Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Adventures of Venkateswara- Kodur to Talakona Trek

14 brave souls successfully finished the strenuous and adventurous trek in Venkateswara mountain range. Started from the east of the mountain range at the Kodur and ended at west of the mountain range at Talakona covering a distance of 40+kms (Including the exploration).

Adventurous trek:

We had done 13 hours trek during the Day 1 and 18 hours trek during Day 2, which includes
  • Rock climbing
  • Bouldering
  • Rappelling (With the help of a Nylon rope after sun set)
  • Deep pools crossing
  • Vertical climb parallel to the water fall

The intro section before the start of the trek to know one and another.
image

The initial trek along a jeep trail and then a dry stream bed under the harsh sun. This makes us to finish the available water.
2

No signs of water along the stretch till 2:30 PM, this makes us to worry, after a long stretch of 12 km along the dry stream we finally met the live stream felt very happy and had lunch. The trail was full of big boulders,
3

The views of the rock formations was awesome...
4

Wonders of the Nature, The tree on a rock helping with its roots to climb.
5

After another long stretch we reach the cave pool
6

Fun at the pool
7

Again steep climb fully covered with 2 feet grass, took a wrong turn and reached the peak of the hill.. The sun took rest for the day leaving us on the top of the hill with full of grass, which is not the right place for camping. So, we decided to get down using the torches. Here are the real adventures.. Rappelled down the hill using a ordinary nylon rope with the danger of the sliding rocks, luckily no major accidents. Its tooks 4 hours to get down from the hill, So this states how difficult was the decent

8

Bravo for the team spirit and specially the girls. you proved that there is no difference between men and women. Finally 9:30 PM we reached a flat surface and camped.
9
During the trek to Ombattu gudda, we were welcomed with lot of viper snakes, But this trail welcomed us with lot of water falls
10

The human chain in passing the luggage safely to the other end of the 1st pool crossing
11

Carrying a tripod gives an opportunity to catch the beauties of the trek with slow shutters
12

Here comes with the most challenging pool crossing. The pool was about 100 mts length and deep with both sides vertical rocks. We had no other option, needs to cross this pool. Using the foam sleeping mat and swimming ring, Depankar and team safely carried all the luggage's and helped the non-swimmers to cross this pool...
13

The water was too cold, this makes the crossing more difficult.
14

Hmmm... Its the trek of water falls..
15

16

The next challenge is steep climb of 150 mt parallel to the water fall using the roots of the trees. We finally reached the top of the water fall and finished the lunch. posed for the group pic.
17

18
The next challenge was passing through a slippery gorge. Luckily my floaters had given me enough grip on the slippery surfaces
19

After another 1 hours trek we reached another beautiful water fall with a nice pool. Again a vertical climb to reach the top of this water fall.. The view was awesome, remembering the Canyon water pool in "127 Hours" movie.
21
22

23
The sun again down for the second day trek and we needs to cover another 10 km of stretch. Took the torches, filled the water bottles, energized our self with the left food.

Hmmm. Finding out the Jeep trail after the source of the water is difficult and finding it after sun set makes more difficult. Here, we took the support of the GPS based watch. hmmm. GPS shows low battery and we took the reference of it and linked the direction of the trail with the direction of three stars in a straight line in the sky.

Again a vertical grass land climb with full of bushes, traces of elephants and other animals. This increases the curiosity among us.  We keep walking and correcting the direction our path with the star reference. Again crossed couple of streams.

As the mountain range was too big (25 sq. km), the chances of getting last is more. So requested all the participants, to save the water and do not urinate until we find the jeep trail. Finally around 11 PM we find a small foot way and felt very happy, we switched on the GPS and came to know we are away 2.5 km away from the jeep trail. We followed the foot way and finally met the jeep trail around 11:50 PM. After another one hours of walk along the jeep trail we finally reached the top of the Talakona water falls.

Here again a vertical decent from 850 Mt to 500mts. Finally we reached our vehicle at 1:30 AM and started back to Bangalore.

24
The team posing for a group pic..

Thanks to all the participants for organizing me this trek susses fully. Special thanks to the swimmers Dipankar, Arun Karthik, Bharath, Sri Ranga, Abhilash for helping all the non swimmers during pool crossings.

Thanks to Dipankar and Jinu john for the GPS support. Rajesh P for the transportation vehicle support and Srikanth Gubbala for walkie- talkie support.