Naveen’s Travel Blog

Mission Dead or Alive (DOA8) - Day1

Monday, January 11, 2010 – 1:10 pm

Day 1 – Dec 25, 2009

It was a cold winter morning, 3am to be precise. Unlike our earlier jeep rides, this time no one dared to hangout and take the wind. Winds were freezing and we had covered every side of jeep with sheets (ofcourse except the windshield) and shivering like pneumonia patients. We pause in a village where hot chais were gulped and someone took a murukku and in quick succession the whole jar of murukkus worth 60 bucks went in thin air.

The 2 jeeps dumped us in a remote village in the northwest corner of Venkateshwara forest and by 5am we were lugging our backpacks in darkness towards the invisible mountains. Not a soul stirred in the sleepy village but Arpitha didn’t want to give up, with her high-pitched low voice she woke up the lonely dog and hens starting a ruckus. Like devils, we gathered near the haunted Puliyamaram(tamarind tree) in village outskirts and distributed the food stuff. Less food for the 11 people who had some desire to return alive(DOA) and more food for the 6 people who wished death for sure (DFS).

Starting with a brisk walk, we cross thorny bushes, climbing moderately and made our first stop over a dry waterfall.

Climbing more, surprisingly we entered into WWW zone. Its not internet but definitely lots and lots of webs of various sizes spun by colourful spiders.

Soon we land in a large flat rockbed typical of Venkateshwara and reach a fantastic drop and clearing which looks like tree-lined avenue leading into the unknown…

Signs of some human presence where visible where fires had burned and pealed the rocks showing strangely tile-shaped patterns on the rocky floor.

Not to miss the gigantic elephant dung…and the mushrooms growing over it!

Around 9am, we hit the first water point, take a quick dip and have our breakfast of cream buns.

We took a shandy dry stream and suddenly Aditya wanted take bath in the clear waters. Its not a surprise for me since its hardly deep to wet even the shoe soles.

As we moved further, the water got murky, muddy and smelly. Few said that the place was a watering hole for the wildlife. But i suspect that few elephants had extreme diarrhoea…

An old jeep track crossed the path and a marking declared the place as Gadela basecamp. Now who could camp in such a smelly place?

The stream widened further and flowed in open stretchs.

Karthick removed his new vibram-soled shoes to cross a stretch. The proud me declared that vibram can do it, took a step, promptly slipped into waters and Karthick had to drag me out. Never voice your ego atleast until you had achieved it.

Either it was the recent rains or suspected elephant diarrhoea or whatever cause, if you can selectively blind the yellowish color then you can enjoy the several small step waterfalls.

Everyone crossed this beautiful waterfall and highlightingly yellowish pool from the right side except our daring Ajay who scrambled for several minutes over the rocky left edge.

At one final moment, he was trying to jump quite a distance but from a very narrow rock edge where he is struck like a lizard. The funny point, was he didn’t know that the water was just knee-deep there. And for good 10mins, Gowri, Aditya and me watched his Pink panther comedy show.

Its 12 noon, bit sunny, we rested a bit, ate polli and drank from a tiny side stream with bit clear water.  Continuing further down the stream around 2.30pm we hit a big surprise, amazement, shock, dilemma, question mark…all together. Gals and Boys, we have made a new discovery – DOA8 Falls !!

A 50m high vertical Twin falls plunged down into a narrow gorge.  There is no way to climbdown this steep vertical from any side. It was decided to climb the mountain on right side and soon we lost our first gadget, the walky talky. We got down into another stream which eventually dried and led to an another dead-end – a steep cliff with a fantastic wallpaper view.

Peter and few went in search for a way out of this dead-end.  About an hour later, they returned finding way to a waterfall below but since it was already 5pm and falling lights, we decided to camp at this wonderful cliff edge and few others went again to fetch clean water from the waterfall.

Did anyone forgot that it was Christmas? Nay, never. Soon came Viki dressed as Santa Claus and everyone sang jingle bells.

But all eyes were set on the nice French Chocolate cake home-made and brought by Roseline .

Soon after, smoke came out of kitchen, piping hot soup was served. After a pause, I started developing version 4 of CTC’s proprietary Aval dish. This time no vegetables were used but plentiful of groundnuts and spiced like lemon rice.

Cooking amid a dozen-plus dead-hungry trekkers is a bit of challenge. Everyone wants to add or not add whatever they want. Ford Bala wanted to reserve curry leaves for next 10 days! Some wanted to cook the aval which is not required and another wanted to dump all the ghee in one shot. Peter was asking me to make the cooking interesting by giving a live commentary of what I’m doing!! Now is it not pure luck that the dish came out edible and again extra lucky that it was delicious as said from the stuffed mouths of the fellow trekkers.

With the hungry tamed, we lit a campfire at the edge of the cliff and the night photography session started. I was never good in this part. So after an hour, I drained my batteries, left several people skin-burned in attempt to do long exposures near campfire and got around 50 nicely blurred shots. (dont ask me!)

With half of the group down, the night birds started a game of UNO swinging their bodies to hit songs blaring from a mobile. At climax, we even managed to coaxed Ajay to dance to Michael Jackson tunes.

The bravehearts slept near the campfire just few steps away from the cliff edge while others took shelter in corners away from cold winds.

Photo courtesy: Kannan