Mekedatu

Kiran,
Ramesh,
Hemanth,
Myself,
Gurivi,
Ajay







My room mates were interested in going to some place near Bangalore. I planned for Mekedatu, this was long pending trip and we postponed it many times. We were six members in total. We planned to go there on bikes. We were ready with one Bajaj Caliber and two pulsars. Our plan was to start very early in the morning to avoid the traffic in city.

Morning we were getting ready for trip and it was raining. Going by bikes was any way not possible and we had only two options, one is to wait for rain to stop and second is to go by taxi. We waited for a while but looked like rain was not going to stop. We decided to go by taxi and I booked a quails from Geo travels.

We started around 8:30. We are almost 2-hours late because of the rain. We crossed some villages and stopped the vehicle to relax and to take some snaps. The weather was excellent and cloudy and it was not raining.

We reached sangama (Palce where Arkavathi and Cauvery joins) by 11:15. To go mekedatu we had to cross a river. In summers this is easy to cross, but it was rainy season and river is in full flow. There we can hire Coracle to cross the river. We hired the coracle and crossed the river. The other side of the river is Cauvery wildlife sanctuary. I came to know after I crossed the river. It is protected area and it is home for wild animals especially for Asian elephants. From that point mekatadtu is around three km. From there we can walk to mekedatu or we can take mini bus. It is private bus from this point to Mekedatu. Interesting thing is how the bus crossed the river because there is no other way from forest. Only way is to cross the river.

We decided go by bus and while coming back we thought we could walk the 3km stretch. We reached mekedatu and it was excellent site because the river was in full flow. Here river squeezed through a narrow ravine. We spent some time there by talking some photos and discussing about the area.

A person from other group fell down in the river while we were taking photographs. He was flowing through the river and luckily some people were swimming there and they saved him. That guy had a really bad experience.

The place is really dangerous for two reasons one reason is that the river has sharp rocks in ground and second is that this place has crocodiles. People come to know these things by seeing the warning boards near the place. Here one more danger is there that I will tell you later which we found by experience.

We had taken enough photographs and we wanted to walk to the river where we can cross the river from sangam. We started walking. Kiran said we will spend some time near river. We selected a random place and we spent some time there.














The interesting thing is that we saw some elephants dropping there and while coming back. We had seen fresh elephant’s pugmarks. I told the guys that we have great chance to see wild elephants here and I was telling what we have to do if we see elephants. These people were not that much interested in this topic except kiran. We had spent some time and started walking. Suddenly I found a herd of elephants near to the road. I told everybody not to talk loudly. Everybody was surprised to see elephants. We had enough distance, in case elephants attack we could easily escape. Ramesh had video camera, he was shooting elephants and I have 300mm zoom lens. I was trying to take photographs. We were silently observing the elephants. The mini bus was passing by and people in mini bus shouted seeing elephants. One elephant looked at our side started running towards us. We stared running and went some extent when elephant stopped. If it is a single elephant it is more dangerous. This is the one danger here but there were no warning boards about elephants here. Anyway elephants are most dangerous animal in India. We can see elephants by maintaining but never take photographs with flash; generally elephant get irritated by flash (not only elephants any animal wildboar, leopard etc…). People have false impression that elephant is soft animal and can’t run fast. This is absolutely false. Elephant can run faster than humans and easily get irritated by camera flashes and sometimes seeing humans.















We crossed the river and had some bajjis and other stuff. We wanted to go to Chunchi falls. This water fall is very small and not so good. We reached the place and spent some time. A Kannada TV serial shooting was going on there. We started back to Bangalore by 5:00 clock in the evening.

But seeing elephant in wild is really good experience and same time it is very scary, we were chased by elephants. If you go to Mekedatu don’t swim in this river as it is really dangerous.

We reached home by evening 7:30.

Other information:

Distance from Bangalore: 90km

Route from Bangalore: Take kankapura road from Bangalore. Need to take left turn after kankapura.

This is good one day trip from Bangalore. You can visit this place from Cauvery Fishing camp in case if you stay in Jungle lodges and resorts