Re-discovering Koraput : Day-3

Route : 

Forenoon : Semliguda-Nadapur-Balda-Nageshwari Cave-Padua and back to Semliguda

Afternoon : Semliguda-Kunduli-Deomali and Back to Semliguda and then to Jeypore late in the evening.

It was the last week of October and winter had not yet taken the higher plateau of Koraput in its wintry embrace. Even so the morning was too chilly. Coming out from beneath the cosy warmth of my blanket on such a morning was not a very welcoming proposition. But we were on a road trip. I had to leave the bed, very reluctantly though, after several nudge from Udayan. When we came out of the hotel the sun of 29th October 2012 was shining bright in its rising path and had left the rim of Eastern ghat hills a little below. The morning air felt crisp and devoid of moisture. Perfecto. Most of the things I said about the food in Berhampur hold good for Koraput as well, with a few deviations. Today's breakfast consisted of puri and upma. It was nearing 9 am when we left Semliguda.

                                    Blanket of niger flower on the slopes of Koraput 

                                                   Agave plantation on the bare hill slopes.

Not even out of Semliguda town and the landscape around pressed into action their force of beckoning and there was no escaping. We stopped every now and then to click. We stopped and we clicked, we clicked and we stopped. Our ride was along a major district road. The country around was mostly undulating. Hills, as far as the vision went. Most of the low hills on the plateau are devoid of forest. Cultivation of niger seed(Guizotia abyssinica), Finger Millet(raagi)(Eleusine coracana) and Maize is taken up very industriously by the people on these hill slopes. Apart from these crops Cashew nut and agave are planted on many hill slopes. Cashew nut and agave have important role in the economy of the district. Cashew nuts and the fibre from agave are two important agricultural harvests from this region of the district. Apart from the harvest they aid the soil conservation on the hill slopes. Niger seed is also a major produce from this region of the state. The highlands are suitable for cultivation of this exotic plant. The niger flower blooms with the onset of winter and we were travelling right around that time. The hill slope blanketed with niger flower is a sight for sore eyes and offer irresistible frames for a shutter bug. The landscape to our right was bathing in the morning sunlight and looked incredible and to our left the hills had a trace of haze on them but looked equally amazing against the light. For me, the road had many memories attached to it. This is the same road that leads to Padua where we lived for six years between 1990 and 1996. Memories, irrepressible as they are, came floating. When we had to come to Jeypore from Padua we used to catch the bus at 7 o'clock at Padua. Irrespective of the season Maa would wrap us(me and my younger brother Sidharth) in warm clothes, because mornings used to be chilly in Padua, even in the summer back then. My favourite place in the bus would be the window seat or the one nearer to the driver as they offered the best view of the surroundings. I would be staring at the landscape passing by the window in great amusement. Typical Nadeem-Shravan or Anand-Milind songs of the 90's would be blaring from the cassette player in the bus. I was not grown up enough to appreciate the beauty around then. During the early nineties there was only a fair weather bridge across the river at Pitaguda. The bridge would submerge for six months of the year when the back waters of Kolab river swelled and two humongous boats ferried people across the river during this period. The boats were large enough to ferry a Tata 407 along with a horde of other loads. Crossing the river by that ferry was an adventure sort of for Sidhu and me. 

                                                            Agave flower buddings

Coming back to the trip, we reached Balda at about 10.30 am. Balda is a small village at the foot of the hill on which the Nageshwari caves are situated. It is nearly 35 kilometres from Semliguda. We found our way through the village to the caves. Here let me give you a rough idea of the hill we were ascending. It is a table top hill. The flat top is nearly 4 square kilometres in extent and stands at 1260 mtrs above sea level i.e more than 4100 feet. The Nageshwari cave is located on the south-eastern corner of this flat topped hill. The slopes are covered with dense moist deciduous vegetation. The road to the top of the hill winds through the forest on these slopes. When we were planning for a visit to these caves I took the help of Google earth to trace the road and found that there was a decent looking road leading up to the caves from Balda village. However the real picture was something far from what it looked like in Google imagery. The road we were riding on was no road at all. It looked like a well used boulder-strewn mountain path. The lone testimony to it being a road were the bushes which were cleared off by the people using it and gave it the look of a road. The first challenge the trip threw on us. I was leading the way. The first quarter of mile was not a big deal for me or the Classic. The torque that RE had packed into the engine was showing its apparent advantage. I was loving every bit of it. My hands gripping the handle bars firmly, my gaze fixed on the road and an in-suppressible smile on my face. I reached at the top of the first gradient and stopped to look back how Udayan and his TBTS were faring and found them not trailing far behind. A turn and there was the second gradient and the roads worsened. 

