Bike Ride near to Kukke Subramanya

Wow.. What a ride.. My first Bike trip.. and that too in peak rainy season in Western Ghats :-)

This trip was near to Kukke Subramanya.. Drove for approx 240 Kms in 2 days :-)

The intent of the trip was to have a bike ride in rainy season. Plus wanted to explore few places near to Kukke. and visit one of the sporadically visited Bisle Ghat and Mookana Mane Abhi Falls.

I went with my 2 friends Lavesh (who was also my manager at Honeywell) and Kubendra. Lavesh bro works as a FRO (Forest Range Officer) near to Kukke.

We took night train to Kukke Subramanya Road on Friday 29th July, 2011. The Forest Rest house is just 2 Kms from Kukke Subramanya railway station.

Lavesh bro picked us from railway station on Saturday early morning. After breakfast we started our bike trip. 2 bikes was arranged for us.

Forest Rest House

By 8, we three started our drive. We first went to Kukke Subramanya temple. Had darshan of the God and had breakfast near to the temple. The drive from our Forest Rest house to temple is 14 Kms.

At Kukke Subramanya Temple Entrance

Then we took deviation to Bisle Ghat. Wow, we enjoyed the nature at its best. Road was horrible. And that can be expected in any ghat in western ghat. Witnessed plenty of water falls. Took in-numerable snaps.

We stopped at View-Point which is 1 Km away from Bisle Village. Could see lots of mountains and water falls from this view point. It was raining continuously and there were plenty of leeches.

View Point at Bisle Ghat

The gate to View point from the Ghat Road

After viewing the mountains, we continued our journey to Mookana mane Abbi falls. From Bisle Village the road was good. The terrain started to be flatter with occasional modest highs and lows. This region is sparsely populated. And with lots of greenery around we kept on riding.

As we kept on driving through bisle village, we reached a deviation and name of the village is Koodurasta. 

From here we took a deviation to the left towards Sakleshpur. Around 3 Kms away from Koodurasta we got a village named as Machalli. From here we took a left. From this deviation Mookana Mane Abhi falls is 8 Kms. We didn't see any sign boards. Have to talk to the locals and get the direction.

As a thumb rule when we ask the locals how far is the place. The actual distance is 2 times the distance suggested by the people.

Exactly 6 kms from Machalli, there is a deviation towards the right which goes to Mookana Mane Abhi falls. The path to the falls is not tarred. Locals suggest to park our bike in the main road and walk. But, we instead drove our bike in the muddy road. Because of rain the bike used to slide with the mud.

We stopped our bike in mid-way in the muddy path and started to walk.

Muddy Road to Mookana Mane Abhi Falls

We heard a small water stream and we walked towards it. We didn't see a single local people. After a while we saw a localite who took us to the falls.

The falls was spectacular. It was a mini Niagara falls. It was dangerous to take bath under falls.

After few snaps and after getting bite by few leeches we started our way back. Now, it was already 3:30 PM. To give bit of trouble, my bike got broke down. Wow. Now, in no-mans land how on earth we could trace a mechanic.

Waiting for Almighty to start our Bike :-)

We pushed our bike through the muddy gradient path. Getting drenched didn't matter to us. We came to main road and tried starting our bike. Bike suddenly started after 2 hrs.. :-)

Now, it was already 5:30 PM. We came back to Machalli and drove towards Sakleshpur. It took us nearly 2 hrs to reach Sakleshpur. The road was good and so we zoomed.

We reached near to Tippu sultan fort by 7:30 PM were we joined to Bangalore-Mangalore highway.

We had few bajji's and tea in the main road tea-stall and we continued our drive towards Gundya-Kukke subramanya.

This is the most dangerous road and most prone to accidents. Trucks with tons of load were driving on the road. There was thick blanket of fog in lots of places and we drove very slowly and carefully. There was few pot-hols and the high beam of trucks made driving bit stressful. Plus riding bike for nearly 13 hrs, had physical strain and frankly speaking our buts had lots of bumps.. :-)

We reached near to Gundya check-post by 9 PM. From here we took deviation towards Kukke Subramanya. It was raining heavily by this time. And we decided to go very slow as it was a Amavasya day. We believe it or not, but we didn't want to take chance. On the way we saw a white color snake crossing. My tyre luckily didn't go on it.

We reached our forest rest house by 11:30 PM with tons of memories and experience :-)

Next day we decided to hang on seeing few rubber plantation. Since Lavesh bro is a forest officer, he administrates few rubber plantation. He took us to a rubber plantation. They explained every bit of rubber extraction and working style.

We learnt that this plantation was set up in 1971 by Late Indian PM Ms. Indira Gandhi for Srilankan Tamil Refugees. Some of the present workers were very small when they came to India and most of them were born here. They speak basically Tamil. They are also familiar with speaking Kannada and TuLu. All are given voting rights; but they don't have any sub-caste. They belong to Hindu caste. But, no sub-caste has been allotted to them and which is their basic concern.

The Srilankan Refugees who work at the Plantation

We then went to Lavesh bro house. Wanted to visit another falls named as Urumbi falls. We failed to go there, as one of the localite mis-lead us. Anyways, we had a good ride in the thick beautiful greenish nature with torrential rain. :-)

We left back to Bangalore by 9:45 PM by train.

The lat-long of route traveled on the first day is shown in the link.

Regards,
Rahul H Iyer