The last (lost??) of Green Route

Green Route, a rail track snaking around the shiridi ghats, has been a trekkers solace. Many trekkers have quoted this place for its scenic beauty, the trek, also popularly known for "tracking", has bridges over the gorgeous valleys and long black tunnels to cross. To summarize in a single sentence i would put it as, a walk with a negligible down gradient, comprising of 17 kms [From Donigal to Yedakumari] over looking the charmadi ghats with kumara dhara flowing along on our left.

Around 1997-98, the railways decided to convert the existing narrow gauge tracks to broad gauge, since then, hordes of trekkers [1, 2, 3 ..] have taken this pilgrimage and have shared their experience and i have nothing extra to share.

This trek had been one of my favorite ones and was always the spoken amongst with Som and Santosh, since, we went in December 2003. Recalling those events, the cross of the first bridge - a pounding heart over the curvaceous track with no planks - bats ridden tunnel - the night stay on the platform of yedakumari with a starry night to watch - the mosssst lighteeeeeeeest dinner one could eat and some one telling a lullaby story of a king and his two queens. Then, we had planned for a single day trek to be out of yedakumari, by noon and onto Bangalore-Mangalore by evening as people had blogged. But, some gross miscalculations, we didn't find the exit route to the kempuhole, though we reached yedakumari by 3 pm, had the stay on the platform for the night.

[for the analogy of the terms check out rails-track-in-wikipedia.]

Planks :- These are a 2 ft width metal sheets running parallel to the tracks on the sleepers.

But this time we had a better equip ed ourselves, food, clothing, sleep gear. And, the plan was to walk from Donigal to Kukke, with a break at yedakumari for the night. Got to know during travelling to sakaleshpur that the second leg of the journey was 30 kms [i.e. from yedakumari to kukke] That was quite a disappointing information, as we would need to push hard to reach before the next night. We started the trek at 10 am with the usual "some initial glitches". Writing a minute to minute account would not be possible [would link the info soon].

The stuff which this trek distinct over the previous one was

• Rain, crossing the bridges was a arduous task. with some 2-3 bridges with no planks, it was more time consuming.
• Fog, we hit quite a fog after the evening rain we could just see some 3 ft ahead that too with the torches.
• Crossing the bridge in the dark, one of the slowest cross, but we did it.
• last but not the least, The Train.

With onset of this monsoon, most of the trekkers [even us] are unaware of the trains started on this route. We came across it twice and we were kind of lucky both the time.

Now with the trains, station yedakumari is back to life. We, after reaching yedakumari were kind of apprehended by the station master, who told us the aftermath of similar uninformed trekkers, who jumped off the bridges on fear getting run over by the approaching trains and were nearly killed.

So, from my opinion, would strongly suggest to avoid this trek route. The main problem been the trains, the timings of these are not adhered to and sometimes one can expect 5-6 of them plying that the day. The most dangerous situation is when if one is caught unaware either in the tunnel or on the bridges, [the bridges, been the worst with no side to move over, one would have to run over the planks, but some long [200m and 500m] bridges don't even have planks!!].

It is quite sad that this route would be lost for trekking, wish a parallel trekable route running along the tracks would have been created. Until this happens, the next time i would checking out the green route would be on the passenger trains some time next year.