The following is a blow by blow account of a trip to Melmudi near Coimbatore by Naren and his friends! Read on for his narrative!
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Most of the successful trips are made with a sudden plan well at least the ones I have been to. “Bored from daily hectic life, it’s good to take few days off from boring routine life and have some fun”. Like last time, the trip plan was made one day before on Saturday. Till the last minute, the place of the journey was yet to be confirmed.
We were in a constant search for a new place which people have less travelled yet it’s near to the city. Finally we came up with the plan to watch sunrise at Melmudi. For all the people who don’t know where Melmudi is, it’s about 26kms from Coimbatore and famous for Ranganathar temple. The trek to Melmudi is allowed only during Puratasi Masamwhich is between September 17 to October 16.
The trip started off with the plan to meet my friends Ebin and jarmas at Coimbatore new bus stand at 5 AM and start our journey from there. I asked Ebin to wake me up when he leaves from his place near to Pollachi along with Vijay and like wise I got a call at 4:30 AM. I called my friend Shakti and asked him to get ready. It hardly took me less than 10 mins to get ready and leave. I reached Shakti’s place by 4:40 AM. I called him back to inform that I had reached his place.
We met them at 5:25 AM and left in a hurry since we were already on a delay. After few kilometres, the road vanished. We were travelling across few brick factories. Since the sand was being transported, the road was covered with thick layer of red sand.
We were following the GPRS and was trying to find in that dust filled route. At one place, we lost our track and met with a dead end. We turned back in a swift and started to proceed in the right direction. The journey was becoming more challenging with the road becoming slippery. We reduced our driving speed and switched OFF our GPRS and went with words from the locals and reached the place.
The tracks vanished and we stopped our vehicles and got down. We were late to trek and see the sunrise from the hill as we planned. It was 6:15 AM, the sun was rising but the mountain towards the side blocked the sun rays and created and effect of seeing from the mountain top itself. “The sun rays penetrated the darkness and slowly came up the adjacent hill”. The view was breathtaking.
We clicked few snaps before starting the trek. From the before night’s research, we came to know that the forest has leopards, cheetahs, bear and wild pigs. As we started each one of us took a stick and a heavy stone for protection.
We went along a way which was approximately visible for walking for some distance. We came across animal paths and animal poops.
After some 700 meters, we realized there was no way further. So we checked for some other route nearby but there wasn’t any other route. Again we returned back to the starting point where we had parked our vehicles and took a different route.
There was one more path which was leading in a different direction and we decided to take it. This time, we crossed a small temple and there was a well defined path.
We started going up the path. The path was made out of gravels and large stones and was fully covered with thorns and gravels. At few places got struck to the torn.
As we got up, there was a sudden rapid movement in the bushes, we got very scared. All the four of us where nearby and was able to feel each others heartbeat. We waited for few minutes before leaving from that spot and started to climb up the hill more rapidly.
We reached a small temple under a huge rock. We prayed and started to climb even more to reach the top of the hill. We reached the top hill and took some snaps before getting down.
The climate was mild with a slight amount of chillness but not so much to use a jacket to warm ourselves.
The return trip was fast that we never even knew that we got back to the bike parked place and started for our return journey.
We reached Coimbatore around 10:30 AM. We were hungry from the trek so we stopped for a bite at Sri Annapoorna at Sai Baba Colony. After completing the breakfast we departed at 11 AM and I reached back at 11:30 AM. The picture credit goes to my friends Ebin and Vijay - great photographers with a passion to travel.
I got a message from Ebin yesterday saying that the place where we visited yesterday was not exactly Melmudi but somewhere very close it and we had mistakenly went to a different place by taking a wrong turn somewhere on our route. But the place was breathtaking nonetheless. That's the thing with travel. It gives you experiences you least expect only if you are willing to let go of the set patterns!
It was a shock for me because the trip was filled with some amount of off road adventures along with some thrill and fun to a totally unknown place which people have missed trying out. Yet another Enfield and Splendor journey.