Day 3 @ Doodhsagar

It was so cold the next morning, we preferred sleeping in our warm tents before taking a look at the falls. It looked so much more wonderful even without much light around. The chilled breeze dint let us stay near the falls for a long time. I made myself comfortable inside my sleeping bag again. We had to start as early as possible to cover a distance till Kullem by foot. Packing our tents & bags we started walking on the track. Most horrible part of walking on these rail tracks is you can’t see anywhere other than the track while walking. You try to see anywhere else even for a moment and there are all chances that you will walk on shit. So we dint really enjoy this part of the trek. We reached Sonalium station after trekking for almost 4kms. We stopped here to have our packed breakfast. Some bread, butter, jam, roti, chatni pudi and some milk all went in without complaining. Just when it was time to be back on track trekking, a goods train stopped by at the station and we dint want to miss an opportunity to experience a ride on it. The train master wasn’t very happy having us onboard, he strictly made us sit and monitored us through the journey just to make sure that we don’t bump over the train bogie joints when it gave a jerk. We enjoyed our ride till Kullem singing songs and taking pictures. The train master was now happy to get rid of us & then we suggested to take a pic with him and made a smalltalk for which he was more than just happy. After saying cheese with us he gave us free advice to wait there for Chennai Express to go to Madgoan. It was 9:30 in the morning and the train to Madgoan was scheduled at 11:05am. We decided to get out of the station and explore other means of transport available to reach Madgoan. There was a bus after half an hour, we roamed around and settled down at a tea shop to kill some time. One among us also found a handsome barber in his shop and realized that they need a haircut :P

When it was time for the bus to arrive we just surveyed the number of people waiting for that poor bus which dint arrive yet and felt it was better to walk back and wait for our super hit Chennai Express to do the honors. The train was delayed by close to an hour but we had all entertainment one the platform to deal with it. I got onto a train for a quick demonstration on the James bond style machines our trains still have. The train master was sweet enough to bear our “What is this….?”, “Why is this used….?” kind of questions. After this interesting session we got onto discussions about trekking with few guys who had missed their morning train to DS and hence had nothing to do till evening but wait for the train towards Madgoan.

Our train finally arrived and I happened to sit with a friend of Jyothi Sir. He went on sharing his experiences of his visit to Mt.Everest base camp and Manas Sarovar. When he realized that I too had similar interest in travelling and we read similar books he kept in front of me all his suggestions and advices. It was nice listening to him and getting to know someone so deep.

Picture taken from google images.

Back in Madgoan we dint have much time before catching our next train to Mangalore at 2pm. We rushed for the tickets and hogged something in the railway station restaurant and boarded the passenger train to Mangalore. The journey is fantastic and this time even better as we had a big group. We enjoyed sitting near the door watching the sun go down. Someone was really very happy being there.

I took a nice nap and a wonderful aroma woke my hungry tummy. I see everyone around me having something delicious. I could not resist and took a bite followed by several servings of the pulav. One of those guys whom we met in kullem platform had got this prepared from his relatives nearby. How nice of them. We got down at Udupi station at around 7:30pm and Murali anna was waiting for us to drive us home. It was raining heavily by this time. Another 15mins drive to reach Manipal where Murali anna is put up. He kept us guiding all the way with different landmarks. After a round of fresh up we were ready to go out for dinner.

Picture taken from google images.

Raja’s friends joined us over dinner. While we had some really nice ice creams at Manipal. Body was too tired to keep any more awake when we reached home. Within no time we heard people snoring at different intensities. Next day morning we met our old friend Raghu Ram who had just arrived from puttu. We leisurely packed our bags to start our journey to Mangalore. There are Volvo buses from Manipal every half an hour to Mangalore. It took us 1hr 30mins to reach Mangalore and the bus stopped for us right in front of Urva stores where our car was parked. Driving in Mangalore board roads is a nice experience. We next headed for some shopping in a mall and had lunch there itself before starting to Mysore.

Journey to Mysore took pretty long. We reached quite early at Madikeri from where the ghat started and it took really long reaching Mysore. We dropped Sumanth home. On reaching home, the volume at which dad was snoring indicated we were way too late.