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Photos: Anand Subramanian

The green spread Rolling hills and dense forests

Lodged in a bowl formed by a ring of hills, the picturesque hill station is named after the nearby Kudremukha (literally, horse-face in Kannada) peak in Chikmagalur District.

Picturesque walkways

It’s one of the ironies of Kudremukh that you can’t see the Kudremukha peak from the hill station.

You need to head out to Samse on the road to Kalasa to actually see it. There’s a trail leading out to the peak (1,892 metres, or 6,214 feet high) from around here.

Kudremukh is easily accessed by road from Mangalore, just about 110 km away along particularly good roads, including the ghat (hill) section through the Kudremukh National Park, the largest declared wildlife protected area (600 sq km) of a tropical wet evergreen forest in the Western Ghats.

I drove down from Bangalore, a good 350 km. It’s a relatively straightforward route to Kudremukh: Bangalore to Hassan, Belur, Mudigere, Kalasa and Kudremukh.

But my hosts in the Kudremukh Iron Ore Co. Ltd. (KIOCL) had warned me that the Mudigere Road was particularly bad and asked me to take the Hassan, Chikmagalur, Balehonnur route.

An early 7 a.m. start from Bangalore gives one the option to take in some of the historic sights along the way: the towering Gomateshwara monolith at Sravanabelagola, and the Hoysala temple towns of Belur and Halebidu further down in Hassan district.

We reach Chikmagalur late in the afternoon; after a quick meal (there’s only biriyani available at the Planter’s Retreat, where we stop for lunch).

The road really begins to climb only now, winding its way past coffee estates by the dozen; it goes down again, only to climb a little further on.

The pattern is repeated, so much so that it’s hard to say whether you’ve gained elevation or not. There are rolling coffee greens and dense forest on either side.

At Balehonnur (8 km from which lies the Central Coffee Research Centre on the road to Sringeri), we break to the left for Kudremukh.

We wonder how the road is: the road is bad up to Magundi, a local auto driver tells us. He’s bang on the money; the road to Magundi through rolling hills and forests is in poor shape, making you wish you had a jeep.

But after Magundi, as dusk deepens magically into night, the road is transformed; we’re soon at Kalasa, a surprisingly large and bustling hill town.

It’s been a long day, but our spirits perk up. Kudremukh is only another 20-odd km away; the road is good, and we should make good time. Presently, we turn off to enter the township; the KIOCL guesthouse is bang in the middle of it, all 54 comfortable rooms of it.

The company town wears an almost deserted look; which is not surprising considering that only an estimated 800 families are left of the original 2,500 when KIOCL was in full flow, mining the mountains nearby for low-grade iron ore. Environmental protests forced a court-ordered halt to the open cast mining two years ago; today, the giant dumpsters and excavators gather rust and the crushing mills and concentrator plant lie eerily silent.

The upside of this is that Kudremukh has regained its earlier serenity; there are hardly any vehicles — or for that matter, people — on the roads and slopes of the township. Beyond the boundaries of the mining township lie grassy, rolling hills and dense sholas forests in the valleys between.

The river Bhadra flows quietly nearby. In fact, three rivers have their origin here: the Tunga, the Bhadra and the Nethravathi.

There’s a gorgeous town park, still lovingly maintained, and the steep ups and downs are made for walking. The KIOCL guesthouse offers comfortable accommodation and good food – at reasonable rates; there’s a swimming pool too. There’s not much by way of entertainment round here; no cinemas, hotels or malls. Kudremukh is ideal trekking territory for the adventurous; but some may require permission from the Forest Department, which has an office in the township.

Ten kilometres down the road to Mangalore is a Nature camp run by the Forest Department, which offers spectacular accommodation in tents in a forest clearing by the riverside. The facilities here are very basic; you can cook food, or have the caretaker cook for you (comes highly recommended by a visiting couple I spoke to). It’s the ideal place to chill out and commune with nature for a few days.

SHIV S. KUMAR

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