How far to Yedakumeri

The story began as usual. Over a cup of chai. Discussing about the places we didn't do. And teeks mentioned that he knew a trek route well blogged about and reasonable close by. It was called the subramanya trek route somewhere in karnataka. And as expected I threw my cup and jumped in.

Task #1 was to find backers and we were able to find about 5-6 people who stuck to the commitment and as usual, we had one person who decided to drop out at the last moment. This made the trip right on pattern, even though we had no plan to speak about. Believe me, these are the right signs.

The gang that went aimless !
Standing: left to right . bajji / ramesh / hari / vishnu / mani.
Of course we cannot miss the key person, Teeks, shown below..


Now that we had people, the next thing to do was to decide on the dates and book tickets. We zeroed in on the weekend of Nov 26th. This was safe and beyond all project deadlines for me. (A last minute re-schedule made my availabilty really precarious and I was just able to free up myself on the concerned friday). To cut the long story short, we booked tickets on shatabdi to bangalore on friday evening and return tickets on sunday 11pm.

This left us with just a few uncertanities to ponder about. Seriously, we didn't do much research per se, about the place. We just mailed each other links to one of the many blogs that mentioned Sakleshpur and Teeks had a friend who had already done this trip.

From the blogs, we had a fairly clear idea about the place. Abandoned railway track. Not abandoned by people, but as we discovered, just by the trains. Renovation in progress. Lots of tunnels. And equal number of scary bridges. Finally, we ended up printing out the blogs and carrying them around for reference.

Planned Route Map.
Chennai --> Bangalore --> Sakleshpur --> Manjarabad Fort --> Donigal --20kms--> Yedukameri --4kms--> Stream --> Main Road --> Bangalore --> Chennai.

Since the trek initially involved an overnight stay at the abandoned railway station, we had to arrange for food & shelter. Food and other beverages were arranged for by Vishnu / Ramesh. Hari volunteered to bring a major portion of the jamakaalams. (Which teeks packed in my backpack !). Using these tunnels in the trip as an excuse, teeks and I bought ourselves a maglite D cell flashlight.

We reached bangalore majestic at 10.30 pm and bought some water. Two 2 Litre bottles each. And picked up some 2 litres of fine bangalore alcohol. This is turn necessitated two more 2 litre Sodas. Anyways, did manage to get on to a managalore bound bus. The conductor of the bus took one long look at our backpacks and knew where to drop us and we didn't even have to ask. This was a little dissapointing start to an 'exotic' trek. Nevertheless helpful.


Reached sakleshpur at around 4 am on Saturday and the next 6/7 kms to the drop point turned out to a be long winded ghat section. Ultimately the bus dropped us off in pitch darkness in the middle of nowhere. We hopelessly looked around for the 'picnic' tea stall mentioned in the blogs. But found no sign, except for a really old person. He pointed us to a mud track uphill.

We climbed that and came uphill and reached a bigger dirt track that ran perpendicular to ours. Now we had to make a decision whether to turn left or to turn right. The blogs hadn't mentioned that. Our back packs about 10/12 Kgs each by now had begun to remind us in a subtle way that every incorrect step was expensive in calories. So, we settlled there and decided to wait for day to break at a nearby hutment. After about 2 cans of beers each, half a dozen rooster cries and one hour later, day broke and someone came out of the hut to brush his teeth. Some of our guys pounced on him with a lot of enthusiasm. Hari tried his sprinkling of kannada. The man seemed to have understood little, but eventually pointed to in one of the two directions.



We set out on the dirt track, which after 3/4 kms lead us to the track near a bridge across a stream. Climbed up and we set out to click some inital snaps and then sat down near the entrance to the fist tunnel. We had to unpack our bags and take out the maglite.


The fist few tunnels were uneventful and short. 50 - 100 mts long. The bridges were quite short and though they looked menacing, they had safety plank in the middle on which you comfortably walk on. By this time we had stopped 2/3 times for a smoke and I was actively promoting the idea of breakfast to unload some of the weight in my backpack. My enthusiastic plans for beer breaks were also based on the same policy of unloading as many Kingfisher cans out of my back pack. However, this brought me in direct conflict with Mani who started to protest that we were taking too many breaks and too often.



So after the 5th break in an hour we set out for some serious trekking and the tunnels began to grow longer each mile and the planks began to miss from the longer bridges. Some of seriously attributed the giddy feeling on top of the bridges to the four cans of beer and decided to stop with that for a moment.


The bridges became longer and higher and we were warned about the mother of all bridges at Nager Hole. The "500"m long bridge with half way metal sleepers and part wooden sleepers. It was becoming part of the folk lore. By this time we had perfected the art of walking across the concrete sleepers in the middle of the track, something I called 'sleeper walking'. It helped us avoid the rough blue metal along and inside the tracks and gave us a sort of rhythm for the steps.

