Thursday, July 06, 2006

"Mekedatu" conquest by hiwayREBELS

Weekend was around the corner and as always, there came a zeal to satisfy our quest for adventure. This time our destination was Mekedatu, a place 90kms from Bangalore towards Kanakpura. This place is famous for the gorge, where river Cauvery can be seen passing between the two huge rocks and the water sqashing against the rocks with a great current.

We started off early morning at 6.30am on Saturday, 1st July 2006, to avoid the sun, from Bangalore, with our bike tanks full and with some basic necessities. The weather was clear and Kanakpura road was not that busy, except for a few trucks. On the way after driving for around 30kms, we came across a place that had a lake surounded by lot of coconut trees.

After having a small break, we headed towards Kanakpura which was our next stop. We had breakfast at Kanakpura and after getting ourselves refreshed, we moved to make our final stop, "MEKEDATU", which was just 40kms ahead. The road was not very comfortable except for some patches, as the way lead us to a quite remote place, remote enough to make our phone signals go off.

We had to park our bikes in a place, as we had to cross a river and from there we had a trek of 4 kms to reach the place we had started for, or we could have taken a bus from the other side of the river to reach the spot. The river can as well be crossed on foot when the amount of water is less, in summers. The trek was inside a jungle with no proper road. Alongside we could see the Cauvery flowing with its current. After reaching the place, we could see that there was Cauvery flowing with a great speed between two huge rocks.

We were tired and felt hot as now the sun was on its peak, we spent some time in water, we could not go too much in the water as the current was enough to take us with the flow. Then after spending some time on the rocks near the river, we decided go back, where we had identified a place that was good enough for us to take a dip in the river.

We returned back to the place where we had parked our bikes and had some food in the shops that were there. We then moved towards the Chunchi falls, that were around 20kms from Mekedatu. After reaching the falls, the first image that i got was not what we expected. It was a steep slope without water to be seen anywhere. We parked our bikes and decided to go down and see, as we went down, we could see a waterfall, between the rocks.

There was not much water, but the place is not suitable for water games due to marsh and Crocodiles in the ponds. After spending some time there we started back towards Bangalore. We stopped for some snacks and tea in Kanakpura and drove back, with the memories of the places we had visited. Yet ready for another conquest.

- Varun
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