                                                There was a "Road" that was not There

                                                     Udayan and his Thunderbird fight the hill

                                          Terrain we rode on.

                                                         View from Nageshwari Hill

Rain water had washed away the soil from the surface, leaving behind a litter of boulders and deep furrows. I made it to the top of the second gradient with much difficulty. But Udayan struggled a lot with his bike. At one point his engine stopped and he started skidding downhill but somehow managed to find a foothold. I went back to help him with the kick start. Because he could not have started the bike himself. I held his bike from behind while he kick started it. The Thunderbird was a little low on power compared to the Classic as it had a slightly lighter crank than the Classic. On the way we saw a group of wood cutters and asked them whether the bikes can go to the top on this road. They said yes but not with much conviction. We decided to proceed, taking it as a challenge. But the hill made it more difficult. I somehow managed to proceed a little further. Udayan stopped at a place and said his bikes clutch wire felt loose and he said it may snap any-time.Shit, I thought. We had another one kilometre to the cave and had no idea what was the condition of the road ahead. Then it dawned upon me what a situation we had run into. If Udayan's bike's clutch wire snapped it could possibly take the whole day to take the bike back to civilization and which meant we will have to postpone the Deomali visit to the next day which we obviously did not want to. We parked our bikes and sat beneath the shade of a mango tree. The sun was shining brightly and we started to feel the heat.Relieving myself from the jacket and camera I started pondering over the situation. Then we agreed mutually that proceeding further will be too risky given the state of road. Trekking to the top was neither a practicable proposition as we would be late for the Deomali drive. So discretion proved to be the better part of valour and we retraced from there after fifteen minutes.

                                                                 The Point of Return

The view from the place, where we were sitting, was serene. The sun midway on the sky felt a little hot for comfort. The back-waters of Jalaput reservoir gleamed in the distance. The vista helped a lot to bring the adrenalin levels down and meanwhile the bike engines also cooled off. The bikes had to be turned around the 50 degree slope very carefully and one at a time. I held for support while Udayan turned his bike and he supported me while I turned mine. I decided to descend first. I descended the slope with my engine running and put the Classic in first gear. I pushed the bike forward inches at a time and Udayan did the same with his engine off. Though climbing down was not very easy, our bikes were saved of the torture this time. But we had to perform a pretty good balancing act on the boulder-strewn mountain path. A stream on the way was good place to quench our thirst. With a promise to return once again and scale to its top we bade good by to the Nageshwari hills and proceeded to Padua.

                                                     The view that soothed our Senses

Roads or No Roads, My Bull took me there, where other mortal bikes fear to Tread

Padua is quaint little village in the remote part of Koraput with immensely beautiful landscape around and a climate that is exceptional. It came into little prominence during the Dandakaranya project. Homeless Bengali refugees were given transient accommodation here before being resettled in other parts of the district. I had not visited the place even for once after we left that place in 1996. This is the place where the first threads of attachment between me and nature were tied. The place had a few government establishment such as a dispensary, a veterinary centre, two schools, branch of a rural bank(of which my father was the manager), a police station and a handful other such offices, most of which ran in the dilapidated Dandakaranya project houses. A small railway station on the base of a hill gave the place a British era charm. Life at Padua was always easy going. Mornings use to be chilly. My school was at a stone throw distance from our house. I used to roam about a lot in the village after school and I remember good thrashings from my father for my overtime wanderings, though I was not mischievous at all. Most of the people liked me a lot in the village and I had free access to every household as a cute child. Thursday used to be the weekly market. I loved accompanying Baba to the haat. Most of our evenings would be spent near the reservoir back waters with Baba. Padua being a remote village suffered from frequent power outages. But we enjoyed the power outage period very much because it disrupted study time and Sidhu and me would coax Baba to tell us jungle tales. 

