahi hai yaar"; "Hold on ok... I am putting turbo charge", while switching off the AC. And this is when we named it - "The White Monster". God knows what got into Paddy then, for he dived into a brief history of dents.

"अरे, पता है इस गाडी मी पुरा डेंट ही डेंट है. Mostly, my contribution.", as he over took an auto.
"The one at the front", he said while point at someplace beyond the windshield, "that one was near Kochi. There was this auto fellow ....". Very entertaining story Paddy, but seriously, while driving, थोडा scary लगता है.
".... उस दिन थो just miss हो गया यार"#, he concluded... hehe...

Almost, as if on cue, at that time, WeeWake informs us via SMS that he has landed. "Where are you?" he asked, which was soon followed by another SMS, "Ticket to Hollywood". Yeah... I know... WTF???

So, we picked up, His Holy Highness Sri Sri Gandeshwari Baba WeeWakeji from the airport. Parked there for free too. The great Baba decreed that the food served on Air Deccan was shitty. It happens, sometimes these Babas blabber too much. And so started the continuous onslaught of chatar mattar from the Baba. For the entire distance. Jai Baba ki.

Baba could not contain himself, when he saw us - the same धुस्ट पापीस, who had "dropped" his old S3-IS somewhere between Jispa and Baralach La. He had to ask, "Any body brought their cameras?"
"Ya da, just my old P-72", I said.
"देखो. देखो. देखो. मेरा नया S3-IS", he gleamed. Then he remembered, "कमीनौ".**

We zoomed from the Airport to Mulki via the inner roads, while reminiscing the Leh trip ; the much older college days spent in the current neighbourhood; and debating where to have lunch.
Lunch, we decided would be at Kapu... err.. Kaup as some idoit misspelled it. The same beach side joint. By the time Kaup approached, it changed to - Karavalli.

After a long drive, which pothole strewn roads, we settled in at Karavalli with our plates of oily Goli Bajje. The roads were a mess we agreed and Paddy warned us, "Just wait till you see the roads near Kundapur".

If I ever complained about the roads leading to Leh, I take back all my complaints. One must be happy with what one gets. Those roads were heaven compared to what we saw from Udupi to Marvanthe. What used to be a 45 minute drive has stretched into a neat 2 hr ordeal. Those manganese and iron ore laden over loaded bloody trucks ought to be taken off these roads!

I compared the Shirdai ghats to the Swiss Cheese, and I wouldn't be too far from reality if were to extend the same honor to NH-17 (Udupi to Marvanthe). What tickled us more was that everybody on a motorcycle would turn, look at our car, and laugh. WTF?? Puzzling behaviour of our fellow countrymen, what to say... sigh.

By this time, a little red dot was blinking furiously on the dashboard. Yes, yes. That was the low Fuel indicator. And we were so close to Kundapur. Err... no, we were actually getting the car autographed. NH-17 was leaving its mark on the underbelly of the poor ol' Indica. Ok. Ok. Enough already about that darn road. I promise. No more bad road sentences. Focus. Focus Sushil focus, this is why you never complete any blog.

It was almost 5:30 pm. We were hungry, goli bajjes not withstanding. The car was thirsty. It was almost sunset. And, we were so close, so very very close to Marvanthe. How could be let this opportunity pass us by? Absolutely right. No way we'd let some "good" road get in our way. We were going to see the sun set at Marvanthe. Yippee!!

Marvanthe beach is a few kilometers North of Kundapur on NH-17. It stretches for nearly a kilometer and a half by the road side. On the left you have the beach and the Arabian sea, and on the right you have the backwaters/lagoon. For about a kilometer, its water on both sides of the road. Road - mind you, not a bridge, not a bund, but a road. It isn't half as barren as this image on google maps would have you to believe.

View Larger Map

Once upon a time, long long ago, when were in college, we used to visit this beach with astonishing regularity... those days... hehe... Well, we were back. Big deal! So, we did what we did then. Well a little bit, for a very small amount of time. Started the setting sun. Just slept on the beach. Wow! Now that was something I hadn't done - at Marvanthe. You know it isn't just the eagles which fly so high, we saw some crows struggling to maintain their bearings. and these were just tiny minuscule specks in the sky right above our heads. Remember Brownian motion? Thats what it looked like. Hehe... thankfully none of them shat.

