Doddabetta
- Doddabetta
- 2636 m.
- Prominence: 2088 m
- South India
- Location: North 11.40251, East 76.73753 (GPS)
- Difficulty: (YDS) class 1
- Climbed May 5, 2023.
Doddabetta
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How to get there:
The city of Coimbatore has flight connections to Chennai.
I stayed at the Marriott hotel right next to the airport.
They could conveniently provide a car with a driver.
Route description:
The trip from Coimbatore to the summit by car, allowing some time for walking
around in the summit area, then return to Coimbatore is a full day excursion.
My trip took 9 hours in total.
The summit road collects toll, perhaps about 100 per car. Near the summit, the road forks,
if possible take the left fork. If very crowded, just find parking. The walk is short in any case.
As you drive the left fork
road towards the highest parking,
note that a small road branches
right, this road is closed by a big gate already where it branches off. The two summit possibilities
are on separate sides of this road.
To reach the first summit area, walk back from the highest parking to the highest section of the
road. You will notice an old fence quite close.
Locate a spot
where this fence is partially broken
and easy to cross. Proceed uphill a short distance
to reach a flat, grassy area just outside a
bigger fence. There are 2 concrete markers
here and the ground appears at least as high as any
ground inside the fence. In any event, it is clear that you have good clearance for seeing across
the fenced in area. This location is near N11.40191, E076.73685.
To reach the second high point, get back onto the road and walk slightly downhill after passing
the road with a gate (on your left now). The hill has a steep section close to the road, but a bit more
downhill, you will locate a good access spot.
Climb this hill among nice pine trees to reach
the highest point.
This location is near N11.40251, E076.73753.
There is no fence here, but both locations
have plenty of signs warning against
trespassing. This track
shows a walk around the summit
as well as two small side trips from
the road in order to visit the two summit candidates.
It is interesting to note that people pay toll and admissions fees to get near the highest summit
in the area, but then nobody cares about the highest point. About 30 meter below the summit, the road
is full of people, all
sorts of buying and selling,
there is no view, we could as well have been
down in the village. It would have been incredibly easy to establish where the highest point is and then
make a short walk-way there. However, if the mentality of people is that the highest point
has no significance, then the situation will likely remain as it is.
Comments / Trip report:
India Airport Security
This section describes how horribly incompetent
(and radically different from
all other countries?) the airport security is in India.
I arrived in Chennai, from Colombo, Sri Lanka, late Thursday (May 4) afternoon.
The security for my domestic connection to Coimbatore created a big fuss over some
spare AA and AAA batteries that I carried in my hand luggage, as currently instructed
by the airlines. They insisted that they should be checked. Back to Bag Drop, as expected,
they said batteries had to be in the carry on luggage. Stalemate. After considerable discussions
they accepted 2 AA, the rest had to be left behind. (Too bad, these were rechargeable batteries.)
When leaving Coimbatore mid-day on May 6th., things got much worse. Security discovered that I
carried a Garmin GPS in my carry on. They produced a big government document that declared that
such a device was prohibited in India. No obvious way to know this? My GPS has travelled with me to
at least 60 differnt countries including China, Russia and Iran, just to mention a few. I was early
at the airport and expected almost 3 hours to be sufficient. A big (internal) discussion involving at least 5-6
security people and an uncountable number of phone calls followed.
This actually lasted 3 hours at which
time they also confiscated my boarding pass and my passport. Hmm. not a very good development. It became
clear that I would loose my flight. They now insisted that I needed to visit the police
office in town, in order that they could investigate more.
At least transport was provided. In the police office not much happened the first hour. I still had 3-4
people from the airport security around. They seemed to wait for some higher level police officer.
Finally, something happened. I was informed that they needed to confiscate the GPS in order to do
more investigations, but that I could return to the airport provided that I wrote and signed a formal
letter of apology for having been in possesion of a GPS. OK, that was quickly done.
Next, back in the airport, I now had to buy a new ticket to Chennai. There were no more Air India flights
(that I was originally booked on), but fortunately an Indigo flight leaving at 2015. If everything now would
go according to plan, I would still make my connection to Frankfurt with Lufthansa. (Long connect time, this time
important!)
