Dandeli Trip

“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”

   -Moby Dick, Herman Melville

Replace sea with water – I’m still making up my mind on whether I prefer fresh or marine – and I feel the same yearning as described above, every now and then. So, I travel. And I get on a bus or train as soon as I can. Below is an account of Dandeli Trip.

The restlessness was creeping in for quite a while now, and I wanted to go away somewhere for a while. I was speculating on two trips, short weekend trip to Hampi or a week in Sikkim around the year-end. So when Vijaya asked me to join for Dandeli trip, I jumped at it. Rajshekher and Venkat helped by booking my tickets ASAP, so there was no backing out. Not that I was looking for a way out, Dandeli was one trek that I kept missing with Hydventura folks and from a long time it was on my to-do list.

We took a bus from Hyderabad to Hubli around 9 pm, and met there with the Bangalore guys. After breakfast at Hubli, we boarded the bus to Dandeli at 8 am the next morning. There is something different about bus journeys, and when you add good roads, plus cold winter mornings you’ll see that it’s not just the destination which matters but the path/means becomes equally meaningful. So, we set out, past meandering roads flanked on both sides by sugarcane fields - their inflorescences swayed by wind, past Dharwar - obliging our taste buds with its famous Pedha, past sparsely populated bus stops alternated with lush green fields with disarrayed scare crows in them till we reached Dandeli bus stop around 11:30 am. Prasad picked us up from there and took us to Stanley Farm House where we had our reservations.

After freshening up we went to their Backyard Lake for kayaking, but we soon moved from bumping each other’s kayaks to toppling people into water, little bit racing, practicing dives and so on, whiling away the next hour or two till we were called for lunch. Post lunch the plan was to go for River Rafting. We drove till Kali Adventure camp for paying and some signatures where we were asked to leave our entire belongings esp. camera with Prasad, which action tormented Nikhil all through the way till Ganeshgudi (which was the starting point for Rafting). The route was through jungle, odd bends and slopes here and there, and picturesque – the reason we missed the camera.

At Ganeshgudi after signing the NOCs (No Objection Certificates) we were given few basic training and the six of us got into the Raft with our guide Malik. Before approaching the first Rapid, Malik told us the commands, safety instructions and then made all of us jump into water in case the Raft toppled or anyone went overboard. We had fun trying to stay still in water then pulling each other back into the raft. We were pretty excited when we approached the first Rapid and thereafter started crossing the river with chants of “Zor lagake – haisha”, “jeetenge bhai - jeetenge”, “jhinga la la - hoo hoo ”… and when we got a liitle bored with these usual ones we started “Venkat - Kaavya”, we have immortalized Venkat’s Kaavya in the hills and woods of Dandeli. We were going to start “Nikhil - Kolkatta” and “Raj - Matrimonial” but we didn’t get much support from our fellow rafters… And so we continued with a kind of continuous ebb and flow of excitement and disappointment in sync with water. We spotted Hornbills, we passed through a stretch where it was eerily calm till Malik “popped” a sound, and I liked this small stretch – the image will stay with me. There was also the competition of surpassing our fellow rafters, Shalini was continuously inciting us for this, and we crossed a few rafts, splashed waters on them with our paddles alias chakku. By the time we were approaching the end we were a tad bit disappointed, because none of us toppled into water and it didn’t scare us enough, so the last rapid was a treat. For me it kind of made up. We bumped into other rafts and we moved upstream headlong into a rapid which pushed us away, this was fun and we stayed for a while, repeating it for 2-3 times and then moved along. We crossed a 9 km stretch and reached our ending point. Some of the epic dialogues apart from our chants were “Apne apne area main maaro”, delivered by Raj referring to rowing paddles/oars in one’s space. And Nikhil imitating Brad Pitt’s dialogue from Inglorious Bastards with approaching rapids, “We are gonna die”.

Chilled to our very bones after the rafting, we reached back to the farmhouse after a short detour to collect the pics and something to drink. We freshened up and by this time the camp fire was set up and all the other guests were returning back too. We had tea, coffee, milk for Venkat (:)), and we had one small bottle of Vodka for me, Nikhil and Shalini. Shalini was having it for the first time, and she gave the verdict that it was no big deal, thereby showing signs that she’ll go far with this thing. There was this group of 8-10 guys who arrived with speakers in their RV. They also had all kinds of hard and soft liquors arranged on a table which of course they gulped down in no time. There was dearth of dance-able songs with beats but the guys were so drunk that they even danced to slow Kishore Kumar stuffs. We too tapped our feet in our own circle with choreographer Venkat and Shalini showing us moves. Then after a while we decided to go for the night trek which was complimentary. By now, Vijaya was on this full-fledged mission of match making between Nikhil and Shalini. With just the right amount of dizziness we started for the moonlight trek accompanied with 2 guides. After a while we spotted deer, or just their shining eyes, we also saw a flying/gliding squirrel, again only it’s eyes. It was an interesting experience, the moon was in its full splendor, it was cold and I was with a group of people with whom it was fun to be. We returned, had dinner and after some time got into our tents. Vijaya was still carrying her tirade of jesting Shalini, till we heard Nikhil shouting from the other tent at her. Anyways we carried on our discussion till some more time talking about “3 hours being enough or not”. (The people for whom it’s meant for will understand.)

The next morning we got up, lazed around for a while with Shalini taking revenge on Vijaya. We then went for more water activities to another river nearby. We did River crossing first and then went for Zip line. We spent some 2-3 hrs. here having time of the world, we were joined by other trekkers and Nikhil found his “karkash awaaz” whose husband received a solid hit during zip line - for he was the first guy – and he cooed back, “no baby, I’m not hurt” (we all started applying brakes in water after that!!!). We played in the water for a while before returning back to the farm house. We whiled away our time talking, lazing in the sun till lunch. Shalini, Raj and Venkat meanwhile had a game of carom and had started playing Cricket. After having lunch we again went to their Backyard Lake and with life jackets on jumped into the water. We spent our time playing in it till it was almost time to start.

We took the bus back to Hubli and with a heavy heart (at least for me) parted from the Bangalore team. Reality was again drawing us back in, and I was thinking about the last two days. Vijaya had been with me in my previous trek and I knew her but this time it was different. She was like the life of the group; she kind of took care of all of us. I envy her energy, her patience. There was never a dull moment with her. She is again one of more of the kind, the one you’d feel like saying “O Captain! My Captain!” Venky’s optimism about his kaavya was one more highlight of the trip. So was Shalini, who we expect would pick up enough Hindi by our next trip. It didn’t seem like I had known these ppl for just two days, that’s how comfortable I was. I don’t know if I’ll meet these people again, hence this long post to relive the magical time. Thanks a lot guys and thanks to Vijaya for inviting me along :) :) :)