Members of cleanmountains.org comprising young and dynamic people working in Bengaluru of different professions decided to clean the trails of two pristine waterfalls at ‘Kajoor’ village in Beltangadi Taluka of Dakshin Kannada district. The place is around 300kms away from Bengaluru. We boarded our vehicle on friday night and the journey starts. We followed the below route :
Bengaluru–> Neelmangala–>Hassan–>Mundaje–>Kajoor and reached our destination at 7am in the morning.

Day 1, 11th May 2019 :

Its a beautiful village with mountains ranges all around and lush greenery everywhere, which is rare sight in a city. We were hosted by a person name Shiva Kumar who was an IT professional and had worked in Bengaluru for 9 years. He quit his job and started living in his farm.
After being freshen-up, we enjoyed the delicious breakfast. It was an organic food being grown in his farm. We had butter milk in the end and we geared up for the cleanup. We collected the gloves, gunny bags, gumboots, three dustbins etc. for this purpose. We picked up the littered plastics wrapper, bottles, liquor bottles and beer can along the trails and put it into the gunny bags. All the stuffs were segregated properly. We were accompanied by local forest officer in this venture. We cleared the debris and collected hundreds kg of plastics, plastic water bottles and uncountable number of liquor bottles and cans. We had to be very careful while handling these glass bottles as some of them were broken in multiples pieces. We stitched all the gunny bags with thread and left it in the trail, to be carried down while descending. We also deployed three dustbins in different part of the trails and were assured by the forest officer and our host that they would take care of the emptying the dustbin and handing over it to local municipality for recycle.
Total hike length is less than 2.5 km.
After 4 hrs of doing this activity, it was time to jump into the water and enjoy the beauty of tranquil waterfall (Didupe waterfall) bath. We did not use any kind of soap or oil while bathing. The drop is in excess of 120 feet. After an hour bath, our energy was restored and we started descending with gunny bags followed by super delicious, amazing lunch and rest under the trees amidst forest. We also chowed down some fruits from the orchard as our dessert. We had flavorsome dinner in the night, played Mafia games and slept.

Day 2, 12th May 2019 :

We woke up early in the morning, had mouthwatering breakfast and headed towards our next destination i.e. Ermai Falls, which is a multi level waterfall situated in the heart of Dakshin Kannada district of Karnataka. We cleaned up the trails by picking up the trash/junk and put it into the gunny bags whilst segregating. After 2 km of hiking and 2 hrs of clean up,
we reached serene Ermai falls and enjoyed swimming over there.

The beauty around this fall is in the form of lush-green trees, beautiful cliff, constant drop of water and one or two rainbows near the waterfall makes it one of the most exotic destination for awesome bathing experience. Rainbows are very normal sight here. Due to the amount of spray the waterfall consistently produces, a single or double rainbow is normally visible on sunny days. Nothing can be more awesome than bathing in a waterfall surrounded by rainbows. We captured some moments in camera and started descending along with trash bags.
And finally we started our journey to Bengaluru at 3pm after having yummy lunch.

• Number of participants : 28
• Number of collected trash bags : 32
• Total Trash collected (in Kg) : 600
• Number of installed dustbins : 4

People are ruining the places they visit. Irresponsible tourists just litter the stuff they are having without realizing the consequences.
Be a responsible tourist and help in making this world a better places for people to live in and better places for people to visit.

It’s just a straw,
It’s just a bag,
It’s just a disposal,
It’s only 7.5 Billion people..

#Stop_Single_Use_Plastic

A move away from the hustling towns always provides a great retreat. Especially when you are in the company of like minded people. This remarkable trip will always embark the beauty of nature and the simplicity of us.