A Getaway of life time !

Here is a short travelogue of the epic vacation we had previous week (Aug 11th) accompanied by snaps. Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the ride! By the time you finish this blog, I "Hope" you have made your plans to visit the places which i have described here !

 

                As anticipated, we all got up late at our jungle stay at Dandeli. Gave a final touch to our backpacks and boarded our vehicle roughly at 7. This is quite common when you are travelling in a bunch. I mean, there will be a lot of deviations from the plan. But it has its own kind off fun! Our plan was to go to Castle rock in our vehicle and from there trek all the way to Dudhsagar (14 KM) along side the railway track and come back to castle rock in a train. We started towards the Ganesh Gudi. We reached Ram Nagar .We took a left on the Belgaum – Goa highway. It was raining cats and dogs all the way. Finally after heading about 25 km west-wards from Ram Nagar we found a way heading left labeled  “Castle Rock” which we didn’t miss. After driving about 5 km we were right in front of Castle rock railway station.

This small town ‘s like a mystery land. It’s a small village with lush patches of green amidst the thick forest. The only prominent establishment you can find here is the railway station. I read somewhere that this was a Portuguese settlement in 18^th century. It seems like every person in village is linked to railway station in one way or the other. The weather here is a synonym for unpredictability !!

 We had a heavy breakfast here and started our trek from castle rock railway station. It was pouring like anything. What we saw here was one of the heaviest rain we had ever been in ! But we all had prepared ourselves for what mother nature had to throw in against us.

 We hit the rails hard and slow and starting to cover some distance. Mother nature gave pauses in between, during which we gained  some pace. And there we are, at the start of Braganza Ghats. An old abandoned railways station of Portuguese period was silent by standing witness for our glorious trek !! 

 

 Within no time we met the gruesome enemy which was giving us nightmares while planning for this trek! Tunnels. As dark as hell, some of these were half a kilometer in length. But, as told before, we were not unprepared!! We took out our torches! These tunnels were no match for our indomitable spirit. As our torches spear-headed the attack against the darkness in the tunnel, our unity and watchfulness bought us back to the other end of tunnel in a single piece!! Believe me, this a do-before-you-die kind of adventure everyone has to experience in their life-time at least once. As we remembered the famous saying, “The light at the other end of the tunnel, may also be of an oncoming train”, we started being more and more watch full while entering longer tunnel. The longest one we encountered was 450 m long!! 

We came across an abandoned station where we saw a old board which told us that we are in to the state of Goa. We didn’t waste much time here as we were already loosing pace because of frequent rests.  One by one, the packed food items started getting unpacked and our luggage started getting lighter and lighter on the way. And rain was completely stopped. Thanks to mother nature!

 

We happened to cross innumerable small yet breath taking creeks like these one . But we couldn’t spend much time at these places as something huge of same kind was awaiting us! Plus we knew that these are the main source of leech so we enjoyed the beauty of this creeks from a distance.

 

This is a busy rail route which connects Mumbai , Bangalore, Hyderabad to goa. Hence no wonder one will find many trains to and from Goa. We happened to come across one such train waiving hands to commuters as curious bystanders.

      After walking for a good 7 Km, we came across a station names Caranzol. This is where all the action took place which spiced up the whole tale! There was a goods train standing which was.. what seemed like nothing less than 1 km long.

The station master told us that  Dudhsagar is 8 more km ahead. He suggested us to take the passenger train which is coming onto the other platform. So we started crawling under the goods train in order to catch the passenger train which was supposed to be stopped for barely 10 seconds. As some of us crawled under, the passenger train came frighteningly near to us in the next platform, because of which 2 guys couldn’t crawl under the goods. Instead they decided to run all the way around the goods train. Which didn’t work. And to summarize, we missed the only easy chance we had to reach Dudhsagar. The passenger train left, and so did the goods train.  

And there we were! 14 of us in lonely railway station midst of thick jungle, extremely exhausted . But there is something which we still had not lost. Hope!

 

We gained all our energy and started walking towards our destination which was 8 more kilometers far from us. Ankles, thighs, feet, knees … and what not. The list goes. The pain was taking a toll on us. But we kept our morale up and we were walking towards out destination. We took rests frequently. Even though we were slow, we were steady. We walked some 3 more kilometers. Finally, after walking for apprx 9 painstaking kilometers, there was a ray of light which came in disguise of an empty engine which was travelling at 20 kmph approx. The engine stopped right in front of us and offered us a ride!! Let me ask you, what is the probability of a train responding to you when you are asking for a ride ? Answer is zero. And without any delay, we got on to the engine, and held our self tight to the engine as it roared up with a deafening noise and put up some decent speed. That was a moment of shear bliss for everyone! I remembered the dialogue from The Shawshank Redemption. “Hope is good thing, may be the best of things”.  

 

While the heightened joy of getting an unexpected free ride from a railway engine manifested in different ways , we just stood dumb enjoying the beauty of western ghat’s evergreen forests waiting for the waterfalls to show up. Who told light travels faster than sound ? We heard the falls first even before seeing it, even though we were standing next to the roaring engine. Such was the intensity of sound made by the falls. Finally, we were at the destination. The Dudhsagar. India’s fifth highest, but seemingly “The most difficult to reach” water falls. The height at which it was falling from, was astounding. The turbulence was so high that, no one could even get near the falls. Once you see, you would realize for yourself, it was aptly named as the Dudhsagar- ocean of milk. White stream of water plunging into great depth with herculean force to create a panoramic, breath-taking ,awe-inspiring scene one would ever see in there life –time. And what’s more ? This falls is been bridged right at its middle. The bridge passes right at the middle of the falls. I was asking myself, what is this silly man made bridge doing in this wonderful temple of Mother Nature ? I found the answer, if it wasn’t this bridge, we would never be able to see this gigantic falls by standing so close to it or the rainbow made by the falls which is virtualized right in front you. You are so close to the falls that you can touch the rainbow made by the pearl drops. You feel you are right in the lap of mother nature!

We felt that all our effort in walking 9 km finally paid off. After enjoying the falls for 15 hrs, we headed towards the Dudhsagar railways station to catch our train to castle rock. We came across the abandoned railway station at Dudhsagar and took some snaps there. We rested in the station and emptied all the food we carried. 

The train came at sharp 5 and. We reached castle rock at 6. We got refreshed a little and boarded the vehicle carrying wet cloths and loads of memories of this unforgettable adventure. We stopped at Ram Nagar to have Vada Pav and tea, and headed towards Dharwad. We had lunch at a decent dhaba in outskirts of Dharwad and headed to hospet on Hubli – Gadag- Koppal route. Everyone slipped to deep sleep due to complete exhaustion. This marked the end of adrenaline filled day!