I was planning since some time to visit Jog Falls. I heard this name when I was in my School, in a Geography Class. As any other traveller, I too did lot of reasearch about Jog Falls and every time, I read, I found something or the other interesting about this place.
I visited Jog Falls in September 2009, and here are my experiences. It was a bright day, after the monsoon, I and my wife thought of visiting some good place over the weekend and we zeroed down on Jog Falls. I enquired with the Karnataka Tourism department, if they had any tickets available for the trip. Fortunately, we got the tickets. I think, each ticket cost Rs. 1250/- per head. So for two of us it costed Rs.2500/-.
The tour schedule was like this: Start from Bangalore at 9PM on day one, reach a place called Sagar by 6AM on day 2, which is just some 25KMs away from Jog Falls. Get refreshed by 9AM, visit Kaledi Rameshwar Temple, which is located in Sagar. Then move to Jog Falls around 11:30 AM, on the way to Jog Falls, visit Lingamakki dam (from distance) which was build on River Sharavathi. Visit Jog Falls till 6PM and drive back to Bangalore. You will reach Bangalore around 4:30 AM on third day. This is a brief summary of the tour.
We reached Badami House to board the Bus to Jog Falls, it was a non A/C luxury bus, with a capacity of around 45 people. The bus was decent and the driver and the guide were friendly and supportive. It was a smooth ride till Sagar. Sagar was very cool, and it remembered me my childhood. There are no huge constructions and Sagar is like typical Malgudi (RK Narayan’s imaginary village). I didnt even find a single house which has more than one floor. It is a must see place, cool, green and very beautiful.
After refreshement, we headed to Kaledi Rameshwar Temple, which was build ages ago (around 800 years). It was a good temple, art work and the construction resembled typical Hoysala-Dravida style. I felt good in that temple, it looked different and has strong history. The roof and the pillar inside the temple looked similar to Halebidu temple. The temple has lot of open space. And no rush, you can find peace at this temple. A must see place.
Later, we reached Jog Falls at 11:30 AM. To reach the bottom of the falls, you need to climb down 1500 steps. Tough task for me, since I am a little heavy, but I was up for the challenge. My wife and I, started climbing down. It was a wonderful experience, the mist from the fall use to touch us every minute, and it was like welcoming us to the place. It was drizzling on and off, like some body is spraying water on your face and wiping out the sweat on your forehead.
I felt very romantic, and remembered all good old hindi melodies as I climbed down. It took 1 hour 30 mins for to reach the bottom. We relaxed for some time and then walked into the water falls. We played in the water, clicked some photographs and started climbing up the hill. Though climbing up was tuff, we could mange it by watching the beautiful waterfall all the way back. It took 2 hrs to climd up. We reached the top of the hill by 4PM, had lunch (dont expect good food here, food really sucks).
The bus started at 6PM from Jog Falls, had dinner at Shimoga and reached Bangalore at 4:30 AM, next day.Jog Falls, is few beautiful things in India which we should feel great about. Its was a great experiene to see such a huge fall and getting very close to it. Jog Falls, dont just watch it, experience it.
KK