Soon, we were headed back towards Kollur and the roads after the turn off at Kundapur, were fabulous. I had never seen anything that smooth, that un-potholed in two whole days! Of course, it was also getting dark, sunset and everything... By 7 pm were were at Kollur. And visited the famous Mookambike temple. During Navrathri, so things were special at the temple. Dance programs - not the disco types, but the Bharathnatyam, Mohiniattam types. Which well, was Oo-la-la. Seriously.

The queue to the inner temple snaked around so much, that if uncoiled, would reach Mangalore. The guy at the middle of the queue told us, this was for the 4:00am darshan. What the?? Well, we ain't that pious. Whom am I kidding, there ain't a single pious bone in our body. i.e. we just went around the temple; bought the prasadam; sat awhile swatting the mosquitoes, who, by the way, were having a party! and then headed back to the car.

We were a torch of two short, and we weren't about to enter a jungle without correcting this anomaly. Kollur is a temple town, with plenty of our pious Mallu brethren visiting. Ya!! You got it! WeeWake was full happy happy wonlee, "Eh chetta", he would start... We managed to gather a torch, four bananas, four 1L water bottles, Tapioca chips, Chaklees, one flute and one drum. Yes dear, you read right, one flute and one drum. One baja and one band. The amused shopkeeper asked us in half Kannada - half Malayalam, "Where are you guys going?"
"Kodachadari", we answered nonchalantly.
"Tomorrow morning, climb will be excellent", he offered.
"Yes, tomorrow morning we will be climbing down.. we plan to trek up tonight", we said rather arrogantly.

He was stumped. I am sure, if Kollur had a mental asylum, he would have mistaken us for escapees, but since Kollur was only a temple town and not a loony bin, he was compelled to believe that we were indeed sane.

"Are you sure?", he asked.
"Yes, why?", we countered.
"You know, nobody does anything like that. Its night. The place is infested with wild animals. Not advisable".
We lost him when he said wild animals. Come on! How many "wild animals", would he have seen in his entire life time of selling bottled water, camphor, the odd torch or two and Masala Lays chips on a busy temple town street?
"But if you do have to go, be a careful and exercise caution.", he advised.

"Wild animals, now wouldn't that be cool", we all thought anticipating an encounter with a tiger, or a panther perhaps.... But our immediate concern was dinner. We were all hungry. A quick plate of Kerala parota with peas curry took care of that problem.

Stomachs full, we were confident that nothing would stop us reaching the top that night. Only, we didn't count on the broken bridge just outside of Kollur. There was a makeshift bridge to the side, and it was so narrow, only a small car would fit. And just about fit! It took an exprienced driver like Paddy and an able cleaner/navigator like Googie to slowing inch the car across the rickety contraption. We were wondering how things would be the next day, when things were bound to get more busy. Only one way traffic on this bridge, and our countrymen are famous for their road sense. Hehe. Anyways, thats the next day. Kal ka kal deka jayega... By 8.oo pm we were back on the road and towards that turn that would take us to the Mallu shack.

View Larger Map

If you look at the map that I have attached above, you will notice that there are two turn offs from the main road towards the Mallu shack. WeeWake and Paddy are four times veterans of the Kodachadri summit. The first turn off is full of small ups and downs. The road, rather path, rises up a couple of 100 meteres, then, as quickly, slopes down. Each successive incline at a greater gradient than the other. Paddy knew about the second more easier approach to the Mallu shack, where the roads were more flat with a relatively constant gradient.

We were on the lookout for the second turn off, and reached the first one at around 9 pm. Only Paddy had seen the second turn off, but he was not sure about its exact location. Hence, without further ado, Paddy turned into the dark boulder ridden steep gradient into the thick jungles. Look at the map! The car had only gone 20 meters, when we heard the clunk clunk clunk of a boulder scrape against the under body. To add to our concern, it didn't look the car had any grip of the surface. The damn thing was groaning to move an inch forward.

We exited the first turn off as quickly as we entered it. If we could find the second turn off, we were going to take it. Paddy knew that it would be on the right hand side, and that it would be a similar terrain, but the gradient would be a little more easy. So we persisted, peering into the darkness in the hope of spotting a continuous path into the jungle. When it is night, especially a moonless night, you'd be lucky to see the tip of your nose. Well, we had headlights. But all they illuminate is a few tens of meters in front of the vehicle. And here we were trying to find a path into a jungle in less than a fraction of a second. Our mind told us that every dark patch by the road was a path, but these just turned out to be small gaps in the trees.

A couple of kilometers down the road, we spotted an asphalted stretch. Could that be it? Paddy was very doubtful, he couldn't remember. The rest of us didn't know. And so continued our quest for that elusive happy road to the Mallu shack. Another couple of kilometers passed by and all we could see were roads leading into homes, and compounds. Nothing though triggered any recollection in Paddy. Realizing that searching any further was no more than a futile exercise, Paddy turned the car around and headed back to the first turn off.

