I wanted to write about this sunday's expedition to the Hoganekkal Falls, but it seems Anant beat me to the post! Anyway, that will not deter me from posting my views also!


The place is about 180 Kilometers away from Bangalore (according to Qualis odometer reading) if you travel by National Highway 7 upto Dharmapuri on the way to Salem, before taking a right turn. Some websites however mention the distance as 150 KM, 120 KM, even 80 KM from Bangalore. (Clearly, the author of the final page was travelling by some old dilapidated vehicle, suitable to give competition to Richard Gordon's Hemorrhagic Hilda, with an odometer, which had given up, panting, halfway through!) We were supposed to start around 6 in the morning. We started at 7:30 as expected. There was a Qualis and an Ambassador. The latter had the priviledge of setting the journey time, being the slower of the two (it refused to go above 70 in the best of roads) and the other had to put a lot of fight to keep up (rather down) with it! We reched our destination around noon, after stopping for about half an hour in Dharmapuri for a breakfast of Plain dosa and Ghee roast (which turned out to be a roasted Plain Dosa). Nothing else was available.

The sole and principal attraction of the place at this time of the year is a boat ride along the Cauvery, near the waterfall, through a stream of placid water between banks of sheer rock, which, at places, go up as high as 50 feet. Several local kids show off by diving into the water from these heights, and ask for payment from the people in the boat as entertainment fees. At first site, the feats look unbelievably risky, and they probably are so. But these kids have grown up doing this only, and they don't care. I don't think, they ever pause to think what will happen if they miss a footing, or land in a wrong part of the water. And after collecting the money, they fearlessly scramble up the vertical rock face for next turn.

The boat themselves are unique. Calling these vessels 'boats' is really an overstatement! Rather they are large round baskets made of cane and plastic, with some black material (probably tar) coating the bottom. They look very fragile, but can carry eight to ten people effortlessly. And when not used, the owners just carry them around on their shoulders!

There were twelve of us, so we hired two boats. We first crossed a stretch of about twenty feet of smelly, muddy, shallow water with rocks popping up here and their. When we reached the other side of the pool, we proceeded on foot, while the boatmen carried their boats. Then the river cruise started. The boat first took us near the waterfall. The waterfall itself is not a big deal what with no rain and all, specially compared to its own self after the rainy season, when it is reputed to be miles wide! But there was enough water to get drenched if you are directly below, and thats were the boats took us! The boatman took us right next to the waterfall and rotated the boat, thus drenching all of us to the skin in the torrent of water pouring down from twenty feet above. Then we went for a gentle cruise along the stream. The scenery was beautiful and reminded me of the scenes from the movie 'Asoka' where Kareena Kapoor sings while taking a ride with a raftful of scantily clad women!

After about half an hour or forty minutes, we reached a sandy beach. The water there was only waste deep throughout. The boatmen set us loose to enjoy ourselves, and that we did! After quite a while of swimming and fooling around, it was decided to head back (by those of us who did not swim or fool around!) On this ride back home, our boatman unveiled yet another of his tricks from up his sleeve. He rotated the boat round and round at the same place at about five or more rpm!

There are quite a few stalls nearby selling all kinds of things including shorts and T-shirts. Several of us availed these services, and changed into new dry shorts before returning! There were also a few food stalls, but we did not try those out. On the way back, we had our lunch again at Dharmapuri, sometime before sunset! We reached home around eight in the evening, tired, wet (some of us) and content. The decision to go to Hoganekkal was not a wrong decision at all!