Hebbe Falls

• Visit after the rains. The gushing waterfall at its full flow is an amazing view to behold. Take a bath. The sprinkles gives you goosebumps. 
• Take Maxx from Chikmagalur city. Regular vehicles can't reach this place with the mountain terrain and bad  roads. They charged us 500 bucks and it was worth the experience.
• You have to trek the last mile up to the waterfall. The last turn when the waterfall opens up to full view is magical or at least I thought so.

The first time I visited Chikmagalur, the four of us - Vivek, Sumeet, Ashutosh and myself started from Bangalore for Kemmengundi. It is a newly popular hill station near Chikmagalur  It was our plan to stay here for the night and visit nearby waterfalls among other things.

Windmills@Chikmagalur

However reaching there we realized that the first weekend of the year was also the busiest. Without advanced booking we had to revert back to the city of Chikmagalur  We, however, spent the evening having a bath at Kalhatti Falls. The road from Kemmengundi to Chikmagalur is an engrossing affair with changing altitudes.

Mulayangiri Peak@Chikmagalur

Chikmagalur was a buzzing little town. We found a comfortable accommodation in Hotel Soundarya for Rs 400/- only. Vivek and Ashutosh went shopping for underwears and I took Sumeet along to look for a bottle of Scotch. Both the team came back successful and we had a small party. We had booked a jeep for the morning to take us around.

Sunrise@On way to Hebbe Falls/Kemmengundi

We woke up early at 5.30 AM and got down from the hotel to start our journey. We decided to cover Hebbe Falls and other places en route. The jeep was the best possible mode of transport as we learned. It took us through a hill road which was more of a thin trail. It dropped us in front of a barrier. We had to trek half a mile through a forest and walked through few streams to reach the fall. Hebbe Falls was huge and fun. We spent some three hours splashing cold water and enjoying the natural surroundings.

Hebbe Falls@Chikmagalur

We started back at 12 noon and reached our hotel room by 3 PM. There we enjoyed a delicious lunch and started back for Bangalore. This time we took the road through Hassan. There was a famous temple in Belur that we visited. We took a miss on the Halebidu temple and made plans to go to Shravanbelgola but by the time we reached there it was dark. Hence we decided to move on and were able to reach Bangalore by 10 PM.