(Some pics at https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3006647653339.154541.1476842893&type=1&l=2875409bba)
One of the many amazing travel destinations in India is the state of Madhya Pradesh. The wildlife sanctuaries, historical sites and religious places are known to all. But myself and a friend of mine decided to take a look at one of the lesser known but nonetheless beautiful tourist spots in Madhya Pradesh - Kukrakhapa waterfall near Chhindwara and just over 100 km from Nagpur. It is a seasonal waterfall, and disappointment awaits whoever decides to pay a visit in some time other than the monsoons. The only transportation available at Kukrakhapa is the narrow gauge railway which was opened for traffic way back in 1913. The old mechanical semaphore signals as well as the old system of exchanging tokens at railway stations can still be seen here.
Both of us being fans of the Indian Railways, which is one of the several marvels of India, the journey was rather memorable. Reaching Nagpur station around 6.45 AM on a July morning, we bought a couple of tickets (just 14 bucks each! And that too, since the person at the ticket counter had no clue that a place called Kukrakhapa existed, so he gave us tickets for Chhindwara, around 40 km further away.) and went off to the narrow gauge platform. The train arrived soon. The narrow gauge track being just over 2 feet in width, the trains are significantly smaller. Along the width of the compartment, there was just enough room for four people and a small passage. The stationary train rocked gently from side to side as the morning’s travelers started boarding. We departed in a few minutes, with the train making its way through underpasses from under the busy broad gauge lines above. A ‘station’ we halted at gave us a fair idea of what to expect ahead: there was no platform, no signboard. The driver was seen leaning out of the engine, looking for passengers boarding the train. He soon waved the green flag and we were off once more.
We were soon travelling through the older parts of Nagpur city at a leisurely 40 km/h. Just before arriving at the next station (Itwari) a few minutes later, we had an entirely unexpected encounter with a broad gauge-narrow gauge diamond crossing. A great start to the day. Itwari happens to be a narrow gauge junction, with one line branching off southwards. The signboard which ‘gave directions’ to the place where which line was headed, was another eye-catching sight, besides a bio-diesel powered shunting locomotive.
We soon passed under the east-bound broad gauge tracks once again, and entered the outskirts of Nagpur. For a long time, we passed through endless, monotonous stretches of green, before passing by the ash pond of one of the two huge thermal power plants we were soon to pass by. The train stopped for a few moments at a nondescript ‘station’ and moved on to the next station where a crossing was to take place. Being a single line, a train has to wait at a station till a train coming from the opposite direction arrives there too. We set off once again after a 10-minute halt.
The railway tracks were now parallel to the highway, so we could regularly see buses and other vehicles moving towards one side of the track. On the other side, there were farms. A few kilometers ahead, we passed by a coal mine. We got a good view of the overhead trolleys being used for transporting the coal as they went across the railway track, along with electric transmission lines and menacing-looking gigantic transmission towers. Then, two hours after we left from Nagpur station, we reached Saoner, a major town. Because of another crossing (six trains ply on this route in both directions daily) a long halt was scheduled here, so many passengers (probably the driver as well) got off the train to have some breakfast. After nearly 45 minutes at the station, the train departed.
We soon entered Madhya Pradesh. The surroundings were now a sea change from the urban environs of Nagpur. Tiny villages dotted the greenery towards either side of the track. Also visible was the work going on for the conversion of the narrow gauge track into broad gauge. A tea seller with an interesting looking moustache requested me to take a photograph of him. We traversed several bridges and passed through tiny villages and farms. There were two major stops at Lodikheda and Sausar. Besides these two, there were a number of tiny stations at villages; these stations had a nice small village charm. There was still some time before we would enter the forests of Madhya Pradesh. Soon, we had crossed a bridge and stopped just afterwards. We could see the semaphore signal arm standing at ‘danger’, and noticed the cables used for controlling the signal running alongside the track. And then I saw another locomotive standing just ahead of us after a curve.
The reason for the delay was that the points were being changed manually to allow our train to enter Ramakona station (Another of the age-old railway customs still very much in use here). The locomotive we saw was hauling a passenger train from Jabalpur to Nagpur (a 400 km journey that takes around 17 hours!) and had narrow gauge sleeper coaches. One more memorable spotting. As our eyes were being treated to all these rare sights, our noses were being stimulated by the delicious smell of samosas being fried at a stall on the station. We saw cows tied to a tree on the platform at the next station, and messages encouraging children to go to school at the next. Then we entered the dense forest area. The little locomotive displayed all its might as it hauled the 10 coaches behind it through several steep gradients and sharp curves. After winding through the hills for nearly half an hour, a signboard next to the track indicated that we had almost arrived.
The waterfall is visible from the train; but blink and you’ll miss it. A stone’s throw away is the Kukrakhapa station. It looks like a place straight out of a storybook. A tiny railway station, a tiny train, a small stream and a bridge over it just ahead of the station, a few cottages in the greenery around, and cattle grazing on the tracks, occasionally stepping over the signaling cables, much to the frustration of a man whose job seemed to be to yell profanities at them and keep them away from the signal cables. Being the only means of transport available, a huge crowd of people, largely composed of school kids, boarded the train here.