This time around though Paddy was a little more cautious in his attempt at entering the thick jungle canopy. It was a fairly steep climb, up to the first turn, which was less than a 100 feet from the main road. Then the road evened out, but the whole dark jungle, thick canopy situation was spooking us out a bit. And Paddy was driving. He was spooked most!

"Ok. Roll up the windows everybody", he said, "If we see anything moving, we turn off the lights, and wait for it to go away".
"What if we see a woman in a white sari?", WeeWake wanted to know.
"Then just run!"
"Man, there will be king cobras and every thing".
"Arre, that is the least of our worries. There are even Panthers running around here."

Then Paddy started his discourse on how Shakaracharya decided to start a peeta here in the middle of the jungle and how he felt the the wild animals did no one any harm, if they weren't harmed in the first place. That is called a morale booster!

There were a couple occasions that night when we had to get out of the car and push the vehicle up the slope. And boy did we run or what when the vehicle move forward. Nobody wanted to be too far away from the door of the vehicle. It was our safe place. No thing, we thought, could harm us if we were in the car. WTF?? what were we thinking?? hehe... so much for mocking that storekeeper uh??

It took us a good hour to reach the clearing with the Mallu shack. We parked beside the dark and seemingly empty shack and began to make preparations to commence our night trek, when we heard a movement from inside the shack.

Horray! The guy was inside and our noise had woken him up. He enquired about our plans and confirmed that it was just a two hour trek up to the top. We could see a distant single yellow light on the top. That was the guest house light, and was to serve as our reference point.

The dark sky was a treat! There were so many stars that I could see, and ofcourse the milky way. It looked so beautiful. It was like Deja-Vu. The old days were back, when all I had to do was go up to End-point to see these familiar sights. I remembered the shooting stars that I used to see so much and wondered if I'd see any tonight.

After a couple of pre-trek snaps - "I'm in" with the foot etc etc... we began our climb. No flute, no drum, just us, the torches, a bottle of diesel (a lesson from Jispa), and of course water. We agreed that we'd keep talking to each other, and no one would be more than an arms distance at any time. We picked up a few branches to serve as walking sticks along the way, after making sure there were no leaches on them. We terked and treked. On a few occasions I peered up, to see if we could see the night sky, and we seldom did. We were always under the thick jungle canopy. And our field of vision was just 2 feet to the front, illuminated by the torch light. The thrill of a night trek.

The trail was fairly easy to follow. That is until we reached a clearing 30 minutes into our trek. Strangely, we couldn't see the Guest house lights from here. There seemed to be only two paths from it. One was a half chance path - where you'd have to clear the undergrowth in front of you to plod ahead, and the other was the path from the Mallu shack. Well - Mard-ko-dard-nahi, right? so, we decided to go ahead. We were two steps into that undergrowth and no more and we heard a strange noise. What was that? A panther? A dog? What the hell was that? There was no place to turn!

It was dark. If we extinguished our torches, all we could see were the odd fireflies. And the noise would become more eerie, more sinster. Shit, we were spooked. If only the path was more wide , if only we had a machete instead of a measly 4 inch swiss army knife. We didn't want to head back, and couldn't move ahead. Were we lost? There was no definitive trail into the thick undergrowth. Could we take that chance? Or should we just camp out the night, and resume, when there was sunlight and we could see things more clearly?

While we were battling with the daemons of the night, we could still hear that sinister growl/howl intensify. We moved back to the clearing to a) clear our minds and b) to make a fire - this is why we took the diesel. Long live Hindustan petroleum - "Kyonki bahut duur jaana hai"

The Clearing

The four of us had traveled from Mangalore to Kollur and were on our way to Kodachadari after parking the car the Mallu shack, when we lost our way and reached a dead end after nearly an hour of trekking.

We lit a fire and camped for the night at the clearing. The eerie sound drifted away from us as quickly as we decided to stay put. Quite anti-climactic, huh? With sleep evading us, we had nothing much to do but to talk. We had one sleeping bag for the four of us. Now, now don't you get no dirty ideas... Plus the place was infested with leaches... not a pretty site ;)

We decided to get moving with the first rays of the sun. And we all know how that works out!

