Chennai is, by far, the worst city that I have lived in or visited. The weather is bad throughout the year, the city is congested, travelling is a nightmare and there are hardly any places of worth visiting in or around the city. But in this huge pile of coal as well, there are a few well hidden diamonds. And thankfully they are well hidden. Else they will be molested before one can say plastic.
One such diamond are the hills near Nagalapuram. Technically in Andhra Pradesh, though it is only a couple of hours from Chennai. On friday, Narayan (Maya) suggested why don't we go for a trek tomorrow. Abhilash and me were like yeah! cool. We shall. A blog, of someone who had gone on a trek along with the Chennai trekking Club suggested we try Nagalapuram, and on Saturday off we were.
We took the Sapthagiri Express from Central at 6.30 a.m and reached Puttur at 8.30. From puttur, Nagalapuram is a 20 minute bus ride. At Nagalapuram there were share autos ready to con us. We one of those to T.P Kotah. At T.P.Kotah a small mud road will branch out and take you an extremeley small village. The mud path is around 3 kms.
(Rs.15/- per person is a fair fare. The auto fellow may haggle to take the mud road, but force him to anyway. If you drive by car reach this village and park. Also the auto fellow may ask you if you want toddy. We passed. But if anyone wants toddy auto fellow is the man to approach)
After this we began the actual trek. Initially we walked on a path riddled with pebbles and stones. There were a few farms on one side of this path and a neat wood/ orchard on the other. We walked along under the blazing sun and extreme heat. This was the most irritating part of the whole experience. Extremely tiring and barren.
After walking for about 3 kms we saw a small small temple that was just constructed and then reached a dam. We crossed the dam at the wrong end and had to cross a marshy stream to reach the correct side.
(It was fun, but I would suggest using the conventional route anyway. When you reach the top of the dam move left and climb down at the edge of the reservoir. Do not move right here)
Once the dam was crossed and we reached the correct side of the bog we reached a temple. This was the last bit of civilisation that we saw. If we had crossed the dam on the correct side we would have reached this place directly.
From here, we entered the forest. The forest was pretty dense but there was what could be described as a small path that we could follow. This path, I assume, would be a stream when it rains.The forest felt air conditioned after walking for 6 kms in the sun.(Though i ask you to haggle with the auto driver to reach the small village, we didn't). We, being absolute amateurs, carried only 1 litre of water for each of us. We were running out of water when we reached a beautiful rivulet which had the clearest water I have seen and the nicest I have tasted.
Reaching this river, felt like reaching heaven, and we had not seen anything yet. We rested under a tree for some time and started again. We did not know how to proceed. So, we decided we will follow some footsteps that we could see on the sand. These people seemed to have crossed the stream and gone on the other side. We crossed and soon reached a place where 5 paths met. Again we thought we will follow the people who went before us. We walked for about fifteen minutes and realised that the people must before us must have been as lost as we were. So we decided we will return to the 5 way junction and move along the stream. We reached the junction and began moving along the stram but the path progressively became narrower and we thought we were sure to get lost if proceeded. And since, by now we realised the other dudes were as lost as we were, we thought lets go back to the rivulet, and move ahead on the other side itself. If we reach nowhere we can simply relax by the rivulet and then return.So we return to the rivulet, sit down by the tree again and start cursing, if the Chennai Trekking Club knew about this place, couldn't they provide rough directions. An arrow mark with charcoal or chalk or something. After a while we get up up, and what do you know, right on the rock we were sitting there was an arrow pointing the way forward :)
So we start moving along on the path, which meandered along the same direction as the stream. The stream at places would broaden and form what can be termed as small pools. In most cases at the neck of these pools would be a small waterfall, about three or four feet high. At one such pool, we stopped and ate lunch, which was apples, bananas and grapes.
We saw four such pools. The fourth one was a small pool but had the tallest cascade. This one was about 10 feet high. Water was trickling down mildly. We climbed to the top of the falls and reached what can only be described as the best bathroom in the world. The stream was flowing at about ankle height and there were three or four natural formations in the shape of a tub where one could lie down and relax with your eyes closed as water flows over you. When you open your eyes it will seem extraordinarily surreal as all you can see is the sky and the tops of the hills. (I can to a great extent now appreciate what Elije Bailey went through in the bathroom on Aurora). It was for me, the most refreshing bath ever.(The next image is of me taking a bath. So for the squeamish, the prude, and those by principle do not approve of upper body nudity, close this page. Those who like watching photographs of man enjoying nature scroll down)
We just didn't feel like leaving that place. It was mid - afternoon and we were out in the sun, but we couldn't get ourselves to move.Finally we decided we should start moving else returning home would be a huge problem.(Our rookiness further exposed by the fact that we did not even carry a torch). The return was a blur. We did not get lost anywhere and were soon at the small village. Luckily for us a share auto had come there on another trip, and dropped us at Nagalapuram. We were too late to reach Puttur and catch the return train to Chennai (Leaves Puttur at 6.20), so we used state transport buses and reached Koyambedu.
The experience was awesome and I definitely plan to return there atleast once more before leaving Chennai for good. I hope this diamond never gets stolen. It deserves it privacy, and deserves to remain hidden from prying eyes.
This is one post I would love if extremely few people manage to read!
