Bandagee Trek

A long log of a trek to bandajee, near dharmstala. In a nutshell, it was a different trek all together.For once, every thing went wrong. Our bus fromBangalore to dharamstala was delayed for over 3 hoursas some old man's pocket was picked and he made a hugefuss over it. eventually, inspite of complaining tothe cops some where midway, they did not search thebus, unfortunately. After reaching dhramastala we madeanother bad decision to take up a room to fresh'nourselves. bad luck hunted here also for us for we didnot get the rooms easily as the orthodox chaps overthere was not very keen to give rooms for a group ofyoung people of both sexes. (strange nah?). by thetime we got our rooms (after some drama) andeventually had our brunch and boarded a jeep to ujireit was already 1030 hrs. Mr.Bad luck was giving somuch company to us that our 12 kms ride went over 40kms because in all the enthusiasm of Manjunath (jeepdriver) he took a supposedly short cut!!!. We reachedGowda's house at around 1145 and started our trek at1230!!jesus...talk about time management!And my god it was up up up all the way. With our poorfitness and snails pace we managed to get to the riverat about 1430 (Pathetic speed). Guess what we foundthere????? Some nutty idiot before us did not dousethe bonfire he had made and the fire had spread to a20 feet tall tree which was smoking quite a lot and onfire at couple of places. We the heroes realized thegrave responsibility weighing down on our frail littleshoulders (made more frail by the heavy rucksacks)that if we don't put off the fire there is a very goodpossibility of a forest fire. We with our smallvessels, water bottles and tumblers fought over anhour to douse the fire. Had lunch (sandwiches) andleft the place by 1600 hrs. Our main aim of reachingthe summit for camping looked very bleak. at 1730 hrs,tried and hungry we searched for a camping place andcurrishly we found a good spot about 10 X 10 feet flatland. Collected the firewood for the night camping.I took out my set of vessels and little gas stove(voila!!!) made coffee by 1630 hrs, got the fire goingand cleaned up the place. Night we had dinner ofbisebelebath, sambar rice etc etc ... all hot andsteaming and by 2230 we were all done. we took turnsin pairs for gurka duty of 2 hours cycle time.during my shift I heard thrice the sound of elephanttrumpeting one quite close by too. well the morningcame quite soon and we were off after having somemilkshakes. We were little worried about our depletingwater stock. we reached the water falls at 1100 hrsafter having a heavy break fast of hot chappathis andhotter curries (WOW!!! I dont get to eat so much inbangalore) The water falls were breathtaking. it wasworth the effort we made.We planned to got the fort, which we started off withjosh and after a hour of hot and dry trek, one of usplanned to go ahead to the top of the hill which youmentioned to estimate the distance. Luckily our cellphones were was working so the pathfinder(!) informedus that he could see a tiny structure really far off.And that convinced us that we can never make it inthat hot sun to hike that distance. The shady forestbelow looked more inviting!!! Our plan was to catchbus to bangalore that day, we were still at top thehill at 1500 hrs. we tried to hurry back to gowdashouse, infact we were ready to hike in the night too.We came back to the same camp were we spent last nightand better senses got hold of us to camp the unplannedsecond night also. Luckily we had enough food for thedinner and for the next day breakfast also. And wewent thro the same cycle of coffee (Black this time,weran out of milk!) heavenly dinner and gurka job. Thistime I heard bear grunting when the bisibellebathpackets were opened. Boy was I scared. Any way weconsoled ourselves telling that it could also be owlhooting (ha ha ...) next day we had a hurried hotcup-o-noodles breakfast, and again we lugged ourstoves, gas and bags to gowdas house at 0700 hrs. wereached gowdas place at 1100 hrs where he had a jeepwaiting for us (We had called him the previousnight....technology works...). After a quick darshanat dhramastala boarded a bus to bangalore at 1530 hrs,bus had a radiator problem and stopped at sakalespurfor 2 hours. and reached bangalore at 0130 hrs nextday!!!Had to hear bashing from our PM as the entire projectmates were on leave!!!The pseudo-trekkers are ravi, adarsh, champak, sri,jyothi and myself in that order in the rockiessnap.Ravi's automatic camera is zimply great.