Ombattu gudda conquered by Citrites

When many of my colleagues wanted to go out for a long weekend I was fully energetic and wanted to go very badly. I volunteered to take up the responsibility of arranging the trip. After this there was a huge discussion about the place where we wanted to go... while few of us were more interested to go to some jungle and lodges resort while some others were ready to take up a trek to a ombattu gudda. I was in the first group and had thoughts of dropping out. Trekking was OK for me but not Ombattu gudda... I was really scared after going through all the blogs. While my team mates started preparing themselves for a trek to ombattu gudda, I was preparing myself to get out of this group. :) After so much of yes and no, I decided to take a plunge.


Team comprised of following members...

1. Abhilash verma
2. Abhishek gautam
3. Amit kumar Tyagi
4. Amitabh sural
5. Anil Kumar Gavini
6. Mahesh M
7. Manoj Bangaru
8. Prashanth bandaru
9. Rama Praveen
10. Ravi Gowda
11. Tushar Gaur

We left Bangalore on Thursday night.. Thanks to Tushar and Amit for making all the arrangements with respect to food, maps, compass, sleeping bags and other necessary things. I know how much time and energy we need to spend to make these arrangements. It is a thankless job...


At 7 PM, we started from Bangalore in a Tempo traveller and got into traffic jungle. It took almost 3 hours for us to get out of this jungle which had proper direction and path...around 10 PM we were into a Dhaba near kunigal and had our dinner. Food was awesome and price was also less.

After travelling through bad roads of Shiradi Ghat we reached Gundiya checkpost at 3.30 AM This check post is a junction of three roads with first one going towards Kukke subramanya, second one going towards Mangalore and third one going towards Hassan. We got down and enquired the local police about the path to Ombattu gudda. Head constable who was drunk showed us the wrong route while constable who was sleeping got up and showed us the right path. We moved from here for about 1 KM in Mangalore road to reach the starting point of our trek.

Abhilash, got down from the bus and was looking for a place to get fresh. As expected he saw his nemesis the dog and ran back to the group. He did not make one more attempt to go out of the group from then onwards...



After collecting all our luggage along with two litre of water each...we started our expedition towards ombattu gudda. After walking for about an hour and half we took our first break and waited for Manoj to complete his namaz. When we started again we found leeches on our legs. Manoj was the one who had minimum three on his body. It was his first experience and as expected he was little frightened. By the time we returned, he was bitten by almost 10 leeches.



Around 7 AM we reached "kabbina Hole" and took a break. We had little breakfast that included Laddus and namkeens. This place was very good and water was very sweet. Mahesh who was the most experienced trekker filled up his water bottles here, while others had carried them from Bangalore. This was learning for the new trekkers that you need not carry water all the way to jungle, you can carry empty bottles and get them filled in jungle. One important thing that I noticed here was people who had gone early had broken glass bottles in this place. They had created a mess around some spots. Rama got a cut in his leg because of a broken glass piece. We left this place at 8 AM and restarted our journey to Ombattu gudda...



From here, there was no clear path. We had to rely on our Compass to travel in the direction of North. While travelling like this we ended up going to another water falls. This was also very good. Since all of us were little tired, we desperately needed a break. All of us plunged into water. Around 12 we started our journey again from this place without any proper trail. All that we know was we have move towards north.

One thing that I observed was all along the path we were either crossing or going in parallel with one or the other stream. From this stretch we were lead by Abhishek orAmit or Tushar. Amitabh got injured in this stretch. He took support of a stick all along the way till we came back. At one point we reached a place where we were climbing 70 degree slope..This was very difficult, since it was very thorny as well as slippery. I kept my leg on one of the stone which moved down and hit Anil on his leg. Thank god it was not serious and Anil was OK after few minutes. Most of us lost confidence here since we thought we were on a wrong path. Thanks to Amit, Abhishek, Tushar and Abhilash for their perseverance, they kept on moving and took us along with them. Our hopes were re-ignited once Airtel mobiles started to work. One place leading guys decided that only 4 of them will move to see if they can see something and others take rest. Remaining people of the group were hanging on to one or the other tree...on a 70 degree slope... After 10 minutes we could hear people shouting...We came to know that they have reached the grassland. We followed them...

Around 2 PM we had conquered ombattu gudda, it was a remarkable achievement since most of us were trekking for the first time. We decided to take a break on gudda itself since sun was blazing at his best. Our plans of taking rest did not go well since there were lot of ants. It was very difficult here since there are no trees to cover us from the sun and ants were making merry of us.



At 4.30 Sun gave us the way, we started climbing the hills... without seeing any jeep track. We were more worried since water we had was becoming empty very fast... we were little anxious here...all the blogs that we read had mentioned once we reach the top we will see the track and we can take this track to come back to civilisation... we moved from one peak to the other without seeing any track... After reaching one peak we could see one more peak...while we could hear Prashanth asking "is this ombattu gudda?"

As it was turning dark we decided to spend our night here...we decided to call up someone to know the route to get back to civilisation. After few calls we got the number of Gautham, who told us clearly that you have to go to the top peak to see the track. This reduced our anxiety. we decided to spend the night on one of the Guddas. We located a relatively flat ground, had our heat and eat stuff, spread our sleeping bags.... Twist came here when it started drizzling... All of us thought our night is done... Thank God it stopped after 5 to 10 minutes... we spent our night under the sky...



Next day morning everyone was up by 5.30 AM... Morning was awesome. I cannot describe it in words. We took some photographs...packed our bags and started moving towards the peak. When we reached the peak we could not see anything around us since it was misty... we were planning to make most our way before the sun comes on top...but that was not possible... once mist was cleared we could see the track and we started moving towards it. After going through bushes we reached the track.



we had met the intersection of the track... we were again confused whether to take the path moving upwards or take the path moving downwards... after going through map we decided to take the upward moving path...again based on direction...we have to move towards north. All of us were thirsty and we finished off the last one litre of water that we had... From here onwards we started our journey towards civlization... with blazing sun on top of us and no water to drink... we took almost 3 hours to reach Laxmi Estate... This is where we got water...everyone of us drank water like anything... 3 hours in hot sun had taught us the value of water....



we took rest for about half an hour here and started our walk towards hoskere...we had informed our TT to come to hoskere...but it was long walk of about 4.5 KM's to the tar road... by 12 we reached the tar road. We waited there for around 15 minutes and our driver came with TT... that was one of the happiest moments for us since driver came exactly at right time....

We are all happy with this adventure and went to udupi from here to take well deserved rest and came back to Bangalore on Monday morning...


Few tips for the people who want to conquer ombattu gudda...

1. Each one need to carry at least 4 litres of water.
2. Till you reach ombattu gudda you don't feel the heat, you will get water also...
3. Most stress full trek is while coming down from ombattu gudda. This is mainly due to sun on your head and non availability of water.
4. Carry a compass..if you get GPS that will be more helpful.
5. Get the map from survey of India office in koramangala.