Freedom of the Hills

Madness on Railway Track June 16, 2003

      ‘Madness, Magnificent Madness!’ – Roshan Seth (in ‘Vertical Limit‘). These were the last lines in my write-up of Sakleshpur Railway Track trek in March 2002.

       Madness always seems to be associated with my Sakleshpur Railway Track treks. First time, we covered nearly 58kms in 2 days and second time it was a aimless trek which I did alone. But this time, it was real dangerous – we planned to trek from Sakleshpur to Yedakumeri on Railway Track during night in the beginning of monsoon.

       When Ujjal proposed this idea some one-and-half months earlier, I immediately agreed to it as it was never heard before! We decided to keep this mission secret and decided that only two of us will go for this trek. But last week, I was so held up in project work, that I told Ujjal that this may not be feasible. Finally, on Friday morning, the work was completed and we were all set to hit the track. We left Bangalore at 12 noon, Saturday in KSRTC bus after picking up some food stuff. Had a nice nap in the bus and we reached Sakleshpur by 5PM. It was raining (The first showers of this year’s monsoon) in Sakleshpur so we spent our time in bus stand munching banana chips. After the rain ceased, we went for a walk in the town and had nice, hot masalapuri while coming back.

     We left for Railway station by 9PM after having a good supper. At the Railway station, there was a guard and some people. Fearing any possible obstruction to our mission we skipped entering the station and directly reached the track. It was a dark, chilly, cloudy night. Even though it was a full moon night, the monsoon clouds had completely covered the moon. At times it was raining too.

      But or pace didn’t slackened. Soon we reached the first bridge. It was a real nightmare crossing that Railway bridge on that wooden sleepers without any plates in that dark, rainy night! But, after crossing a couple of bridges, it became a routine.

       As we neared Donigal station, we walked silently so as not to evoke any interest from the people sleeping in makeshift tents. Suddenly, we saw three laborers chatting and they stopped us. When we told them our intention, they were dumb folded! They seriously opposed our idea and tried to dissuade us by telling some incidents of wild elephants. We ignored all their warnings and walked off.

       Dense forest crept in as we moved on the track. We never used any flashlight while walking. Our main flashlight – Moon, used to appear in between the clouds. We went on chatting about music, movies and what all….The forest was noisy with the various insect sounds. We were expecting some animal to appear in our path. Though this forest is the habitat of wild elephants and other fauna, we were unfortunate to see nothing. We only saw a dead snake which wasn’t even worth for a snap.

       Soon, the series of tunnels started. Flashlight came out. In the middle of the tunnel we switched off the torch and stood in that pitch darkness for few minutes. Ujjal started to make some unearthly noises to frighten me and I responded with similar noises to frighten him. We laughed off and went on. At one place there was a landslide and the rubble covered the track completely. There were a couple of construction workers using an earthmover to clear that rubble. Since those workers knew no language other than Telugu, we couldn’t strike a meaningful conversation with them.

       At 1:15AM we stopped to take a break. Outside a tunnel, in that dark night we had a couple of hotdogs and 5Star bars. We continued walking. Our pace was constant throughout.  Bridges and tunnels came and went. We crossed the longest tunnel which is of 572m. Since it was night, bats were not in the tunnel. It’s a wonderful sight to see mist rising through the forests. In that frightening night, we both were walking like ghosts. We used to stop on the middle of the bridge to see the gushing stream below or the take a panoramic view of dark forests and mountain peaks which stood like the Prince of Darkness.

       We had another break on a bridge at around 3:20AM. Moon was peeping out amidst the dark rainy clouds. We sat there eating potato chips while it was drizzling! After taking some snaps, we resumed our trek. Soon, the moon went out as cloud cover was thickened. Darkness increased.

       After some time, the tracks diverted signaling the approach of a station. We had reached Yedakumeri! It was 4:30AM. We saw a light approaching us. It was Joseph, the railway worker. He had thought that we were hunters! We went to his house and he showed the place to sleep. Our sleeping mats came out and as we slept it started to rain heavily outside.

       We woke up at 9AM. After refreshing ourselves in a nearby stream, we planned to have the breakfast. Joseph gave us a vessel for cooking. We prepared Maggi instant noodles in his kitchen and devoured it immediately. We took leave of Joseph at 11AM and descended the mountain through thick jungle. After a kilometer we touched the jeep track. At the end of 3km jeep track, we came across a river called Kempuhole. Meanwhile we met few forest department staff who were working near that river.

       On the river bank, we took rest and ate remaining hotdogs and potato chips. The Shiradi Ghat Road – NH48 highway is next to that river. It was 12 noon then. None of the vehicles stopped for us. Finally a mini truck stopped and we got ride till Sakleshpur. There was an Ultra-deluxe bus leaving for Bangalore. We boarded that bus and dozed off. We had the lunch at Hassan and reached Bangalore at 6PM. 

      We went on laughing at our madness all the time. Even now as I am typing this, I can’t believe that we did this…It’s amazing, awful….Its spectacular, spectacular!