The security people had for hours tried to justify their case by claiming that my GPS would (secretly?)
communicate with the Irridium satelite network. I kept telling them that this GPS (A Garmin 160)
was a completely
passive device, only receiving signals (from the GPS satellites) that facilitated computation of
location.
I told them repeatedly that the same technology now existed in all mobile phones.
However, they did not seem to believe me.
Clearly, these people had no technical competence whatsoever. Total robots following
some (outdated?) government document about GPS devices.
With this information, I realized that my Garmin
Mini Inreach was in great danger. This device actually also talks to the Irridium network and
is in some sense, a very primitive satellite phone. Fortunately, I was able to hide it well
enough to avoid an even bigger loss.
My last potential trouble would be when entering Terminal 4 in Chennai and passing through yet
another security check. However, I was now aware of the issues and even got the 2 AA batteries from
my confiscated GPS undetected through.
In summary, totally incompetent security personel with totally outdated government guidelines.
The net result being State sponsored robbery of innocent tourists. In my case a direct loss
of more than USD 800, not claimable from any travel insurance.
Trip report
I started out from the Marriot hotel near the airport in Coimbatore.
I had booked a car with driver from the hotel and we left as planned at 0730.
The first part runs across a completely flat landscape,
but one can see the hills ahead.
Just before the uphill starts, there is a check post with a sign reading "No Plastic beyond
this point". I had purchased a Coke zero bottle (plast) just 5 minutes earlier. The
guy noted the bottle and said to my driver, "pull over, drink the bottle and dispose of
it in the container here". Very inconvenient. We pulled over waited 3 minutes, then drove off,
my bottle still 85 percent full, My driver explained that Indian people would throw away
plastic bottles everywhere, the only recipe being to tell people not bring any. Seems like
the wrong approach if you ask me.
The uphill road is quite long and the road turns and bends with blind curves, one
after the other all the way. There are buses on this road and they tend to
run slightly slower. There seems to be an instant change of mind with all drivers.
They are willing to risk their life as well as that of others to gain 30 seconds.
Constantly honking their horns, aggressively overtaking around blind curves.
Extremely dangerous behavior, and no real gain,
I witnessed many near accidents, my driver was actually among the more careful,
his reward was a constant stream of angry, honking cars making the road very unsafe.
Still, at one moment when we were trying to pass a bus, an oncoming motorbike
tried to squeeze by on our right, only to crash into a concrete pillar, subsequently
hitting our car. The driver was not hurt. My driver got out and helped him get the bike
free from the car. They exchanged a few words, then we continued driving. We arrived at the beginning
of the Doddabetta Road, a few kilometer road that serves the summit area. We paid about 100 Rupee
toll, then proceeded uphill. The hill was not very steep, but congested by traffic. We had to stop,
then the driver killed the engine when trying to start. This repeated a few times, more and more
angry horn honking behind. I realized that my driver most likely had only been driving around on the
flat area near the hotel. Nobody ever taught him how to do an uphill start. I was just about to get
out to help him drive up the hill (an absolutely trivial task if you know how to drive a manual
transmission car). However, suddenly a stranger took the driver's seat and drove to next flat section
of road, my driver came walking up behind us.
He parked and I set out on foot to explore the summit area. I quickly noted two possible locations
for the highest ground. The first one, is where Peakbagger has the summit location. This is on a flat
area near the antenna installation, but just outside a pretty big fence. In order to get there, you
must pass an older, pretty low fence (easy to cross) and possibly ignore some trespassing signs. This area
is very near flat and has a couple of concrete markers
placed on the ground. One can clearly see across the fenced
in area. A couple of persons were doing some (outdoors) work directly inside the fence.
I next proceeded to walk around the entire summit area, quite a short walk. When walking uphill on the
road that serves the highest parking, one can leave the road on the uphill side and walk up in the
nice pine forest. There are no fences here. You will get to the highest point, a smaller flat area
with vegetation all around and limited view. Hard to say if this is (marginally?) higher, my GPS indicated
this.
There is a much lower area, served by a small side road,
presumably a view point.
Many people walked
there, there was a second level of entrance fee to be paid, so I turned back.
Returning to my car, we then started driving back.
Traffic was lighter (and safer).
We stopped for lunch in a place somewhat before
getting all the way down to the flat plains. We reached the
hotel around 1630. All things considered, a pretty successful day.
