I’ve been meaning to put a lot of travelogues in here. I would start writing them in my mind after the journey is over, and in the best case, some scribbles would make way to my pocketbook, mostly on the way back on train (and this too mostly on Maveli Express, since most of my journeys originate from Mangalore) when you are really in the tired, content and retrospective mode, and invariably my laziness would always get the better of me to actually type in stuff.
So one of these weekends I was bit by the travel bug again, and we travelled in total about some random 1000 kilometres in three days. Documenting the whole journey in words is too much pain, especially so considering this constipated-for-words predicament that I am now perennially in, so I will recount the best part of it, which was our second day, the trek to Dudhsagar Waterfalls – partly because my travel mates had asked to do it, partly because I feel a first-hand account would be useful to people who are actually planning to visit the place (whatever be the odds that this actually comes up in a search result), and more importantly, to inspire people to experience it. The latter is too ambitious for an intention, and counts perhaps too much on how I can transfer the experience to words - I will come to this in the end.
Here is the wiki link, if you are into that sort of thing. Research, I mean.
Now, there are two main routes by which you can reach the falls from Madgaon. One is via Castle Rock, and the other one via Kulem.
The one via Castle Rock is the more popular one – Castle Rock is a small village located in Northern Karnataka, the part that shares its border with Goa. It is about 70 kms from Madgaon and I assume, 7.84 kms from Dudhsagar (DDS) Railway Station (this was the distance written at the Railway Station) - means around 9 kms from the actual falls. If my assumption about the distance is correct, this is the shorter of the two routes. You could reach Castle Rock with your own vehicle (not so sure about the buses plying between Castle Rock and Madgaon), either catch a train and alight at Dudhsagar Railway Station or choose to trek the distance to the falls by rail. There are trains plying on the route – again, not sure of them all, but you will need to make sure prior hand that it does stop at DDS. Alternatively you could make use of the many freight trains that travel in the route.
The alternate route is from Kulem Railway Station. Kulem is a small town, part of Goa, located around 40 kms from Madgaon, and around 11 kms from the falls. This is the less popular of the routes, perhaps because the distance to the falls is more or may be because that the freight trains from Kulem that pass via the falls don’t stop at DDS (since the track goes uphill). You could search for passenger trains that stop at DDS from Kulem, or rail trek the 12km to the falls.
We intended to take the shorter route, but mistook the Kulem route for the shorter one. And I swear we don’t regret it one bit, now that you think of it.
We started from Madgaon on a rainy Saturday morning, aided by google maps and navigation which I hold as inarguably Google’s second best contribution to mankind. Goa is majorly known for its beaches and churches, I felt it is much underrated as a monsoon destination, (when the North Goa literally shuts off), at least that was the impression I got based on my preconceptions as we travelled through the beautiful landscape, looking all the more beautiful when drenched in rain.
The road started getting narrower, the vegetation on either side of us more prominent and the number of people/houses on the way scantier as we neared Kulem. We finally reached a railway station which read Callem, and took it for our destination, assuming it to be a typo on Kulem, and would have started our trek from there (in which case we would have been dead from exhaustion by the time we reached the falls) but were saved by this lady who explained to us that both of these were two distinct places and that we still needed to go about 10 kms further in the direction of Vodlem in the board below to reach Kulem. The place names can be a bit confusing, because there were three places named Kulem, Callem, and Kalay in the vicinity of each other.
We finally reached Kulem, parked our vehicle, asked for directions and a couple of people appeared skeptic at our intention to rail trek the distance to the falls. “Chalkar Jayenge?!” One guy actually gave us pointers to bike to the falls for 600 bucks/person - They lead you to the base of the falls. All the people we interacted with during the journey firmly reiterated my belief in the observation I have made after all my journeys – the more farther you are from “civilization” and the hustle bustle of the towns, the deeper you go down into places, the more helpful and genuine the people are.
So, armed with a backpack consisting of food supplies (couple of packets of bread, and some biscuit packets) and around 4 litres of water, we headed out to the railway track to start the trek. We had a packet of salt and a bottle of an irritating-smelling deodorant as a precaution to leeches which we expected to find on the way. When we started the trek we found that the track passed right through a forest (part of the Bhagwan Mahaveer Sanctuary and Mollem National Park), and we weren’t really prepared to face random wild animals on the way, and even if we were to be, it was too late to retreat back then.
3 comments:
This is one heck of a blog. Glad I encountered this. You have made my day.
i so enjoyed reading ur posts...dey r so rich in detail :) ma eyes did get tired aftr a while hehe ;) although u dont seem to hav written nythin in a while...?
Thank you. Yeah I was bored of not posting anything here, so I bought my own domain, setup a blog there and started not posting there. Its fun.
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