Trekking the Nilgiris: The Sholur Trail

The Sholur trail through the Nilgiris or the Blue Mountains is a breathtakingly scenic trail and more so during this season just after the monsoons. So when the opportunity to set out for the trek with Bangalore Mountaineering club(BMC) presents itself I lap it up with glee.

We, a bunch of 18 trekkers, start from Bangalore on a particularly rainy Friday night towards Masinagudi were our guides, Mohan and Swami join us, after stopping briefly for breakfast, we head towards the starting point of our trek. What is most noticeable as we reach the base is that the area is hemmed in by electric barbed wires to confine the Elephants to the forests. Vijay, who ventures to touch the wires thinking that they are active only during the night, is in for a rude shock. Our guides later tell us that the barbed wires are on, 24*7. After having distributed the tents, sleeping bags and foodstuff we start towards the peak, which according to our guides is 10 Kms from the base.

The initial stretch of the trek is pretty easy, the trees look fresh from the recent showers, small streams meander along the way and the biggest relief is that there are no leeches, you can walk at your own pace, drinking in the surroundings. As I start talking to my fellow trekker, Atish, I am in for a surprise, he turns out to be one of my best friend’s cousin, the world is small place, indeed.


A waterfall, albeit a man made one.

As we reach the first milestone after covering around 2 Kms from the base, our guide tells us that we have 18 more Kms to go; I sense that there is something seriuosly wrong with his calculation but then, I was never great at Maths, so don’t give it much of a thought. Having rested a while we again start walking, doing a variety of things on the way, plucking gooseberries and having them with water, marveling at the fact that the water tastes sweet after eating gooseberries, taking pictures of whatever subjects present themselves on the way, stopping to look at a strange insect or flower…

We take a short detour just before lunch to view a View, the place is a rock perched on the top of the hill; we climb the rock and see a picture perfect panorama, misty mountains in whichever direction you look. As we sit there for sometime it starts to drizzle we hurry towards our make shift dining place ‘The Bridge’, which is dilapidated, fully covered in algae, and trembles as the burlier among us walk on it. But it survives the human onslaught all right and we savor delicacies like rajma, dal fry, paneer butter masala, and obattu sitting on it.


"The Bridge": Our make-shift dining place.

The climb after the bridge is continuously steep and hence tiring, we keep stopping frequently after this, to our guide’s exasperation, who keeps prodding us to move every once in a while. JD, Rajesh and I stop at a rock to wait for others and a woodpecker comes and perches itself on the tree in front, the place is teeming with birds as we can hear a constant twittering from the forest. We move along as the others come and join us no longer asking the guide about the distance left, because we’ve understood that we’ll know that only after we reach the peak.


View from the trail as it snakes through the tea estates.

We reach a particular beautiful stretch now that reminds me of Ooty , tea estates everywhere as the trail snakes through them. We have reached Sholur and are now walking on pucca roads, after hitching a ride to a teashop to have some snacks, our guide tells us that the camping site is another 2 Km away. Its already getting dark Anjali, Ashwin, KP, Kiran and I don’t want to walk with our backpacks so we hire a jeep. Everyone dumps their luggage in the jeep and our guide lugs along with us; we plan to meet the others at a school in the village.


A villager at the tea-shop.

The jeep sways and swings as the road towards the school is in a pathetic condition. We finally see the light of the school, but the jeep refuses to go forward at a particularly narrow stretch of road. A haughty discussion ensues on what is to be done next, KP, who is the only one among us who can converse in Tamil , explains to the driver and our guide that we want to get as close to the school as possible so that we can meet the others. It takes some time for the message to sink in but finally we are on our way back to a place we had crossed earlier. We wait at the place for sometime before we see torchlights in the distance, we shout for JD and he replies, to everyone’s relief.

After relieving the driver we walk down towards the school, our campsite. Tents are pitched, a bonfire is lit and we again have a round of Ready To Eat(RTE) delicacies as dinner. It’s chilling cold as we snuggle inside our sleeping bags for a round of blinking sleep before we get up in the morning to a stunning view outside. Sunlight playing on the contours of the tea estates, the brilliant play of shadow and light makes the already beautiful hill scape breathtaking.


Beautiful view in the morning.

We start for a wildlife trail in the morning; we have fresh luscious carrots on the way for breakfast. We cross the fields and estates to reach a hill scape which is yet uncivilized, grasslands with patches of forest in between. We see a lone Gaur grazing in the distance, we manage to click a few pictures before it becomes aware of our presence and runs into the forest. We walk towards the peak, which looks very similar to the suicide point shown in Bollywood flicks, we see a circular rainbow formation in the valley below, before the valley and even we get covered in clouds.

We walk back to Sholur after spending sometime at the peak, where the hospitable villagers treat us to tea. On our way back to the base an Aunty from the village joins us. She is easily above fifty and is wearing sandals, but she sprints down the way to my surprise, I try to keep up with her for sometime, but then give up. We take a slightly different route on the way back to the base so that we get to soak in the waterfall. A small stream falling down a height of ten feet or so forms the waterfall, the water is chilling and liberating, after the bath we walk towards our vehicle with renewed life in our step. On our way back to Bangalore we spot Elephants, gaurs and a herd of deer eyes in Madumalai wildlife sanctuary.

The timeless game of Antakshari follows a heavy dinner at a roadside restaurant, I finally succumb to sleep, the body ache hasn’t made its presence felt yet and I am already dreaming about the next trip, next excursion, next adventure.