Trip to Dandeli - Part 1

The List
Dandeli was in my list of places to visit for a long long time. Never had the time to spare or the courage to drive that far (It is about 500 km from Bangalore).Finally, I got a chance to strike it off this week. My friends and I made a quick trip to Dandeli for 2 days this week and it was an activity packed trip.

The Planning
As usual, the plan for this trip started 3 weeks ago. How to go? Where to go? Who all to go? When to go? Where to stay? What to do? and the sorts.

We had a Monday and a Friday off this week and thought that if we took the Tuesday, Wednesday and the Thursday off, we will have 10 days of leave and we could have a lot of time at hands to visit a lot of places. But due to many reasons, we had to cut down the trip to just 2 days - on Tuesday and Wednesday. Funny, as most people go on vacation when they have holidays. I actually applied for leave and went on a vacation and chose to stay at home during the holidays (Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday). But I think it is good to get our minds off office once in a while like this.

We first made up a list of all the places where we could stay in Dandeli. After a few email discussions, we settled down on one that was of moderate cost, not too high, not too low and filled with just enough activities for 2 days.

We initially thought of going by car and have a 5 day fun filled road trip. But the rain havoc across Karnataka made us rethink this situation. Finally, we settled down for buying tickets on our favorite Indian Railways. Cheap and convenient. If we had gone by car, we would have spent about 2,500 INR per head as against 500 INR that the Indian Railways charged. And not to mention the strain of driving and the waste of days for travel (we don't prefer to drive by night usually as it is risky - specially during rainy days).

The Confusion
A couple of our friends had to return back on Thursday, one of them had to return back by Friday and the rest were free till next Monday. Though we all knew when we were going, there was a confusion as to who would return back when. It was when we all met on the departing train, that this confusion was cleared. 5 of us decided to return back by Thursday morning and the rest, by Saturday morning. The 3 decided to go to Jog Falls from Dandeli and then come back on a train from Shimoga.

I will pen down the rest in Part 2 and Part 3.