An Expedition to Hebbe Waterfall
Waterfall. What comes to your mind when you hear the word waterfall?
Clean water, falling from a decent height, forming a plunge pool, people taking baths under it, and girls busy taking selfies, right?
Wait. Stop your imagination.
I am taking you to a waterfall which is amazingly beautiful, but the path leading to it is anything but beautiful.
Bad roads take you to beautiful destinations.
And this journey proved that phrase right.
Into the Western Ghats
Hebbe Waterfall is situated in the Western Ghats of Karnataka, India, in the Chikmagalur district.
The waterfall is formed by the Bhadra River and is located near the famous hill station of Chikmagalur, called Kemmangundi .
The waterfall offers an amazing view. It is surrounded by lush green forest and lies inside a coffee estate.
You can reach the area by four wheeler, but in my view, the real joy comes when you walk, struggle and trek your way to the destination.
There is no joy at the destination if you do not enjoy the journey.
A birthday escape
I am sharing this memory with you because this journey still makes me smile.
Back in 2012, I was working in an MNC, an IT firm. I was relatively new to the industry, and if you know that era, getting leave from the office was not easy.
It was not an era of Work From Home either.
I had escaped from the office to celebrate my birthday and a few festivals in my hometown in North India. And then I returned to Bangalore after almost three weeks.
No one used to get three weeks of leave.
I was practically absconding.
As soon as I returned to Bangalore, we sat together one evening to do absolutely nothing and simply spend time together.
Some people call this a waste of time. I disagree.
Time spent enjoying, laughing and creating memories is not wasted time.
The philosopher in every group
I believe every group of bachelors has one person who always wants to travel, explore and experience something new.
There is usually one person who also becomes the philosopher of the group.
We had one too.
His name was Abhishek.
He had a plan.
The plan was to go on a trek with a group of people, including me, who had never really been on a trek before and probably had no idea what the actual meaning of trekking was.
Nobody was asking for my opinion.
I had no option but to join the bandwagon.
The team was:
Abhishek — Leader
Sawan
PK
Saurabh
And obviously, me.
Except for Abhishek, none of us had experienced a real trek.
The journey begins
At night, we boarded a train from Bangalore Central towards Chikmagalur.
Around 3 to 3:30 in the morning, we got down at a stop from where Kemmangundi was still a few kilometres away.
There was another interesting story involving the Train Ticket Checker.
We had confirmed seats, but they were in different compartments. We wanted to sit together, so we tried to offer some money.
To our surprise, he refused.
We had our seats, he had his rules, and that was the end of the discussion.
We got down at the station in the early morning.
It was September and we were freezing.
We had not carried any warm clothes.
The first thing we did was rush towards a nearby tea stall.
Tea had never tasted so good.
Kemmangundi and the clouds
We took an auto rickshaw and headed towards the Kemmangundi hills.
When we reached Kemmangundi, it was drizzling.
We could see a cluster of clouds above our heads, almost as if we could touch them.
In reality, we were in Cloud Nine with almost zero visibility.
It was difficult to see the person standing next to you.
Winter, drizzle, natural water and rainfall created an ideal environment for one particular creature.
Leeches.
Yes. Leeches.
I had only heard about them before.
In my imagination, leeches were scary.
In reality, they were even scarier.
They are parasites that feed on blood. Let us just say that they were not exactly the kind of company we were looking for.
Our first battle with the leeches
Even though this was our first real trek, we were prepared like professionals.
We had carried salt, diesel and petrol because we had heard that these could help in dealing with leeches.
We were confident.
The leeches were not impressed.
We started the trek and reached the top of the hills, from where we had to trek down towards the waterfall.
As soon as we entered the forest, the leeches started welcoming us.
Within a few minutes, we were fighting them.
They were everywhere. On our heads, necks, backs and, worst of all, inside our shoes.
It seemed as if they were completely immune to our carefully planned defence system.
Soon, our salt and other supplies were exhausted.
We were left with one option.
Ignore the leeches and keep walking.
No Google Maps. No network. No idea.
