Nagalapuram

Nagalapuram, a forest range doted with ponds, waterfalls and streams , was the target destination for the Fellowship of Foolhardy Trekkers (core constituents being Adith, Anand, Charunethran and yours faithfully) for about 2 months. We were collecting information on that trek for the entire period of these 2 months meeting nothing but dead ends. This place had very very little information on it. When enquired the CTC folks warned us against going on this trek by ourselves as it was quite risky. Born brave fools, we decided not to be deterred by these petty issues and decided to go ahead on this trek with the amount of info we had. The primary reason for this post is to ensure that people , who plan their treks to Nagalapuram, are better informed.

Route to Nagalpuram

Follow this map till Nagalapuram village .

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?doflg=ptk&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=204146848897547296467.00049cf6c79579594a6dc&ll=13.215882%2C80.031281&spn=0.359631%2C0.676346&z=11

Once you reach Nagalapuram ask for a village called TP Kotah. You have to take a narrow tar road to TP Kotah. Its about 10 kms from Nagalapuram. Once you get to Kotah ask people for the way to the "picnic spot" thats wat they call the trek route. The "picnic spot" has a temple too. So you can ask for the route to the temple near the dam if u feel bad abt using the words picnic spot. you will be pointed towards a very very littered mud road. We were highly sceptical about that road but there was no choice but to take that road. That road will stretch for about 2-3 kms through very rough patches of mud roads(thanks to Adith's diligence the car survived) and you have to keep driving till you see a temple. The car can be parked near the temple and from this point you have to start trekking.

The first thing you will see is a decently sized reservoir. you have to take the path which leads into the mountains here. Once you start trekking you wont see any streams/water bodies for almost half an hour. You need to keep taking the path which leads you downhill (and i think towards north im not very sure though). There wont be huge confusions till you reach one particular point where the path will fork out. At this point we thankfully found a arrow marking the direction we had to take. So look out for such arrows when you are confused. You will bump into a stream after about30-45 mins (depending on your pace) Once you reach this point you might think its very easy and that you will just need to follow the stream. This is where you will get realllly lost (we got lost so i assume you will make the same mistakes) . The path in this trail (unlike that in Tada) is not very well trodden upon. So most times there wont be a clear cut path. So you have a high chance of getting lost or mislead. So you will have to remember the points where you took wrong turns and retrace to that point and try the other road.

Our Story

We started at around 530 AM and made it to the parking space near the temple at about 930 am (all thanks to a damn traffic jam at Koyembedu which took us 30 mins to cross). We got hopelessly lost about 2 times on our way to the fabled Nagalapuram Pool 1. All thanks to our crazy perseverance to get to the pool against all odds we managed to somehow reach pool 1. This took us almost 1.5 hours. Exhausted and a little freaked out by the pathless jungle we decided to be contended with the 1st pool. We spent about an hour there. Finally we decided to trace our way back to the car. Ironically we managed to take a wrong turn even on our return journey. We somehow reached our car (which was in perfectly safe state) and found our way back to Singara Chennai.

This trek was a very very exciting(and a little scary) experience for us noob trekkers. We realised why CTC junta adviced us against going alone. To completely enjoy nature's beauty you need to go with CTC. To have an awesome and adventurous experience you must plan and go by yourselves.