MadhuvanthiBetta

A trek or even a thought of going out in the sun during summer is a distant dream sweltering heat the thirst and tiredness would make us just laze around or be under the fan constantly, but last weekend one of my dreams got fulfilled it was a wish of many days Kamath Sir(Ramesh Kamath) forced me to go trekking to this beautiful place in this peak summer.

So after lots of confusion we decided to go somewhere near Mukambika range & finally once again decided to go to Ambaragudda ,even after many attempts to this place I still wanted to go once again just to complete the great trail from ‘Ambaragudda to Galigudda’.

Till Saturday evening I was not sure we were going somewhere, there was no proper plan simply in our preliminary discussion we had chosen 2-3 places & decided to go in the evening. I had almost lost hope till I received phone call from my friend Mahesh. He reached Mangalore with his cousin at 8pm & joined Kamath sir & started their journey to my place in Kamath sir's car.

We were all together 6of us when we started from my place around 9.30 & informed one of our teammate Ashok to his old roommate Raghu & he arranged our night stay at his place which is near this mountain. We reached this place very late in the night and slept, early the next morning after a good heavy breakfast we thanked his family and started towards Ambaragudda.

We identified the routes easily & parked our car near the mountain and started to walk in the mud road which lies to the other side of the mountain. After climbing half of Ambaragudda Mountain we had 2 options, one was to finish Ambaragudda peak or to take adventure in next trail of this beautiful range & to find the routes to Galigudda if possible.

All of us wanted to take adventure first so without much information, without food and just 2liter of water we stepped forward. First our target was to cross one deep valley & reach to next mountain. Climbing down a steep & very slippery mountain was not easy &we also had to find an easy way to the next Mountain with less effort.

One more thing in our minds was to ‘Keep silent’ because we were looking around to spot few wild animals, in this area during my last visit to Devkunda we saw a large groups of Gaurs in Maduvanthi range. So we were expecting the same this time too so were very silent.

During our early morning journey it was almost very pleasant, but later again humidity and heat was increasing, but that didn't affect our spirit. We were simply enjoying each moment, we felt like we are walking towards paradise.

We were able to find some wild fruits which gave us temporary strength as we had not carried food or enough water these dates were a blessing. First time I ate so much of the wild Dates (Eichala) which was very tasty & we saw so many Wild Date trees across our journey.

Our final 1hour stretch was amazing; though we were exhausted it was worth the effort after 4 hours of nonstop walk we reached the peak of the Madumaga-Maduvanthi Betta. From the top of this peak we could see clearly Meghani village on our left side, Galigudda & Devakunda on the other side & beautiful valley on right side we spent nearly 30 minutes on the peak. There are no words to describe this beautiful experience

Madumaga-Maduvanthi Betta

Due to lack of time and energy we dropped our plans to climb Ambaragudda because we had already seen it twice before. Finally on our return we visited Sharavathi backwater in Tumbri which was again another beautiful place though a very exhausting trip this time it was worth all our efforts for a refreshing mind and memorable summer trek .