We slowly marched towards the destination.
The problem was that we did not actually know the route to the waterfall.
We were under the impression that we would find other people along the way.
There was nobody.
It was the era of 2G.
There is no need to explain what Google Maps meant in a forest with no network.
So we continued.
We jumped across small water streams like frogs and slowly entered a dense forest.
We were excited.
It felt less like a normal trek and more like an expedition in search of treasure.
The forest we were walking through was connected to Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary and the Bhadra Tiger Reserve.
Our hunt was still on.
The weather turns against us
After walking for a few kilometres, we reached a point where almost nothing was visible.
It was raining heavily.
The wind was strong enough to shake our bones.
And we were wearing nothing more than shirts and T-shirts.
We had a small bottle of diesel left.
We found shelter under a small rock and tried to light some paper and wood.
It failed.
Then we heard a trumpet like sound.
Elephants make a sound that resembles a trumpet.
We were not sure if that was actually what we had heard, but the thought was enough to scare us.
Karnataka, especially the Western Ghats, is known for elephants and several elephant corridors.
It was around 11:30 in the morning to noon, and we still had somewhere around 12 to 15 kilometres of trekking ahead of us.
We were cold, wet and tired.
Some friends suggested that we stop and go back.
The decision
It was supposed to be a once in a lifetime opportunity.
You do not always get time, friends and circumstances together to travel to places like this.
You can visit a place multiple times, but the question is how often do you get to experience it with the same group of friends?
Abhishek and I decided that we were not going back.
We would continue.
We made a deal.
If we could not find the waterfall by 3 PM, we would return.
When the student is ready, the teacher appears.
The unexpected guides
As soon as we became ready with our backpacks, a couple of street dogs joined us.
It was almost as if they had decided to become our pathfinders.
We trekked down a little further and finally found a person.
We asked him for directions to Hebbe Falls .
He guided us.
As we started climbing down the hill, something beautiful happened.
The clouds began to disappear.
For the first time in hours, we could see sunlight.
The Ray of Hope.
After heavy rain, the clouds slowly disappeared and the forest opened up in front of us.
Down the hill
The journey was not over.
We still had miles to go.
We were walking down a sloped hill surrounded by forest and coffee plantations.
None of us had much experience walking on such steep and slippery surfaces.
One by one, we started slipping.
It started with PK.
He had a huge belly and gravity seemed particularly interested in him.
PK was a big guy, but that did not stop him from joining a trek.
As we climbed lower into the hills, he started feeling uneasy.
Saurabh and Sawan carried his bag and supported him.
Luckily, the situation did not become serious and we eventually reached the bottom of the hill.
Remember, we still had to climb the hill again.
We finally heard the waterfall
Then we heard it.
The sound of falling water.
We jumped with joy.
After all the rain, leeches, confusion, fear and climbing, hearing the waterfall felt like an achievement.
We followed the sound.
We crossed a couple of small streams and continued deeper into the forest.
Our two new friends, the dogs, were still with us.
It was around 3 PM.
We sat down for a while.
We had carried some bananas and glucose.
At that point, they felt like a five star meal.
We gathered whatever energy was left and continued.
And then we reached the waterfall.
Hebbe Falls
There you go.
A beautiful waterfall surrounded by lush green trees, falling from a great height and forming a picture that looked almost like a milkman pouring milk over the forest from the hilltop.
It was not just beautiful.
It was an achievement.
It showed us how tough we could be when we decided not to give up.
Sometimes mental toughness begins with a very simple decision: keep going.
And yes, our leader Abhishek was extremely thin back then.
Around 45 kilograms.
You are free to laugh.
The journey back
The journey did not end at the waterfall.
We had to go back.
We wanted to hire a taxi or some four wheeler, but there was nothing available in the middle of the jungle.
If you remember, we had climbed down the hill.
Now we had to climb up again.
We were tired, hungry and almost out of food.
It started getting dark.
We had absolutely no plan to spend the night in the jungle.
Then it started drizzling again.
