So as the first post on T-BHP, I am sharing my experience of a life threatening(to me) trip to shivanasamudra from bangalore. I am lucky to be here writing the story.
It was in April'13, when 6 friends decided to put apart the office pressure and have a short trip on weekends. So we zeroed in to shivansamudra.
And on a saturday morning, engines of 3 bikes roared from marathahalli. While my friends were on powerful bikes(pulsar, apache) I decided to test my Twister's reliability.
We decided to take the conventional route since it was saturday morning and we didn't expect much traffic. We zoomed through heart of city through KR Market and in 25 mins we were in kengeri, where we stopped for tea. It was reddish sky and we could notice people heading out of city for short trips in cars/bikes.
From there we started and the planned route was through Ramanagaram->channpatna->maddur-> malvalli->shivanasamudra.
Since other bikes were powerful, they were easily doing at 80+ added mysore road is good and traffic was less. I was maintaining 70-75 and was following them. Then we stopped for breakfast at McDonald's, 18 kms before Maddur. We tanked up since there is petrol station in same vicinity, and didn't need to refill till our way back. We took left from maddur town and the road is pathetic
upto malavalli since there is a sugar mill and the movement of trucks and other commercial vehicles is more, I also mention the ignorance of authorities.
So, we reached shivanasamudra at around 10 AM since we had a long stop for breakfast.
It was quite heated up by that time and the heat was unbearable. Never mind, we parked and got down by steps upto the falls and whoa ! there was very little(and dirty) water there.
Nevertheless, since we had come this far, we decided to have a bath in water down there and entered the water.
Here starts the story of accident: I and my friend decided to have a swim upto the base of the fall, where some good swimmers had reached(that tempted us). By looking at the amount of water, it seemed doable. I am an average swimmer, but don't know the art of getting out of water where I don't have a floor beneath my feet(as in swimming pools). Forgot to mention, it was my first adventure of having a swim out of swimming pools and I was going to swim after a 3 year break and no practice
The stretch we had to swim was some good 75-80 feet(3 pool lengths) and we had no idea whether there is any land/rock in between. My friend jumped and made it in one stretch. I was on top of my confidence and jumped after a thought. 25 feet of swim and I am out of breath in the mid of water! The fear of drowning came to my mind, and I swinged harder. And bingo! I made it to the base.
The happiness was incomparable but somewhere the fear of going back was haunting me. Anyhow, we bathed and enjoyed for some 20 mins under fall and whole energy was gone.
Time to swim back to the shore. My third friend was swimming near the shore and he was standing on a rock some 15 feet towards me, so I thought I can make it to that rock at least. I jumped and after a few jolts, managed to reach that rock, but it was 5 feet under water ! I managed to stand on it with some swings of my arms. Then my friend left that rock and started swimming towards shore. That wave was the reason or the current of water, I lost my grip on that rock and dipped inside. The lack of inexperience of coming out of water, and the freaking out caused me to swing my arms relentlessly and I went further inside and shouted for help. My friends on the shore thought I was kidding and within 10-15 seconds, I had drank water through my mouth and nose.
By that time my friends had realized the situation but they were not of any help since none of them knew how to swim with a body.
Say it god's miracle, the the boatmen near the base of the fall had realized the situation and one guy(I say him god himself) rowed those 70 feet in no more than 10 seconds and when my head went inside the last time, he grabbed my hair and pulled me up, and hello world ! I am with you again. He made me hold the boat(the basket shaped boat) and helped me climb to the shore. I was shaken by witnessing death so closely and was shivering by fear. That guy simply went off without any word back to his work(I thank you from bottom of my heart gentleman !) .
When I gained my breath, All I had was 100 rupees(since I had planned to visit an ATM later) . I called him and gave that money(I am an idiot, i owe him my life) and ton of thanks.
We packed up and headed back. On the way back, I and other 3 guys went to mandya via a shortcut to visit some relatives. We took back mysore road and came back to bangalore at 7:30 PM.
The total trip was some 340 Kilometres(I did it on twister, which is not comfortable for that hop). I rode the whole way(minus 20 kms where my friend took over to give me rest after that accident).
Overall that was the experience of a lifetime. I suggest people reading this to keep away from water bodies unknown to you. Enjoy on shores and use boats if possible(I was 5 feet away from shore rock where I was saved !). Enjoy your trips but don't do out of your league adventures.
p.s. the first thing I have plans to do next time I go in water to learn how to come out of water without land beneath your feet