First we went to the inspection bungalow situated on the top of a knoll over looking the reservoir and the surrounding plateau. This is one of the many British time bungalows that are still there in undivided Koraput district. The location and architecture of the the bungalow fascinated me a lot and I dreamt of constructing my own bungalow in the same fashion as this one when I was a school boy. The bungalow compound and its adjoining scrub forest used to be a favourite haunt of ours. My father used to bring us here for a evenings birding and we would sit on the verandah of the house to see the sun set below the reservoir and hills. The rear portion of the bungalow had been damaged. Buildings such as this one should be preserved for their antique as well as aesthetic values. I always hold the British in awe for the reason that they always choose the best of places to construct their house and bungalows. 

                                                       The British Time Bungalow at Padua

                                                              View from the Bungalow

                                                                      British Charm

Just when we were about to leave the bungalow I spotted a flock of birds which flew from one tree to another as I watched them. I identified them as babblers. Of course they were babblers but babblers that whistled as they flew. Yes, there they were, a flock of Yellow-billed babblers. Yellow-billed babblers are a species of babblers(known as Kundakhia pakhi or Sat Bhai in Odisha). They were the birds I was looking for since a few months. The northern most range of this bird according to the field guides is up to the northern parts of Andhra Pradesh. These birds had never been reported from Odisha. Few months ago I had come across a babbler near Jeypore which looked like a yellow billed babbler. I had not got the confirmation as I had not heard the bird call. But this time I saw them in broad day light and also heard them whistle. The common and jungle babblers make raucous chatter or a metallic '"Ttich" '"Ttich" sound but yellow billed babblers have a sweet whistle like vocalization. We took a few photographs of these birds as a record so that Koraput can be included in their range of distribution later. Then we rode about in the village to see the place where we lived and the school where I started my formal education. The house where we lived was in a very dilapidated condition but the school where I studied had expanded and was in good state. The scenery around looked as beautiful as it used to 16 years ago. Nostalgia. That is what I had come here for. I showed Udayan the above places and told him in brief how my childhood days had passed in this beautiful place. I recognized a few familiar faces in the village but they could not recognize me for obvious reasons. I had left the place when I was a boy of 10 and now there I was as a man of 26 sporting a French beard and riding a Royal Enfield. I preferred not to startle them by divulging my identity and left Padua. 

We returned to Semliguda by 2 o'clock. A hasty bath and a quick lunch followed. I had asked a few of my friends from Jeypore and Sidhu(my younger brother) to accompany us to the top of Deomali. However others failed to turn up and Sidhu delayed his start from Jeypore. It was getting too late. I called him up and told him not to come and we started from Semliguda to Deomali at 3.15 in the afternoon. The plateau looked resplendent in the afternoon light of the sun, the right setting for photography. We took a left turn from the Kundli haat. This haat is famous through out the district for vegetables. The Mali tribe who inhabit the valleys near Deomali are very laborious people and they grow the best vegetables of the region using the traditional organic practices. Kundli haat is where all the vegetables are traded and then make their way to different parts of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. The arch at Kundli haat welcomes all the visitors to Deomali peak. From Kundli onwards the road passes through a scenic valley with high and bare hills on two sides and cultivation and crystal clear streams in the middle. Anybody passing through this valley with a camera in hand cannot help but stop many times on this road to click pictures. So did we. The afternoon golden light had made the valley even more alluring. Though we were getting late we could not resist the temptation to take pictures. 

                     Deomali Peak, 1672 Mtrs from mean sea level as seen from the road leading to it

                                                      Deomali peak as seen from the valley below.

                                                                       Deomali Here I come

We reach Thuria, the village at the base of Deomali. The road from Thuria to Deomali is a riders delight. The zig-zagging mountain road felt awesome to ride on. As we rode up hill I felt the temperature dipping and the light fading. We reached at the shoulder of Deomali which offers a panoramic view of most of the hills and valleys around it. There is a 3 km stretch of road that runs on the shoulder of the hill and is the most scenic part of the road. The road ends at a place from where the peak is 2 kms away. We could see the sun fast disappearing behind the distant hills. We had to make it to the top of Deomali before darkness. But that seemed an impossible feat now. It was nearing five o'clock and the sun almost ready to go for the night. We were almost two hundred meters below the summit. A family was out there picnicking when we reached. Apart from them there was old cow-herder, smoking a rolled tobacco leaf. He asked for alms with a wide grin to which I could not say no. We decided to trek as far up as possible towards the peak before darkness. The picnicking family left the place as we started our trek, so did the cow-herder along with his custody. 

