Stoooooopppp.
Pratap shouted this as we were cruising on the highway. We were 4 of us, who had travelled from Bangalore to Yellapur earlier in the day. We had checked-in to our hotel rooms, got a bit of rest and were headed to Vibhooti falls, which was still an hour away from where we were. What prompted this stoppage – a sign indicating way to “Shirale falls” off the highway. We had not heard about this waterfalls and were not sure if it was going to be worth the stop. Any significant delay here would mean that we could not visit Vibhooti falls that day. The sign mentioned that the distance to the waterfalls is 500mts and that cars were not allowed on the mud path leading to the waterfalls.
We decided to quickly check it out and still try and cover Vibhooti falls a little later. The walk was on a downward gradient and the path seemed ok-ish for a car – how good it would have been to get nearer with the car and having to walk lesser! After 10 or so minutes, we still heard no sound of the waterfalls – this made us skeptical. The 500mts was obviously a very wrong metric. A little ahead, we saw a small board indicating that we were on track and soon enough the sound of the water falls started to become audible.
There was no one going towards the waterfalls, but us. The path crossed a private property where we had to pay Rs.10 each for entry. After this, we saw a few people making their way back from the water falls. One of them made a comment that we’ve come rather late for a visit. It was still 4:45PM, but it was rather cloudy. We were already a bit worried about the climb back up to the roadside, where our car was parked. The visit to Vibhooti falls was definitely off the plan for that day.
On reaching the waterfalls, we spent a few minutes enjoying the view and then started to look for good places to shoot from. The water made the rocks rather slippery. I tried getting as close as possible to the base of the waterfalls. There were a few hairy, heart-in-mouth moments while crossing the rocks with water flowing over them. I did manage to get into a nice spot. I had time only to take 2 shots – that’s it – before the skies opened up. The others did not get enough time to get to the spot I managed to. Here’s the image I got.
Shirale falls
Then that’s me taking that shot – thanks to Shashi for this behind-the-scenes image.
Behind-the-scenes at Shirale falls
Getting back to the car was an ordeal in itself. With rains battering down on us, the heavy backpacks that all of us had, the gradient we had to scale – those were gritty, painful 25 or so minutes back to the car. Though, this was an unplanned stop/visit, we were glad that we did and learnt about another waterfall among several that adorn this area of Karnataka.
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