My Sirsi, Yana Rock Caves Experience

Sirsi, a city and hilly region in Uttara Kannada District in the Indian state of Karnataka. Sirsi, also known as "Gateway of Malenadu" or "ಮಲೆನಾಡಿನ ಹೆಬ್ಬಾಗಿಲು" in Kannada or "Gateway of Western Ghats" is a very scenic and a calm place to visit away from the fast-paced city life. So in this blog post which is my second blog post, I’ll give my Sirsi, Yana Rock Caves Experience,i.e. describe my visit to Sirsi and Yana Rock Caves in my perspective. Kindly let me know if I have made any mistakes.

Getting There

One can reach Sirsi by road from places like Bengaluru, Honnavar, Gokarna, Kumta, Karwar and Goa.

Since this was an excursion arranged by our school, we travelled to Sirsi from Bengaluru in an Air-Conditioned Bus arranged by the School.

Our Preparation

Before I narrate you the trip let’s go back to a Sunday 4 days before the trip. So 4 days before we left for the trip, i.e., on 16 June 2019, my friends Raajan Rajesh Wankhade and Vaibhav S came to my home as we decided to go shopping together for the trip and make a video. Around 5 in the evening, both of my friends came home and after just planning about vlogging and documenting the trip we left to the supermarket nearest to my home. The supermarket was next to a Dosa restaurant so we decided to have Dosas and then proceed for shopping. After rejoicing on Dosas we went to the supermarket where we pulled out a trolley and walked every section gathering the snacks we planned for the trip(of course the food was our only shopping plan 😉 ). After picking up the snacks we headed back home and divided our snacks and my friends too left for their homes.

The things we shopped for the trip!

So the next 3 days elapsed with loads of excitement, planning about the trip in the breaks in between classes and in WhatsApp groups while preparing for the Pre Mid Term Exams which was scheduled a week after we returned.

Day 1: Departure from Bengaluru! (20 June 2019)

As much I remember the whole time in school on this day was just everyone planning about the trip in the free periods and breaks. After attending the same amount of classes, as usual, all of us reached home and finished packing for the trip.

After having dinner at home, we had to foregather in the school around 7 in the evening. On reaching the school, all the students along with their parents sat on a briefing session by the teachers after which the teachers assigned buses and groups to all the students. We were lucky to be assigned to the same bus.

At 9 PM the buses left the school with highly enthusiastic students. Some people slept as soon as we left, some played games on their mobile phones, some watched movies while we spent the next 3 hours laughing, scrolling through memes.

3 hours later, the buses stopped at Cafe Coffee Day on the highway where the majority of the people spent money on coffee, cake, chips etc. On the other hand, I just bought a bottle of water because I forgot to bring a bottle of water from home🤦‍♂️.

Escaping the chaos inside CCD, we stepped out to enjoy the cold wind while I opened a small packet of Lays. After 45 minutes or so, the buses left again but this time most of us slept to stay fresh and enjoy a long, amusing and an exciting day.

Day 2: A long, exciting, sort of tragic and a memorable day! (21 June 2020)

We reached Sirsi in the morning where we first checked in to our hotel rooms. While everyone was assigned a room with at least 4 people and 2-3 beds, our luck favoured us again and the room assigned to us was the biggest room assigned to any group of students with 3 separate beds and only the 3 of us! Yay!

After freshening up and loading our bags, Raajan and I started vlogging on our way down to the restaurant for breakfast with Vaibhav. After having breakfast, we proceeded to our buses to reach our first place of visit in Sirsi, an Apiary. We spent an hour and a half discovering about the different kinds of Honey bees, rearing bees for honey, royal jelly, etc. from the owner of the apiary himself.

After the visit to the apiary, we proceeded to Sahasralingeshwara temple in Uppinangady, situated on the banks of the river Netravati and Kumaradhara, where a thousand Shivalingas are found. Although we couldn’t pay a visit to the Sahasralingeshwara Temple, we stepped into the river where we sat on the rocks and attempted stone skimming😉.

A picture of us on the hanging bridge near Sahasralinga!

(The person to my right is Raajan and the person to my left is Vaibhav.)

After a while, we walked to the nearby hanging bridge and took some pictures and filmed some cinematic shots after which we proceeded back to our hotel for lunch and to get ourselves ready for the most thrilling, adventuresome and the most magnificent highlight of the day!

Yana Rock Caves

An hour after lunch, we reached a point 3km before the entrance of Yana Rock Caves because our buses couldn’t drive all the way to the entrance. Everyone got down at the point and started hiking to the entrance with their friends and teachers. We too started our journey. The walk till the entrance was adventurous, entertaining and memorable as we spent the whole time hiking till the entrance vlogging.

But things were poles apart when we reached the entrance.

When we reached the entrance, a group of our juniors gathered around a girl who got bitten by leeches and started screaming. We inquired the reason for the gathering around her and we just disregarded it and walked away. We heard people screaming each minute as we progressed. But nothing could stop us from arriving at the Rock Caves except for shoelaces getting unlaced😉.

It started drizzling on and off now which made the views exceptional and enhanced the natural fragrances.