The roads on Deomali

Right there where it was Made to be

                                                              Eastern side of Deomali

                                                          The magical sunset at Deomali

                                                                 While trekking up Deomali

The only time the tripod was of used

There we were on the mountain, just two of us. With the light fading away rapidly we trekked at a brisk pace. The anabatic mountain breeze was sweeping across the hill side. We reached an observation tower(view point). By now we were a little out of breath. It was almost dark now. To reach the peak was our target, but given the terrain we were walking on it would have been very difficult to come back from the summit unhurt in the dark. The mountain side was full of loose boulders and scrub. There were also many sloth bears on the other face of the hills which we might unknowingly stumble upon inadvertently. I always carry a small Maglite torch with me but that would not have been of much use while trekking up or down. We stop at the watch tower to enjoy the vista for a while before going downhill again. We sat on the tower enjoying the serenity and tranquillity of Deomali. We decided to keep mum for sometime. I inhaled and filled my lungs with the clean and cold mountain air and it had its own magical effect on the body. Every muscle and nerve felt extremely relaxed. A few insects chirped under some boulder or in some bush, a red-wattle lapwing gave its did-you-do-it , did-you-do-it call at some distance, a few birds sang their evening songs to bid adieu to the departing day. To the west, behind the hill, the sun had already sank into a slumber. Only the golden glow of its fading rays lit up the western sky like a golden canvas. To the east I could see the full moon(it was a full moon day) lazily rising above the rim of distant hills. Down below in the valleys to my right and left a thick mist was descending on the villages. We sat there for quite a while. The tower was half broken, some of the steel rods used in its construction had been stolen, the place was littered with polythene wrappers, cigarette packs etc. The tower's walls and pillars served as the "wall of fame" or I must say "wall of name" for many lovers of the district. This has to stop somehow. 

The Vista from the top most watch tower of Deomali

Deomali Landscape 

I was not at all feeling like leaving that place. The only thought that bothered me while sitting there was in case one of our bikes broke down on the way or got a flat tyre we could be in real trouble. I kept that thought to myself and prayed for a safe ride back up to Semliguda. We started our walk back to the place where our REs were parked below. We collected dry brushwood along the way and made a small bonfire on the road for ourselves. The bonfire was a token celebration for having made it to Deomali at last. It was an end to years of waiting, years of yearning and here I was at the Deomali, the highest hill in the whole of Eastern Ghat mountain range. Lighting the fire was not easy though on the windy mountain top. Lighting up the fire we sat there for a while, posed for a few photographs near it. The road on which we were sitting had Maoist slogans and messages written all over it. We call it a day. As the fire died down we started on our way back. The full moon in its full glory lit up the bare mountain side in a ghostly shade. On the way back we saw Barn Owls sitting on the ground, probably the red wattle lapwing which was calling did-you-do-it a few minutes ago and a fox. On one of the U-turns on the way down a few men suddenly appeared with long staves in their hand and gave quite a shock to both of us. Udayan was leading this time. One of the man raised his arm to ask for lift but we did not stop for obvious reasons. I sighed in relief when we reached Thuria village. From then on we drove faster. On the way between Thuria and Kundli Udayan told me there was four-wheeler which was trying to catch up with us. I told him to accelerate and in two minutes we were to far ahead to be caught up with. 

The Bonfire

We reached Semliguda at about 8 o'clock. After having a little snack break there we checked out of the hotel and proceeded on our way to Jeypore, my home town. The journey to Jeypore was uneventful. We reached Jeypore around 9.30pm. That was the end to Day-3. The off road biking earlier in the day gave us the high we were looking for. Deomali without a doubt was the literal high point of our trip. These two beautiful places along with many other in Koraput hold a lot of potential to be promoted as tourist destination. But sometimes it amazes me that many people of Odisha don't have the slightest idea that places like Deomali exist in their own state. Vigorous promotion and good tourist facilities at the right places by the tourism department can definitely help to increase visitors foot fall. Deomali as I noticed has scope for adventure sports such as trekking and para-gliding. My word for any one reading this : Deomali is definitely a place you must see in Odisha. 

Hope you enjoyed the travelogue as much as I loved the travel.

Day-4: To Continue, Trek to the base of 160 mtr high Duduma water fall in the next post. Till then these photographs will keep you company.

For more of my pictures visit my Flickr photo stream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/75813070@N08/
or My Picasa web album at  https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/108824607231013281975/albums