A stroll in the rainforest

Trekking and digital photography has plagued youngsters; anybody and everybody talk about the focal length of the lenses, SLR cameras, Canon vs. Nikon, lighting, manual focus, woodland shoes, hiking gear, weather proof tents, cutting knives, careers in wildlife photography, tiger conservation etc. One Mecca they all visit – the Western Ghats. The Western Ghats are thick rain forests in South India sprawling about 1600km in length and 100 km wide with a majority of the forest, about 60%, in Karnataka. These pristine and soggy forests have been infested by trekkers, photographers and nature enthusiasts from across the world, for its splendid sceneries and over whelming range of flora and fauna.

Gung ho about trekking, my friends and I, budding software engineers, decided to trek!! The baton of organizing the trek was entrusted upon Sheetan and KP (a.k.a Prashant) – the senior trekkers. Sheetan consulted YMCA, discussed with KP and both of them came up with the idea to trek in the forests of Agumbe – which receives the second heaviest rainfall in the India (many times interchangeable with Cheerapunji in Assam, making it the highest)!!! I, being an amateur, was delighted about the trekking thing, of course with a grain of apprehension. I nodded a yes and my name was listed as the first goat. However, it was not easy for the fervid KP and lazy, yet extremely enthusiastic, Sheetan to gather the rest of the gang. Not only did they have to talk to the prospective trekkers but also their parents – as they felt that we were going for war! I believe it took a lot of coaxing before we had a final list of 10 goats – KP, Sheetan, Harsha, Raghuram, Ashok, Abhilash, Guru, Sumanth, Aravind and one more guy (Sorry, I do not remember his name).

We started on Nov 06, 2001 from Bangalore – Shivamogga (by Train) – Agumbe (by bus). Though traveling directly from Bangalore to Agumbe by bus would cost half of both time and money in comparison to our train cum bus journey, Harsha made a brilliant decision and spent twice the amount and pushed us into slow and expensive train travel – yet another sign of a novice traveler. We hit a snag in the Bangalore railway station – one of trekker came up with a case of a torn trekking bag!! We had to distribute the luggage judiciously to others, grinning and getting ready to bear it – the distribution was as if we were trading drugs. Another bum had to bring his younger sister’s cute pink school bag – I guess she was in seventh grade! KP and Sheetan announced that we bring along one kilo of rice, half kilo each of sugar and salt. My mother’s advice, “this much grocery is not needed for you for two days; take less”, fell on deaf ears.

We landed in the sleepy Agumbe bus stand, bright and sunny at about 0830hrs. The civilized 10-member gang started daily ablutions right there and made a mark by brushing teeth and spitting the juices over the road sides, peeling off egg shells and throwing them in gutters…and others which, if written, would not be classified as decent literature. While idiots like us were up to such frivolous activities, the sensible KP and Sheetan inquired about how to trek, where to go, what to do etc and informed us that it was not safe to venture the forest without a guide. That gentleman also informed us that “Krishnappa” is the only person who can guide us through the woods. He gave some phone number and disappeared into the greenery. While we waited for the guide to receive us at the bus stand, I stood near the junction and savored the nearby forests and enjoyed a drizzle of rain – my heart said something was not right.

We saw civilians for the last time and started the trek to a nearby waterfall called “Barkana”. This is a 6 km trek (3 km on road and 3 km off road). I got the first flavor of a forest. There were huge tall trees everywhere and rare twig pickers and cow herds. The forest is evergreen and the sunlight fails to reach the ground. It is soggy all the time and one thing that is complimentary with the wetness is leeches!! There are plenty of them, actually in colonies waiting to suck fresh blood!!! The leeches crept on to us as we were easy prey – we did not even know when they came on to us. They sting, suck blood and fall off. A lot of impure blood from our bodies was lost for good. Initially KP went on shouting “Oh Shit!” whenever he saw any insect, but all of that fell silent as time passed by. We were in their territory and we had learnt to adapt – get bitten either this way or that! What seemed like 1630hrs marked 12 noon and we arrived at a broken algae infested pavement to view Barkana waterfalls. It was a beautiful sight where roaring water gushed out amidst crooked rocks covered by flora everywhere. Few others were found nursing their legs by removing leeches stuck to their legs, knees, thighs and shoes, applying calcium, tobacco and other useless leech-preventers. Nonetheless, there was a pristine waterfall, marvelous forest and stains of blood on each ones legs! I had stopped looking at them thinking that the leeches are sucking out all the bad karma.