As soon as we began climbing, PK started feeling sick.
His condition was not good and we still had a long way to go.
It was difficult.
It was also becoming funny in the strange way that only a group of close friends can understand.
PK started praying to God to save his life.
We were scared too, but somehow we were still able to laugh.
What if we encounter a tiger here? We just have to run faster than PK.
We all burst into laughter.
Where there is a group of friends, there is usually some slapstick comedy.
It gave PK some courage.
He did not want to die without getting married.
We started climbing again, taking short rests in between.
By now, we were tired but completely pumped up.
The final climb
I removed my T-shirt, carried the backpack and started climbing without looking back.
I was worried that if we stopped too often, we might miss our bus.
Somehow, in one go, I almost reached the point on the hill from where we had started climbing down earlier.
The final few steps were steep.
I passed the backpack to Abhishek, our Iron Man, and he successfully reached the top.
We were exhausted.
But we were happy.
We gathered at the top, trying to catch our breath.
Breath in.
Breath out.
We had done it.
The Ghost of Kemmangundi
We started walking towards the bus stop but accidentally took a different route.
We were unaware that the route would eventually lead us towards a forest check post.
It was around 5:30 to 6 PM.
We were walking down the road when suddenly we heard a voice.
It sounded like a woman crying.
We stopped.
It was raining.
It was getting dark.
We were in a dense forest.
Who could possibly be crying here?
We were scared, but we continued walking.
After a few minutes, we saw a woman sitting under a tree and crying.
Let me ask you something.
Do you believe in ghosts or paranormal activities?
At that moment, I was not sure what to believe.
I gathered some courage and went towards her.
She appeared to be in her early seventies and looked like a tribal woman.
Or, at least, our frightened minds had already decided that she might be something else.
I tried speaking to her in my broken Kannada, but I could not understand what she was saying.
She was trying to communicate with us in her local language.
It could have been a local dialect of Kannada or perhaps Kodagu.
I do not know.
What I do know is that she was probably not a ghost.
She was simply a woman in trouble.
I wish we could have helped her more.
But we were young, exhausted, scared and worried about catching the last bus.
We could not do much.
The forest check post
Soon, the forest police officially caught us.
They started questioning us.
We had very little idea about what exactly they were asking.
Then we saw a board with a picture of a giant tiger.
There was a red alert.
A tiger had been spotted in the area.
Remember, the hills were connected to Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary , a tiger reserve.
Technically, we had become trespassers.
Entering the area was not allowed and it was an offence, even though we had done it unintentionally.
After some questioning, the forest officials let us go.
I immediately pushed Abhishek to rush towards the bus stop because the last bus was about to leave.
We had almost no energy left.
Our feet were barely moving.
Somehow, Abhishek managed to reach the stop.
And he got the bus.
The best dosa of our lives
The bus dropped us near the railway station.
We saw a dosa corner.
Every one of us ordered two or three plates of dosa.
It was probably the tastiest dosa I had ever eaten.
Not because it was necessarily the best dosa in the world.
It was the reward.
After a day of trekking, rain, leeches, hunger, fear, laughter and exhaustion, that dosa felt like an award for a great achievement.
We had pushed ourselves.
We had made decisions under pressure.
And somehow, we had made it.
Back to Bangalore
We boarded the train and headed back to Bangalore with a memory that would stay with us for years.
And then there was PK.
Remember him?
During the trek, PK had practically negotiated with God for his life.
He had made several promises while praying.
As soon as we reached Bangalore, those promises mysteriously disappeared.
We laughed about it for a long time.
God probably did not need anything from him anyway.
But perhaps that is what makes journeys like this memorable.
It was not just about reaching Hebbe Falls.
It was about the people, the mistakes, the fear, the laughter, the unexpected help, the dogs that became our guides, the woman under the tree, the forest officials, the tiger warning, the leeches and the dosa at the end of it all.
The destination was beautiful.
But the journey was the real story.
Bad roads really do take you to beautiful destinations.
And sometimes, the worst roads create the best memories.
~ CoolSage