Sangama, Mekedatu and Chunchi Falls

Early last month, I had remarked to my roommates about going to Chunchi falls and to start at 4 a.m. for that! However, that trip did not materialize. So when Nildeep and Bhola came to Bangalore and wanted to see some places, my first suggestion was Chunchi…
The name does sound peculiar, people were almost ready to put it on hold and it was only after some consultation and much deliberation that the venue of our 1 day trip was finalized!

Here are some specifications:
Location: Sangama, Mekedatu and Chunchi falls
Distance: 140 Kms from Bangalore (Indiranagar)
Route: Indiranagar – Koramangala – BTM – Kanakpura Road – Sangama.
Mode of Transport: Chevrolet Tavera (hired)
People: 7 (5 Males, 2 Females)
Date: 27th Sept, 2008
Time: 7 a.m. to 7.30 p.m
Total Cost: Around 2.5K INR including food
Ideal Time to Visit: September

The trip:
We started an hour later than schedule and were on track from Koramangla at around 7 a.m. … The day was cool, the traffic light and the roads…well, better than expected…

As we left Bangalore and steered towards Kanakpura, the road became better…At about 8.30 am, we stopped at a hotel (Vaishnavi Palace) for breakfast. We had some good Idli/vadas, however, the coffee was worse than the vending machine coffee that we get in our office… The ambience at the place was pretty good…and I liked the way the restaurant was constructed.
Snap: Breakfast @ Vaishnavi Hotel

After a nice and heavy breakfast, we were on our way to our first destination: Sangama.
The journey from Kanakapura to Sangama was quite uneventful and we passed time cracking jokes and listening to songs.

The area was very green and the blue sky made it look like the nature advertising itself in all the colors possible!

About an hour later, at about 10 a.m., and passing through villages, we reached Sangama.

Snap: Journey from Kanakapura to Sangama.


Destination 1: Sangama
Sangama: It’s a place where Arkavati merges with Kaveri… This is why the river appears to be really wide…and upon reaching Sangama, the first thing we did was to change into our swimming trunks (yes, there are changing rooms @ the nearby hotel). At this time of the year, we could see quite a few vehicles already there and a number of people already enjoying the shallow waters.

The river looked quite calm and the water not too unclear!
The river might have been around 100 meters wide and was very shallow.
However, there’s a warning. It seems there are crocodiles in the river. However, we didn’t see any…It might be that they had been well fed…But that’s another story. We were able to wade through water quite comfortably though the water bed was full of sand and rocks. We spent about half an hour there and crossed the bank to reach the other side of the river. Snap: River at Sangama

The other side of the river was quite different from the one where we started. Here, the force of the water current was quite strong and it was really fun playing in these waters. By this time, the sun was smiling at us really wide and the sand and the rocks were completely heated up by then.

The beach was sandy and had a huge number of pebbles/rocks on it. Most of us had left our shoes in the car and were walking barefoot. This had made the walk on the beach almost unbearable! (Always carry chappals!)
Once we had played enough in water @ Sangama, we came out and dried ourselves. We looked around for some refreshments and found a couple of buses lined up along with a few people selling chips/cold-drinks at exorbitant rates.

Snap: Strong currents at Sangama

Destination 2: Mekedatu
Mekedatu is about 5 kms from Sangama. The word Mekedatu means “Goat + Crossing”…It is believed that here, the river flows through a gorge so narrow that a Goat can cross it. (I would differ from that though).To reach Mekedatu, One has to cross the river (and reach the place where we were playing) and either walk or take a bus to Mekedatu.
The buses lined up were ferrying passengers from Sangama to Mekedatu and back. It costs Rs. 40 per person for a two way ticket. The buses ply every hour so one can spend some good time at Mekedatu. The journey takes about 20 minutes. The distance is hardly 5 kms, but the journey time can give you an idea of the road or the lack of it! That bus ride was probably the bumpiest ride of my life, may be at par with masinagudi safari! :)

Mekedatu is quite an amazing place with rocks, sand and water… It is impossible for one to get into the water except if one wants to commit suicide! The scales on the rocks formed due to years of erosion make it quite a scenic place.
Again, it wasn’t really wise on our part to not bring our chappals as the rocks were heated up and our feet had to endure their wrath.
Snap: River and Rocks at Mekedatu

Lunch and drive to Chunchi:
After spending an hour at Mekedatu we came back to Sangama, crossed the river and came to our car. Spending time in water makes one very hungry (remember Michael Phelps’ diet!). There is a nice restaurant (again Vaishnavi Palace) at Sangama…where the food was fair enough, not really too delicious but we were so hungry, we hardly took any notice.

We sat under a tree (ya, there were tables and chairs) to relax and ordered our food.
We had some biryani, curd rice, rasam etc.. It was enough to fill our tummy and move on to our next destination.


Snap: Egg burji (it looks delicious, but you can thank me n my cam for the picture!)

Destination 3: Chunchi falls
About 10 kms from Sangama, is the Chunchi falls. We started for Chunchi falls from Sangama at about 2:30 p.m. and reached in about 20 minutes… When we got down from the car, the land looked almost barren with lot of rocks and very less vegetation. I was almost sure that we might end up seeing water trickling amongst the rocks…
To make things worse, there was no sign of water. A signboard said “It’s dangerous to enter the water and might prove fatal” (well it was written in Kannada, this is my crude translation!). When we asked people where the falls were, they pointed us in one direction.
So we started out in that direction…the narrow path was through lots of rocks and some thick vegetation (sparse but thick)…The part-trek was for about 1 km. and it was quite an adventure. We had lots of fun (though some people might differ in their opinion).

For most of the part, the trek was really easy, however, some part was a bit difficult as the rocks were a bit slippery and so was the muddy path. That most of us had slippers didn’t help our cause.
On the whole the walk took about half an hour (from the car to the point where the falls were at touching distance!)
Snap: Valley and rocky terrain at Chunchi

For the most part of our walk, we were not able to see any water. We could only hear the noise of the falls. We walked towards the source of the noise. Tired as we were, as we neared the falls, the anticipation ruled emotion more than fatigue and we managed to reach the base of the falls (We are IT professionals, most of us have ‘0’ physical activity).

The sight of the waterfalls and sound of the water gushing was worth the exertion. The sound was very soothing and the sight quite pleasing.
The walk back, we felt even more exasperating as were very tired.
Snap: Water falls at Chunchi

After about 2 hours, we finally started to Bangalore. The journey was very quiet and most of us were dozing on our way back.We reached Bangalore at about 7:30 p.m. and a hectic day of fun, laughter, pain and endurance came to an end!!!