We were standing on one edge of what looked like a horse-shoe with the water fall in the middle. The plan was to trek to the waterfall along a route within the jungle, go beyond it and descend alive to a village called Kigga, which is about 8 km from Sringeri! This is a trekking plan that Sheetan and KP had come up with, keeping in mind dolts who hadn’t walked to the local market to get a bunch of curry leaves.

It continued drizzling and before we knew, we were in unchartered forests with our guide deriving directions from the position of the sun! Had we trusted our lives in the right hands? Hell yes – he was a genius in navigation!! While many had not seen a real mariner’s compass, a few others’ enthusiastic efforts to mark coordinates were marred down rudely because of our ignorance in using the instrument. The guide smoothly paved his way, created originally by the bison, through making blunt marks using a sickle on the trees which we thought was for retrace, if we were lost. Leeches feasted on foreign blood while the guide was axing them off his legs using the same sickle as if it were the top of a tender coconut!

While many had stopped enjoying the forest, a few of us took many stops in between the treacherous trek to enjoy the surrounding forest. It was a lovely and satisfying experience to see all the greenery and the sparkling creeks. No man other than the eleven of us for hours together! Isn’t it hard to imagine, that too in a world where there are so many people everywhere? At about 1530hrs, we came to grassland, meaning no trees in a 20 square feet area!

We took a deserving break in the rather heavy rain. It was hard to distinguish sweat, rain and blood. Our legs looked like a spoilt chemistry lab table – with all sorts of colors and sediments. We could not sit down as there were leeches everywhere – as if we were not satisfied with the ones that we had currently housed! We stood and tried to catch a threatening glimpse of the surroundings. We could see nothing but forest in all directions – we were in a valley surrounded by thick forest in the midst of nowhere!

A few proceeded towards the Barkana water fall which was about 10 minutes. I, along with other weak hearted first-timers, stayed back as we could not muster courage to continue any further. While I anxiously waited for them to return, my mind went blank. The gingerly feeling in my heart started screaming – “Something is wrong here”. The others returned from what seemed like an eon – quite thrilled about the experience. This excitement quickly converted into curiosity cum fear as we started thinking about – “What’s next?”

Since the entire place was soggy, we could not light fire to anything, including ourselves. Our plan of spending the night in this patch was thrashed by Mother Nature. Krishnappa duly informed that we return back towards civilization before it became dark and gave us 15 minutes to make a decision before it became dark. He told us that he will not stay with us, though we might foolishly want to. If we were half as smart as what we think we are, we should have grabbed that cue and returned. My decision right away was – let us go back, it is a no brainer! Suddenly a few stupid software minds started working on logic –”It will not continue raining like this all the time - it will stop raining, we will wait for another hour and then decide, where there is a will – there is a way, who knows when we will ever come here again – we have come till here“– these led to a “no error no output deadlock”. It again took the revered KP to convince the grumpy ones to return. It was quite dark already and the time was 1615hrs. This was a time when we all, everyone, felt that we are knocking the doors of hell.

The return was a lot quicker with nobody wanting to stay at the end of the line – it seemed like a horror movie where the last person mysteriously vanishes. In what followed, seemed like a quest, we emptied the rice, sugar and salt supplies into a plastic bag and handed it over to the guide. The bags became undoubtedly lighter, by 2 kilos to be specific, which allowed us walk faster. We had ignored darkness and had become owls – we continued to walk as if there was no tomorrow. The first sight of a farmer on his way back home came to all of us as a signal – “We will live to tell this tale!”.

A few cases of venting anger on an empty broken water bottle, whistling members, swollen and painful legs and bad dreams involving leeches were punctuating our otherwise uneventful trek.

Only off late did I come to know that

• Agumbe is the best place to find a King Cobra – a fierce and aggressive snake which can generate poison enough to kill either 40 adult men or an adult elephant.
• Leeches can exsanguinate (excessive loss of blood) their victims.

What facilitated this funny yet detrimental experience? “Ignorance is bliss!”

Aravind Bargur

Aug 21, 2010