The station has the absolute minimum of ‘facilities’ – a small waiting room, the ticket window, the station master’s cabin and the signaling cabin. One of the sleepers of the tracks displayed the date 1962, showing how old the equipment and the system being used here are. No stalls for food or anything else were anywhere to be seen. Near the station behind the ‘platform’, there are some unused barracks belonging to the railways and a forest further behind them. To the opposite side of the tracks, some cottages are present at a small distance. The waterfall is within walking distance of the station, and the stream passes under the tracks at a bridge just at the end of the station. The cottages can be reached after crossing the stream, which is not the easiest of tasks as we found out soon afterwards.
By the time we had our lunch, it was around 12.45 pm. We had around four hours to explore the place, since the next train scheduled to arrive at the station was bound for Nagpur and would arrive around 4.45 pm. We walked along the track for some distance looking for a path to climb down to the base of the fall, but could not find any, though we did have a good view of the waterfall. It falls down in two stages, the first drop being much smaller compared to the second one. Not being able to find a path for descent, we moved parallel to the railway tracks and along the bank of the stream, which was largely composed of stones and wild shrubs. The flow of water in the stream was decent, and we had to do quite a bit of searching to find a suitable spot to cross the stream. At some places, we found the water to be somewhat deep and the flow to be strong; at places where the stream was broader, we sometimes saw distances between possible stepping stones too large to be covered. Finally, we decided on a spot that had a small sort of island in the middle of the stream, and plenty of rocks to cross the stream. After crossing the stream, we walked along its bank to the waterfall. The spot where we stood, at the top of the waterfall, was across the stream from where we had seen the fall earlier, i.e. coming along the railway track. Some rocks extended almost to the middle of the width of the stream, so we went to that point and had a good view of the fall.
We then retreated towards the bank and decided to look for a path to descend. We had a brief chat with a local fellow sitting nearby. He showed us one path to descend the first stage of the fall, and also had a brief talk about the number of people visiting here etc. We then looked for a path ourselves, and found a way we could climb down to the base of the upper stage of the waterfall. This descent is relatively quite simple. At the end of the descent, we came to a large flat area and the water falling over quite a large width from around 15-20 feet above us. It being the monsoon, there was a good amount of water accumulated in the flat area between the base of the upper stage and the drop of the lower stage. During drier seasons, with less water in the fall, it might be possible to cross this flat area on foot. The second stage drops around 60 feet or so further below the flat area. We tried looking for a path to go down, but could not see any suitable path in our immediate vicinity. However, in the distance, we saw some local person crossing the stream rather easily, and that too, with a few logs of wood on her back. The path she had taken was further downstream, and we would have to travel further along the railway track, i.e. some more distance along the path we had initially taken. We spent some more time there at the base of the upper level, and then started climbing up again as we sensed a slight increase in the flow. One has to be very cautious at such waterfalls since incidents of sudden flash floods are not unknown, especially more so in the monsoons.
When we reached the top of the fall again, we again started walking along the stream to the same spot where we had crossed the stream earlier. After crossing the stream, we saw that we had just over one hour left. We decided that there wasn’t enough time to look for the path and descend to the base of the lower level, so instead we decided to just wander around a little. We looked around and saw cattle drinking water at some puddles formed because of the rains. We went to the other end of the station and had a look at the bridge. The stream seemed quite broad and deep here. Then we returned to the station, spent some time observing the signaling and point changing mechanisms, and had a brief chat with the station master.
To save some time, we decided to complete some portion of our return journey by bus. So we purchased tickets to Saoner and waited for around ten minutes before we heard the train horn. We tried looking around to locate the position of the train, as the sound seemed to originate from somewhere behind the cottages on the other side of the stream. After a few minutes, we saw the train, fully loaded with passengers leaning from the doors, take a sharp curve and then cross the bridge before entering the station. We also witnessed the exchange of tokens between the loco pilot and the station master, which is done at every station. Another old tradition of the railways, this is still followed, or was being followed till quite recent times, on some of the less developed broad gauge routes as well.
Most of the people disembarked from the train. They were probably returning from work at Chhindwara, which is a district place and the nearest major town, around 40 km away. We boarded the second compartment from the engine, and stood at the door since there was no place available for sitting. As the train passed the waterfall, we spotted the path that could have been taken to descend to the base of the falls. Soon, the loco was chugging and humming fiercely, hauling the 10-coach train through dense jungles and sharp curves. The next station also saw many people getting down. Around fifteen minutes later, we departed. Since it was now getting dark outside, there was not much to be seen except the occasional bridge or two. Around an hour and a half later, the train picked up speed and we estimated the speed to be around a decent 60 km/h. Around 7.15 pm, we got down at Saoner and took a bus to Nagpur from the nearby bus stand. I reached home around 9 pm, saving around an hour since the train was scheduled to arrive at Nagpur around 9.40 pm. Thus ended a memorable journey to a relatively less known and untouched tourist spot. But the journey was worth it.
The journey is a pleasant one, going through lush green and dense forests, and the destination itself is a nice place to relax and enjoy. For saving time, it is possible to go to major places like Saoner or Lodikheda or Sausar by road, and then continue by train. But be sure to check the timings; trains mostly run on schedule, but the time gap between the arrivals of trains can be really large. The journey is a treat for anyone who wants to feast their eyes on lovely greenery and enjoy the beauty of small things, as also for witnessing some rather less commonly encountered sights and events on the Indian railways which may soon see the curtain come down on their existence. I would recommend a visit to Kukrakhapa for any nature lover, or anyone interested in railways.
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