Trek to Shivaganga falls..... photos:Minchu

On the morning of 12th of April this year, we all woke up early as it as planned to go for a trek. Though the people were only 22, our enthusiasm was not so less (usually our group contains about 35-40 people). That morning the departure became late. Hence our trek also started very late. The name of the place that we were going to visit on that day was Shivganga. It is a falls near Shirsi of Uttara Kannada, Karnataka. It was stunning.



The images above are the photos of the steps that we had to climb down to join the river. After joining the river, we had to walk along the river for only about 1km.




But the trek between theses steps and the river was tough. The route was very steep.You can see in the pictures above. It was easy to get down but it was tough while climbing up.
Then we joined the river. The river was full of volcanic black rocks. Most of them were visible because of summer.



On the opposite side of this, the beautiful falls was present with its charming beauty.






We had a wonderful swimming in the pool in front of the falls consisting of two stages (can be seen in the above images).
This is my father. He was swimming (floating) keeping his legs crossed. I took the photos from the height standing on a big rock beside the pool. You can see the height.
After having the swim, fortunately we also got to see a snake (I don't know the species ). It was so beautiful, that i suddenly took camera and started taking snaps. But because of bad luck, the battery of camera was going down. And I was able to take only a few snaps. Some of them are below.







This is a 'Bronzeback'.
Everybody was tired very much while we were going back. But the important thing was that everybody did the trek successfully. And also there were no injuries throughout the trek. Then we got into the vehicle. While our journey back towards Dharwad,our city in north Karnataka, we saw many peacocks, jungle fowls. I enjoyed the trek very much. In fact, everybody enjoyed.

Shivaganga to Magod falls for two days trek

We started from Dharwad at 5:30 in the morning on Wednesday 3rd' Jun' 09. We were five in number. We reached Hubli and caught a bus to Yellapur. From there we took a bus to Jaddegadde a village. The bus driver left us at the bus stop of Shivaganga falls.It was 11:30am. We started getting down. We saw Shiganga fall from view point.It was written that there were crocs in the pond of the falls.

We continued to get down. Suddenly we saw a vine snake. All of us took it in our hands. It's neck was very thin.I took some snaps of it.

As we were going down, it was not tiring. The rocks were slippery.

We reched the river in the vally around 12:00. After we reached the river, the Shivganga falls was on our right side. We started walking towards left. We walked along the river. We walked till 1:30. Then we had a wonderful bath under the a small falls cum swim.It was a sort of massage. We enjoyed the water falling on our calf muscles. After the swim we sat down and had our lunch. It was very tasty. Surprisingly we saw a man there coming towards us. He was a siddhi. His name was Narayan. He was a villager of a nearby village. He was a nice person with strong muscles and also six packs!! He told us that it was impossile for us to reach Magod the same day itself.

As we went forward, we saw two Great Indian Hornbills. We also saw nests of Barbets. We were just moving forward when Kallur mama suddenly told us that we were very near to Magod falls noticing another river joiningthe river along with which we walked. The water of the another river was very muddy. All of us were happy because we finished the trek in just 4 hours. We planned to reach the falls first and then sleep somewhere near the falls itself. And then we would go to the forest IB the next day. So now we atrted walking against the flow of river.

The water coming from Magod falls was very dirty and was not potable.We were moving very fast with the eagerness to see the falls. After we had covered about 2kms, we got water in a bowl shaped rock. It had been collected from rainwater and was clean. After a distance, as the river was flowing with a lot of water we had to cross certain patch by getting into the water. While crossing, I slipped into water and the water entered the camera which was hanging to my neck. I removed it from it's cover but the water had already entered. I took the battery and the memory stick out. As we were holding our shoes in hand it was difficult to walk. Suddenly my socks fell down into the river. Finally after some time, we went and saw the falls from below. We were so happy!! Then we thought of sleeping there and found a place and spread our beds. Then we had our dinner and slept around 7:30. We didn't even make fire as it was not cold.

The next day we got up around 6:00 and enjoyed the melodious song of whisteling schoolboy. We started walking back. Though the IB was right above the hill in front of us, we had walk three kms back and then again climb a hill to reach IB. We literally had no water. Our aim was to reach IB before noon. We saw a path in the jungle on right side just after walking about 600 mts. We took chance and strted getting through that. It was almost vertical. Guru was very much tired and was lagging behind. After climbing the hill along with numerous resting breaks, we started walking along the ridge line.We finally reached IB and were happy that we will get water to drink. But 'badluck', we didn't get water there. So we had to walk till MOttegadde school where we got water for drinking. Then we caught bus to Yellapur and was just 8:30am!!!!