Why do we choose Dudhsagar waterfalls and Rail trekking?
It has been a while thinking of writing something over here. But somehow it went long. But today would like to share some info about Dudhsagar trekking.
Background Info: – Me and my friends need a break for some days from daily routine life (office-home-office).So we decided to go for a 4 days trip to Goa.Mostly all guys choose Goa as a free drinking place. But we thought; try something new, at least for one day. So we choose Dudhsagar waterfalls trekking. I have seen this waterfall in pictures with train passing through and in Chennai express film too.
Dudhsagar Falls (literally Sea of Milk) is a four-tiered waterfall located on the river Mondovi in the state of Goa. It is 60 km from Panaji by road and is located on the Madgaon – Belgaum rail route about 46 km south of Madgaon and 60 km north of Belgaum. Dudhsagar Falls is amongst India’s tallest waterfalls with a height of 310 m (1017 feet) and an average width of 30 metres (100 feet).(Courtesy Wikipedia).
We have 3 options for routs;
Route -1: Castle Rock to Dudhsagar falls
Route -2: Kulem to Dudhsagar falls on track
Route -3: Kulem to Dudhsagar falls on mud road
But we have opted second route as we are coming from Goa side. But I heard the first route is more interesting as its having more tunnels and big bridges enroute; has the famous second largest tunnel enroute. This is good for the people who are coming from Bangalore side.
Kulem to Dudhsagar is 13 Km average trek which can cover in 3-4 hours one side, but make sure that you have proper pair of shoe otherwise legs will start paining after 2-3 km as we are walking on the railway track. The stone pieces on the track will gradually kill your legs. It’s a slow poison ha ha.
You won’t get good food there, so carry your own food. However, vendors sell snacks and drinks at waterfalls but at costlier prices. You must carry torch which is required very much while crossing tunnels. If you are trekking in monsoon then its better carry raincoat as it rains heavily in this region. But I would suggest go just the end week of monsoon as falls will be on full flow of water. We went on Sept first week.
Once you reach Kulem station you will find lot of bike taxi guys there, ignore them completely otherwise they are gona say it is 20 km you can’t walk,bla bla. Once you listen to them ,think that your 750 Rs gone for just 2 hours bike ride(45 mins one side and 30 mins waiting).
We trek down the distance in 3 hours with a small 10 mins break. Spend almost one hour there and took some snaps(uploaded here by). But we have seen lots of people around and it may spoil your mood, so I think a weekday might be a good choice.
You can wait for freight train to come back if you are really tired of walking back. I am not sure all trains will stop there but whichever stop there will stop in Kulem too. We took a freight train back to Kulem as my shoe got damaged and we were little bit tired.Freight train journey was a nice experience and memorable .Sudden breaks, jerks, views of valley, view of water falls from train.
I would like to personally thank Sreejith Chittezhath and Vipin Vellakkat to accompany me for this trip.
©Krishna Kumar
