SreeMangal

358pm, 21.06.22
I am back guys, this time with my first travel guide! I visited this fantastic place called Sreemangal and felt I needed to share my experience. You won’t find a smooth guide on the internet to visit this place. Here we go.

I went there with seven friends from IUT, IUB and UAP on 15 June. We took a train named Kaloni Express, which departed at 415pm from Airport Railway Station. The ticket cost was 260tk per person. We arrived at
Sreemangal station at 800pm. Then we walked for around 7-8 minutes and reached Hobiganj road. There we booked a hotel named Hotel United. The cost was 5000tk for two rooms, 1 ac and another non-ac. We refreshed ourselves and then took our dinner in Kutumbari Hotel. The food was good. The dinner cost around 100tk.

We woke up the next day quite early in the morning. We went to a nearby hotel called Panshi Restaurant. It takes 2-3 minutes to reach there with an auto from Hotel United. At Panshi restaurant, you will find many Chander Gari(Jeep) and CNGs to take you to Humhum and other tourist places. We prebooked a Chander Gari for a day for 2000tk. If you take CNG, it will cost around 1200tk for a full day. We completed our breakfast at Panshi restaurant and departed for Humhum waterfall at about 630am. You will enjoy the Chander Gari ride if you sit on top of it. We arrived at Humhum trail at around 830am. There you will find guides to take you through the Humhum trail. We prebooked a guide for 800tk. Here you will need three must-have things. A trekking shoe with good grip, a waterproof mobile phone bag and a stick for pivoting on muddy soil. For entering into Humhum trail, you will need to pay 80tk per person. The Humhum trail is quite a long trail. It’s not that difficult, but it will require a lot of stamina. You will have to go through mud and water to go through it. You should visit this place during the rainy season; otherwise, you won’t find water in the waterfall. Beautiful scenery abounds on the walk. At 11 am, we arrived at the Humhum waterfall. The waterfall is pretty impressive in size. In that waterfall, you can take a shower. We really enjoyed that place. One bit of advice would be to take an extra set of clothes. We lingered there for approximately an hour before heading to Humhum. At 2:00 pm, we arrived in Humhum. We had lunch for roughly 255tk there. From there, we started for Madhoppur lake with that Chander gari. We arrived there at 410pm. It’s a beautiful lake with scenic tea gardens around it. I wished there was a kayaking facility, but sadly there wasn’t. We left Madhoppur lake from there and arrived at the hotel at around 7 pm. That completed our day one. One piece of advice to you would be to take some essential medications with you. One of our friends caught a cold and couldn’t go with us the next day. Also, don’t give away the bamboo sticks you bought. You will need them the next day.

On 17 June, we departed at 550am and arrived at the Somonbagh area at 940am. We prebooked a Chander Gari for 4000tk. Here we prebooked a guide for 1000tk. The name of the trail here is Patharia trail. We decided to visit Puchum waterfall, which is actually prohibited by the Khasias. Nevertheless, we went for it because it was raining heavily, and there was barely anyone outside to catch us. This hike was fantastic. We had to go through mud and rain to get to our destination. We had to go up and down hills. Sometimes we had to go along the slope of the mountain. This was a massive gamble, as a minor blunder could have proved disastrous. There were also a lot of leeches. A bit of advice would be to check your body as frequently as possible and use salt to get rid of them. We also had to wade through downstream of the waterfall through rocks underneath. The wave of the water was immense. Any mishap would carry you away, and you might get hit by a rock. So be very careful while you wade through it. After adventurous trekking through the Patharia trail, we finally arrived at the Puchum waterfall unnoticed by the Khasias around 11 am. The waterfall was impressive and big. It was really worth the strenuous trekking. Here we stayed for about half an hour. On the way to this waterfall, we met with a wild snake on the trail, but it didn’t bite us cause we stayed together in a group. So some advice to you would be to stay in groups. Then we saw Rojonikanto waterfall and Jherjheri waterfall. This packed our tour of Sreemangal. We started for the hotel at 425pm and arrived there at 7 pm.

The next day we were supposed to visit Kalapahar, but most of our group members were too tired to trek, and we decided to rest for that day. So we hopped on a train at 650pm and reached Dhaka at 11 pm.

This was my first trekking tour, and it was terrific. I look forward to more trekking tours like this. They may be challenging, but they are worth it. I am attaching some pics with this write-up.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1JicxUaitzzrh-6rFZb5hx1qTY_6yC1DV?usp=sharing