This rhythm, if well replicated on the railway bridges, was successfull enough to take you to the other side without having to look down and sense terra firma moving 100 feet below you in the opposite direction. But this strategy had one shortcoming, the guy before you shouldn't stall. Else, you stop and lose your rhythm and have to look down serious to evaluate you next footstep, which to say the least, was thrilling. But not the kind you lookforward to doing everyday after breakfast.



We were given advance notice that, the beat, a goods train transporting construction material, would pass through the track that day. And if we were lucky enough, we could hop on and cross the bridges safely. It was finally true. I suggested we hop on it for some distance and chill, but was overwhelmingly turned down by the crowd. We cheerfully said bye to the gang men who jumped on to the train after warning us further about the nager hole bridge.



Some of the long tunnels turned out to be quite a daunting crossover due to the bats. Imagine light at the end of the tunnel. Now imagine the same light filtering through a colony of bats ! (had to look up the collective noun !)



Then immdetialey after the above said tunnel, we came to a sufficiently long bridge, but nowhere as 500 mts long. More in the league of 200 - 300 mts. And this one did curve considerably to the right. It was half way metal sleepers, followed by wooden ones. When we crossed it in batches. Stopped to take pictures of work happening on it. It was fairly tall bridge and after we crossed it we were told it was infact the Nagerhole bridge. Of course I was dissappointed. One woman had recently fell of it. Must be the wind, remarked a guy in chaste malayalam. Ramesh was trying his best to keep up with him.





Mani, by this time made friends with the track and went off to sleep. We did do some repackaging of our bags and re-alignment of weights and set of again towards our destination for the day. Yedakumeri Ho !



Another interesting fact was, that none of us were able to pronounce the above said destination properly and it kind-a kept morphing into yeruma kari , yerumbu koli and so on... After every fifteen minutes, we would come across the construction workers who would speak a different language. And ask them 'How far to yermba kaley ?' or some equivalent. We always got the same answer. 4 kms.



We were told that, after Nagerhole, the trek was nothing. This apparent 'nothing' was wearing us down along with the weight of the upto 10kg backpacks / 2 litre bottles. The bridges kept coming and their count increased beyond 15 since morning. Six hours had passed. And we were still 4 kms from erumakkiri !



Now it felt as if it was the turn of the tunnels. They were taking their revenge for not respecting them enough. The long tunnels were particularly hazardous because of the junk lying right in the middle of the tracks in pitch black tunnels. Every now and then we would switch off all flashlights and stare into the darkness. As expected we saw nothing until teeks clicked off a snap and caught us blinking.



Finally, as a blog said, we reached a place where the track split into two. This was the sign that edakumeri was round the corner. And it turned out to be literally true !



We finally reached our 'abandoned' station. And it was teeming with some kind of construction activity. I was grateful to find a chai shop. But Vishnu, found the chai 'too watery'. Discerning chap.



We were warned that though the mainroad was only 4kms away. We had to cross over a stream, which was now in full flow. The local workers asked us to beat it along with them back to Donigal. We were initially hesitant to give up the plan of staying overnight at the station. But we had no way of leaving the place in the morning. And suddenly, 4kms didn't sound so near either.

Thats when we found our new mode of transport. Truck on tracks ! Modified Tata trucks that ran on the railway track. We were happy to be offered a ride and jumped on. By this time, the sun had set and it was pitch black. the tunnels didn't make much of a difference.



The journey back to donihal was uneventful, except for the truck making strange noises over the famed Nager Hole bridge and stalling. One of co-passengers, a gangman from tamil nadu, remarked that sometimes the truck de-rails on the curving bridges. This was our first big scare. Not that we weren't scared before. But that was during different time periods. Now, everyone was scared at the same moment except for Mani, who had dozed of to sleep. We were sure we couldn't cross the bridge in pitch black darkness (Nor wake up mani). Luckily the truck hadn't de-railed and after the mandatory inspections, started to move slowly again..

After thanking the truck guys, who were brave enough to do a return trip the same night. We reached the main road within 10 minutes. We enquired at the lonely tea shop about our chances of reaching sakleshpur that night. We were told that one in hundred trucks would stop by for hitchhikers and we could try our luck there.

I guess we were extremely lucky, for the 2nd truck we waved to, stopped and dropped us in sakleshpur. It would have been the first truck, if not for the truck I waved to turning out to be tanker lorry.

After a bum-breaking ride we reached sakleshur and checked-in to a small time hotel. Here we conclude the events concerning this trip.