Jenkal Betta trekking

Hi Nature Lovers,

Cool wishes to the reader from Endless Passions guy's - Ravi , Harish , Shobith

As usual, to follow our New Year resolution - "Celebrations will be in a isolated Jungle"  we started our hunt for a least explored place where there is more greenery jungle than the urban jungle. Hunt started in the mid of November [Hunters - Ravi, Harish ], After a long search of 1 month we finalized a 2 day trip to "Jenkal Betta, Dipadakallu Betta, ettina bhuja hill" near sakleshpur, Karnataka. Ashuthosh and Amar agreed to joined us for trip.

As planned, all were supposed to assemble in Bangalore on 31st morning, but only me and hari ended up for preparation task. I was supposed to carry the rented tents from Mysore, as it is cheaper in mysore when compared to the price in Bangalore. we dumped the tents in KSRTC clock rooms and started our journey to buy the sleeping mats, torches, other stuffs. By evening the sleeping mats and other stuffs were ready and we went to ashuthosh room to join rest of the party. We went to BigBazar to buy some food materials [Only mistake we did here is we grabbed materials as we were on a week trip, which increased the load while trekking :( ]

We were supposed board the 12:10 O'clock bus from KBS, but because of our Dancer Shobith's new year dance program, we requested Bus driver to leave by 12:45, for which he agreed too. Thank god other passengers in the bus were in deep sleep and didn't noticed, otherwise our new year trip would have ended up in bus stand :)

We reached sakleshpur bus stand by 5:30, freshened up in the bus stand rest room, horrible place guys, which looked like a "Wrong Turn to Dead End" movie location to me - still wondering how hari spent half an hour in there. we hired a taxi from here to the base of a hill,a place near Hanbal , near Jenkal resort, from where we started the trekking.

Warriors ready for battle

Taxi driver dropped us, demanded 400rs for a 10km drop :-| and gave us his number assuring a pickup next day, but he forgot to mention only BSNL network works here :-( and we all were Vodafone users, thank god we got some local help to call another jeep next day.

Trek from the base starts with a narrow road which locals use for cattle grazing, half a kilometer of walk in this path give a nice view of the jungle around, after a 20 min of walk here we reached tip of a ridge which gave us a fantastic view of the Jenkal Hills, first spot in our hit list, awesome view of the hills, first thing came to my mind is - we must see this place in October, as soon as the rainy season ends.

  we followed the cattle trail to reach the base of the jenkal hill, it was a nice trek in midst of the jungle, hearing to birds, enjoying the greenery around. There is a patch of thick vegetation at the base which some people enjoy to pass through and some find to hard , except hari all others enjoyed a lot here. A nice cool place.

 we crawled in the mid of bushes and reached coronet of hills covered with thick grass. From here there is no tree shade till the tip of the jenkal hills. At this point one can have a awesome view of the Jenkal-betta (4,150'). we took some rest here, packed our gear properly to scale the hills.

  At this point it would be better you start when there is no mist covering the hill, else it would be difficult to choose a right path to climb, since in some places path is bit narrow and u'll get only few rocks for support.

 

  After a tough trek with the heavy load of bag pack and tents we reached the top of the hill in 45 min, we were welcomed here by the mist, a cool breeze of mist took away all our body pain. It was as if we were floating on clouds. we got to see a lamp and few rocks at the top, to which locals perform puja on some day in a year.

  we took some here , had some snacks , enjoyed the beauty around and started our journey towards deepadkal hills., before that we had a tough task of getting down from the Jenkal hills. its almost 50 degree hill , its hard to get down by walking, so we decided to slide down. sliding down in a queue, with bags and tent for almost 15 min, wow man my base is still burning. Adding to this we had our path covered with mist, it was hard to look at each other's face. with lot of difficulties we reached deepadkal betta.

 

It's a nice place to relax and enjoy the mother natures beauty - Green grass, covered with mist, thick forest around. we decided to spend time here we took some snaps. Hari gave some poses like mungaru male ganesh, chinga[shobith] like michel jakson, thank god MJ is dead, if not he would have commited suicide by looking at those pose he gave.
From deepadkal betta we can clearly c see the yathin buja hill which was our next stop.

  we reached deepadkal in 15min, we can clearly see ombathu gudda from here[which we planned for next day]. we started trekking back to the base from here, in next 30min we were at the base. it was 3 o'clock in the afternoon when we reached the base of the mountain. There was under construction resort, where we planned to camp for the day, since we had some local movements here and also water source. we relaxed for a while and started to assemble the tent. By the time we were done with the tent it was 6, and was bit dark. we collected some firewood in torch light, we had camphor[karpura] which is a better option when compared to kerosene while traveling. we kept few rocks and our cooking system was ready.
Because of the due, the firewood was bit wet, me ashuthosh, amar had a hard time lighting the fire.

All 3 waiting for a single packet of food :)

Ready to die in smoke., but not ready to loose the food packet to hari.

  we had nice time cooking food, chatting, hearing to the jungle sound, hari ate half of the food we bought, remaining half we four shared :( . By 9 O'clock we were in deep sleep inside our tent forgetting that we are in the mid of the jungle. Morning we woke up by 8 and decided not to continue trekking to obathu gudda, rather go back to bangalore and take rest as we were completely exhausted.

Prepared some breakfast, prepared coffee using the milk powder we took. With the help of one local guy we called a jeep to pickup, he agreed to come near the entrance of a estate, which is 3 KM away from our camp site. After some time we packed our tent and bags, said Bye Bye to Jenkal hills and started trekking back to the estate entrance.

Bye Bye Jenkal, Take care