Trek Dates:Dec -13 & 14 -2008
Sharing an exciting weekend with all those who were not there -
11 DTC members completed an amazing trekking expedition to Nagalapuram this weekend along with CTC. We started at 4pm Friday from Kacheguda and returned around 8am Tuesday morning delayed by a day, since we missed our scheduled train on Sunday evening. 45 hours of sheer pleasure, intensive trekking over trail-less slopes, through mountain streams and bedazzled by breath taking views.
We started at 4pm 12th Dec from Kacheguda by Kacheguda express and reached Puttur by 3:45AM 13th Dec. We walked out of Puttur railway station looking for some transportation and got surprised to see a tea stall open out side. We had a nice coffee over there. Sridhar and Nani went to bus station to enquire about the bus timings to Nagalapuram which is 20 Km from Puttur. We all walked to bus stand and boarded into a bus which we thought goes to Nagalapuram. After 10 min driver came and we got to know we boarded into wrong bus. Then we got down and caught another bus. We started our bus journey from Puttur to Nagalapuram by 4:30am. We reached Nagalapuram around 5:45am. As per Plan we decided to go to Vishnu temple, but few people wanted to take a room and fresh them up, after few jinks team got separated and one team of 5 people went to Sai Baba temple which has more taps to take bath and the rest stayed back to go to Vishnu temple itself and take bath in a tap in the street. After wonderful Dharsan, Ragu and LSP walked first to the Nagala bus station to enquire about the transportaion to T.P Kotta, which is our actual trekking starting point. They got no information since nobody in bus station knew about that place. Rest of the people also gathered and decided to have breakfast. From the hotel guy we got the transportation details. He said there is no bus since some roadwork is happening and asked us to take auto. We took two autos and reached the T.P.Kotta. The road to T.P.Kotta was not a well laid and water was running all over. So autos got struck in their way, and we walked down to reach our destination. We waited for CTC guys to reach the venue. By 9am every body reached the place and distributed the food and snacks. Everybody’s backpack is packed and it was time to kick start the trek. By 9:30am we walked over the walls of reservoir to reach the base of the mountain. The reservoir was completely submerged – the recent rains had transformed the place into a big lake that stretched deep inside the valley through which we trek. As a result we had to trek along the mountains bordering the western/left side for around 500m before joining the valley at a point behind the submerged area. There was noticeably more water in all streams we trekked through along the trail. The water was now streaming generously through rivers.
Target was to scale the 600m peak towards the right side of the reservoir. The weather was quite enjoyable which made the trek much more comfortable. We encountered big pool and a waterfall. We all jumped in and had a nice break. After the break, we started walking following the main river/valley before taking a right turn towards the caves. From here we proceeded towards the small waterfall/pool, after which we climbed over a small hill on the left/western side. We encountered a small pool and water stream we all had our lunch there. After our lunch we all filled our water bottles and everyone started to prepare their Glucose water. We started walking along the stream. Around 1.5km we started climb up the 600m peak along a fairly steep slope. We were climbing and sun was beating down, It was getting dark. Around 6pm it became darker and everybody was asked to use their torch. We trekked 1Hr 30Min in the dark. Darkness, steep inclines, long grass everywhere (due to recent rains) and rocks underneath the grass made things more challenging. Few people were shouting for help and thorns along side made life more difficult. Few fell, people from back were encouraging them to move ahead. After a long trek with the help of torches, we finally reached the flat mountain peak and set up tents. The full moon was peeking through the low-passing clouds. It was a quiet, peaceful night, although a bit chill at 600m altitudes in the winter. Everyone slept deeply after a first intensive and long day trek. Parotta’s and Chappathi’s with pickle and jam complimented with pure Nagala Glucon-D water never tasted so good before. The next day morning the alarm rang at 6am and some started to get up and around 7am the team were ready to proceed with the mission. We had reached the mountain on the Northern side and now proceeded towards the South where the single river draining this 3km long x 500m wide mountain takes a 300m vertical dip into the valley below. We were treated on some really amazing views from both sides of the mountains.
We reached the top of the 300m falls late Sunday morning and took a refreshing dip in a cool water pool on top. The views from the top of this vertical drop areamazing. Sitting on a rock and seeing the water tumbling down beneath your feet, so high above the valley floor really fills you with a feeling of deep peacefulness, relaxation and accomplishment. We enjoyed the pool and views from the top of the falls for more than 1 hour before proceeding further Southeast to start our descent back towards the dam. At the same time the worry started about getting late to our train since we had booked our return train by 7pm from Puttur. The descent was quite steep. People were struggling while descending. Few borrowed help to carry their backpack. Few need helping hands to assist them. The clock was ticking and we were started to worry about our train. After some time we could sense that we are going to miss our train. But with the little hope of catching the train we walked. We could only walk very slowly since the decent was so steep. At 6pm we were again caught by darkness and we preceded carefully avoiding steep slopes and dense scrub along the trail. We were able to navigate towards the shining lake in the night at the entry of the Nagala valley and made a perfect landing on the right side of the dam around 7:30pm Sunday.
We missed our train. Hoping we will get some transportation back to Hyderabad we decided to move immediately leaving CTC folks. We walked over the reservoir walls and walked across to the path where we came. Meantime we tried to call the auto rickshaw guys whom we asked to wait for us. But we could not get them we decided to walk. After some 1.5km we found two autos were parked and we were back in business. We boarded the auto and reached Nagalpuram around 9pm. immediately we got a bus to Thirupathi and we reached Thirupathi by 10. 30pm. We decided to send Murthy first since he had his daughter’s 21-day birth celebration back home. We got a bus to Kurnool and there was only one seat available as per our plan we asked Murthy to leave and by the time Prakash found a place in the same bus after few negotiations with conductor. Rest of the people decided to stay back and travel next day. Next day we visited couple of temples and boarded 6pm bus to Hyderabad and reached Hyderabad by 8am Tuesday the 16th Dec.
Fill your eyes with some pics
http://picasaweb.google.com/lsprasath/NagalapuramTrek#
http://picasaweb.google.com/ragupathi.p/NagalapuramDec1314#
http://picasaweb.google.com/chandmama/Nagalapuram#
http://picasaweb.google.com/bvsnmurthy/Nagalapuram#
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