A few more minutes into hiking and vlogging we were astonished by the massive rocks in front of us. The rocks in real life are incomparable to the ones we see in pictures on the internet! None of our mobile phones or cameras could do justice to nature. One has to experience it to take delight in the grand views of Yana Rocks.

To view the caves, we had to enter it through the temple, so we stopped vlogging there to take off our shoes. As I took off my shoes, the view of my right foot left me in great panic. There were two leeches on my right foot! I screamed in fear of pain and started to pull the leeches off my foot. After pulling both the leeches and throwing them off, I was left with escalating panic and non-stop flow of blood from my foot which forced me to keep hopping like the others to avoid getting bitten by another leech.

Commonly, those who got bitten by leeches did not pull it out like me. Rather, they sprinkled salt on it which caused it to fall off in a few seconds. I, on the contrary, sprinkled salt after I pulled off the leeches which made no sense.

I continued hopping around like others for a few more moments after which I spotted another leech on my left ankle. This time I did just like the others and the leech fell off with very less bleeding. Meanwhile, my class teacher saw my right foot bleeding and asked someone from our school’s non-teaching staff to apply antiseptic on my right foot to put an end to the bleeding. A notable point here for the ones who’ve never got a leech bite is that LEECH BITES DO NOT PAIN AT ALL. It's just the panic which strikes the majority of the people at that instant.

Even after applying antiseptic, the bleeding did not stop from the right foot. So I washed my right foot 3-4 more times emptying my water bottle after which I held my socks on the wounds and soon the bleeding ceased. As soon as the bleeding stopped, it began raining a little heavily. So I took shelter in the nearby shop where I tapped my shoes hard to remove all the leeches. I sprinkled some more salt on my feet and wore back my shoes without socks.

It was too late now to enter the caves so we advanced on our way back to the buses. We continued hiking and a few minutes later we spotted no one in 500 metres of us. The rain did get less heavy but was constant. So it was just us three friends drenched in rain, with suspicion of leeches, without water and no energy struggling to hike back to our buses. The hike going back was difficult because it was uphill.

A few minutes later, we spotted two more classmates who resumed their hike with us. This repeated for the next 30 minutes. In the end, we were 8 drenched classmates, with a horror of leeches, without water(yes, none of us had water) and no energy. Everyone wanted water at the moment because of continuous hiking. Suddenly, I remembered that I had backpacked a small box of Glucon-D. I quickly got my hands on the box of Glucon-D and shared it with everyone.

Finally, we reached the point where the buses were parked! Reaching the buses felt like a fabulous accomplishment for all of us. I felt a tremendous sense of satisfaction and achievement. All of the episodes that happened made our hike to Yana and back very extraordinary for all of us especially for me!

Upon reaching the bus, 2 or 3 classmates asked everyone to take off their shoes and show it to them as a precautionary measure to prevent leeches inside the bus. Only after showing empty shoes, we could enter the bus. Indeed after taking such measures, we did discover 4 leeches on the bus. The centre track of the bus looked very alarming with blood patches and dead leeches.

A happy ending to the day in the hotel

We arrived at the hotel by 7:30 PM. We were asked to freshen up and come down for dinner at 8 PM. On reaching the hotel we requested the hotel staff to send us 2 glasses of hot water without letting our teachers know. We ordered hot water as we planned to make ourselves a hot cup of Maggi! And the reason we hadn’t informed our teachers was that we were worried they may scold us for eating Maggi while everyone else was heading for dinner.

A picture of us enjoying the cup Maggi in our room!

We freshened up and had Maggi while narrating the episodes of the day we hadn’t vlogged to the camera. After recording the video and savouring a hot cup of Maggi, we headed to dinner where we ate some appetisers and ice cream! We came back to the room and tried watching a movie but we didn’t have any energy left so we just slept for another exciting day!

Summing it up

Visiting Sirsi and the Yana Rock Caves is something all the adventurous, enthusiastic people like me should endure at least once in their lifetime. The experience of the thrill and fun of hiking through the lush green forests of Yana is something that will please the ones who wish to reconnect with nature and escape from their fast-paced city life. Experiencing the sounds of nature with pleasant natural fragrances on the hike make it an unparallel experience. A trip to Yana can add up to a great set of memories in the album of life which will make one reminisce lifelong.

What value did this trip add in my life?

This trip to Sirsi and Yana, helped me explore the aspects of my life which I had no idea I had an interest in:

It made me independent and confident to travel to places slightly off the beaten track with a set of responsibilities I carry along. I discovered my interest in vlogging and documenting my life through this trip. This trip presented me with an opportunity to enjoy one final excursion with my friends and teachers as a school student and add a great set of memories in my album of life and as a post in this blog.

Now, to not make this post long and boring, I’d better continue with the experience of Jog Falls and Unchalli Falls in my next post. So stay tuned by subscribing to The Navneet Kishan Blog by entering your email id in the box below. Also, don't forget to follow my social media handles which are available at the end of this page!

This is Navneet Kishan signing off stay safe, take care, be happy!

Here's a small and interesting video about the trip! Make sure to watch it in full screen to enjoy the video!😉