As a child, I had read a travel account by Rudyard Kipling (or was it a British official who lived around his time?) travelling from Bombay to the North of India. In that account, he breaks the train journey at Kasara and then makes a backbreaking trek up the hills to a station up in the Deccan Plateau, before continuing the journey. There was no railway line up the treacherous, leech-infested Thull Ghat then.
Ever since, I have always wanted to have a look at this section and compare it to the Pune-Mumbai, Londa-Madgaon, Sakleshpura-Mangalore and theTenkasi-Punalur crossings across the Western Ghats. And this one rocks, especially now in July 2009, with the monsoon in full force.
The track up the Ghat is now powered by 25KV AC traction. Express trains with names like Tapovan and Panchavat,i pulled by 3 to 6 locomotives snake up and down the fog-veiled Thull Ghat.
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