For a change, we guys were up and about chasing imaginary peacocks by 6 am the next day. Dawn also infused some extra spunk in our balls and we plunged into the thick undergrowth determined to make a new trail through the forest. After a few hundred yards through the wild undergrowth we found ourselves, rather miraculously at a well trod path. Not lost anymore were we now?

The jubilant jungle quartet began belting popular tunes to egg themselves on, not mention scare away all wild life - panther, bear, snake, butterflies from their surroundings. What! You say this is bull shite? Then how do you explain us not spotting a single wild animal? Give us some credit man... :P We were in tune with nature, such a splendid feeling.

People with my physique - blubber, will find the ascent ( ~ 2000 odd feet over 5 kms) fairly difficult. I kept pausing every 100 meters or so to catch my breath. And of course the Glue-Gand-Dee that Sri Sri Gandeshwari Baba had so thoughtfully carried along was very handy. Can't say much about following Sri Sri Gandeshwari Baba while trekking though... keeps playing peek-a-boo with you all the time :P

The first break from the think folliage was around 1/3rd the way up. The clearing is very small and the first thing that catches the eye is this tree in the middle.

From there it is back into a thicker canopy and out into a clearing along the slopes of the hill. Monsoon had spawned a rash of elephant grass and we had to wade through a narrow beaten track into yet another Canopy and out into a clearing just 150 meters below the Kodachadari temple.

At the Kodachadari temple you will find a huge iron pole, said to the "trishul", with which the Goddess had nailed down a mooka (dumb) demon. Scientific studies claim that this "trishul" is not a product of modern iron making processes as the carbon content is less than 0.05%. Which would make this very very old. However, no archaeological studies seems to have been performed to determine its age. Sad, that no one done anything about it. If were an archaeologist, I'd have jumped at the first opportunity to do some Carbon dating or something like that...

At this point, you can ask the local caretaker to arrange for food, lassi, fresh lime juice etc etc. If we had arrived at night, we probably would have crashed here too. But after a wash in the cold stream behind the caretaker's home and a couple of shots of lime juice we guys moved on to the Shanakaracharya peeta.

The distance of around 2 kms was easily achievable in 1 hour, the canopy had disappeared and the open hill top was awash with colour full butterfiles; dragon files; bumble bees and other interesting insects darting around the wild flower fields collecting necter.

It is rumored that from the top of Kodachadri, on a clear day, you can see the Arabian Sea, Linganmakki Dam and Shimoga. Fortunately we weren't given a chance to verify that claim! But I tell you what, being up there, on top, engulfed by clouds meant much more. Words fail me in describing that experience. The clouds just drifted in from the north-east; gently enveloped us; lingered around for a while; made us feel a little cold; then retreated, ever so gently, lifting the white mist; revealing once again the depths of the valley, over which we had just trekked. Surreal. Very surreal.


Why don't moments like that last forever? May they shouldn't, what the heck... philosophy and all... too much ok... After a while, we climbed down back to the caretaker's home. Lunch was all laid out and we did what we do best. Eat. Then started our rather uneventful trek down the hill. And this is where we also spotted the place where we took the wrong turn at night. That confounded path looked like the small stream, but dried small stream. Very very possible to get confused, and not take that path. We took a little over 5 hrs to trek up but only 2 hrs to trek down.

We quickly got to the Mallu shack, changed into something that didn't stink ;) and were on our way back to civilization. This time through that "easier" road, which by the way, was quite steep and peppered with boulders large enough to scrape all the metal away from the under carriage. We also encountered a variant of the Pagal nalla, which turned out to be a damp squib just like its more notorious cousin from the north. Maybe we guys are just plain lucky! Touch wood.

It was that asphalted insignificant stretch of road, the one we had rejected last night, to which this alternate road was connected. Something to remember for next time. There is always a next time ;)

Off all things we got stuck at the broken bridge. Took quite a while for the mess to clear up. First of all a rookie driver was trying to navigate a car width wide bridge, with no shoulder to guide the car, what did they expect? Gammon was the contractor, yessir the same one responsible for that flyover in Hyd, which collapsed.... What to say... strange are the ways in which we work.

We reached Udupi by 6:30 pm, and then we stopped by at Seaworld, Kapu for a quick bite at nearly 7 :15pm. Rushed as quickly as possible to Mangalore. Googie had a 9:30 pm bus to catch and two spare tickets to sell. And we know how "punctual" he is when it comes to catching buses, or trains, and even planes!

*Not to be confused with WeeWake a.k.a. VMK
#whole story will not be told to protect the privacy of the said auto driver and a few other truck drivers।
**Conversations might have extra मसाला added to them.

Sounds of a moonless night