Kudumari Falls

Kudumari Falls is a beautiful waterfall in Toodalli Village of Shirur town, Karnataka, India. You can also avail Indian railway to reach Shirur town. Shirur is a small town with little availability of commercial goods. So food and other stuffs should be carried before reaching here. Before going to describe the place, I would prefer a group of at least 10 members to visit this place safely.

long view of waterfall from road

Get an autoriksha(taxi) from Shirur town to reach near the waterfall in Toodalli village. The good news for the malayalee community is that you can see many malayalee taxi drivers here. The road leading to forest is little bit bad, but acceptable.

 

After some distance the taxi driver will drop us in a small junction and will guide or instruct about the road(muddy) leading to Waterfall. From the junction and up-to waterfall get ready for hiking and trekking.

Walking through the road you can see a petite malayalee shop and many malayalee community homes. It’s better to have a small interaction with these loving native, so that they can help you in some case. Kudumari Falls have long eleven steps of waterfalls shaped like L. The 6 waterfall step which forms vertical side of L and the remaining 5 forms the horizontal side of L. With some adventurous hiking and trekking one can reach at the 6th waterfall. If you are really professional in trekking and adventurous travel you can really reach at the 11th waterfall, but it is really dangerous and try not to visit there.

Walking through the muddy road, we reached in residential area. Reaching nearby a dwelling we asked a women “where is the water”. She pointed us a strait far away. We start walking through this dangerous water strait hoping to see waterfall very nearby. The size of rocks in strait was pretty small  initially for easy walk, but as we move on we experienced bigger and bigger rocks in strait and it became dangerous to walk through. Meanwhile everyone start making natural hiking sticks ;).

The time was around 4:30 in the evening, and the forest start becoming dark making a scare feeling among all our hearts. Someone decided to go back. But our over confident friends didn't allowed them to do so. We believed our over confident friends because we trust and know them deeply. So everyone continued walking with an extra gadget, the torch, just to push the darkness away. But a peak time reached where the torch light can’t show us the way more.

Now the only option yea the only option is to take rest in the dense forest hearing the jungle sounds. After much opinion we decided to stay beside strait with less water flow. It’s always good to respect opinion when you travel group wise. The time was about 7PM night. We felt the time is moving so slowly than usual. Everyone start resting and laying on rocks checking cell phone signal and discussing future plan; not career plan, future trip plan. We planned first to make us secure. Someone moved to the nearby forest with torch and fire light for collecting some woods to make cam fire while other start making tea and preparing foods. Interesting thing is most of the kitchen utensils were made with rocks and sticks. Like us, our other group of friends also came to the place on same day, But we didn’t met together. We guessed either they or we are leading through a wrong way. When large quantity of woods are brought we started making huge cam fire in order to keep us away from wild animals and cold. Food preparation was going well under the guidance of our chief chef. The menu for the night was chicken fry and bread with hot coffee. Since we got less amount of food we made ration for all. After a good dinner everyone start resting on rock maintaining the cam fire beside us, talking each other and waiting for the next sun rise. But as I told the time was really moving so much slowly.

I remember everyone felt asleep, but no one slept because of scare. Some take cared of cam fire when others were sleeping and vise versa. While talking everyone slept unknowingly and opened the eyes watching a clear morning sky. We checked the surrounding and understood that we were in the safest place ever to sleep in the forest. We understood if we had moved little bit straight away from the place that we rested, we might have been in some dangerous situation. The fresh morning made us feeling happy. Everyone was busy with brushing, bathing in cold water, taking photograph of beautiful scenery and having cup of hot tea. After breakfast everyone start moving taking all our gadgets like torch, rope, knife, hiking sticks, food and clothes. Just moving little bit it seems difficult for us to move over the big rocks.

So we planned to walk through the forest parallel to the strait, thus we can assure we are not moving in wrong direction. But it was terrible walking through a forest making way by cutting plants. Moving further we found the forest became so difficult with hard terrain, leeches and we felt strait seem much easier. So we continued through strait.

Leeches

The rocks were not that much slippery and the water level is low. I prefer anyone to visit here from October to February as this is more safer than visiting in the monsoon season. Even the rocks are less slippery many fell in water, but experienced divers within our friends were there to help us.

At last in strait we found rocks thrice bigger than our size which was harder to do. I thought not to  continue but my friend was trying to convince. But when I disagreed, they told they will come back and tell me if the route is safe. But those people who were capable to climb over the rocks continued. Meanwhile me and my another friend utilized the time to bath in the cold water. After finding waterfall and safe route, as agreed my friends came back and instructed us to move in different way through forest. Walking through the forest keeping the waterfall as the destination we moved as we were controlling by some GPS.

The smell of animals, animal cave and some other strange trees on the way felt little adventurous. But we were excited to see the waterfall and also thought we discovered Kudumari Falls as someone discovered Everest mountain. With this feeling we moved to the waterfall defeating all adventurous challenges. When we reached at the waterfall we were really shocked by seeing a married couple sitting with their little baby nearby.

We understood that we discovered the waterfall taking 7 hours of journey with an extra night stay was all through a wrong route. There's a direct way from down to the top of waterfall which can be traveled within half an hour. But the women to whom we asked at first 'where is the water' was not answering incorrectly because she answered our question and showed us the water strait and its we who guessed that's the way to waterfall. Either we didn't asked her the question correctly or had any communication problem. Whatever, we were not disappointed because all our last night experience and others were unforgettable moments in life. While reaching the top we saw our friends code '06' carved on a big rock giving us a sense that our friends visited and returned through the right route last day.

When return we choose the correct way and it just took half an hour to get out of the forest. The moment when everyone reach outside, everyone was flattering,  mocking on others, describing about the last night blah blah blah.

We walked through the muddy road and while reaching the diversion area we tried to get autoriksha(taxi) drivers on phone and couldn't get them due to low signal. We waited for any taxi to come and meanwhile we bathed from the nearby strait. But we couldn't find any taxi to help us. But as God's gift a truck with full wet bricks was arriving the way. When we requested them for a lift, as every Karnataka loving people they too never hesitated to help us. From there took the bus to the hidden beauty Bhatkal.