This week­end trip was a first for me in three respects: river raft­ing (which I’ve never done before and dis­cov­ered can be great fun!); trekking in a for­est and get­ting bit­ten by leeches (not fun, but funny in retrospect!).

DAY 1: Call of the jun­gle
We take up most of the bus when we boarded from Ban­ga­lore on Fri­day evening. 22 of us. Nice and com­fort­able bus – I fall asleep with­out much ado. Some­one asks Shri­ram aka Kishore Kumar to sing. Thank­fully he doesn’t ;)

At about 8 am the next morn­ing we are deposited at the start of the Seethanadi Nature Camp, about 100 kms from Man­ga­lore. After a walk of about ½ km, with noth­ing but the shrill sound of insects in the air, we reach the camp.

Dor­mi­to­ries, tents and a river!
At the camp we meet the guys from Adreno who take care of all the water related activ­i­ties – Man­ju­nath, San­jeev, Bharath, Adil. We find nice tents and big bath­rooms adjoin­ing them! Ah, bliss in the forest.

After a hearty break­fast, the first batch is ready to set off in two rafts. The river stretches before us — cool and invit­ing. The instruc­tors give us the basic lessons: if you fall into the water don’t panic, lie back and enjoy the view (eas­ier said than done, methinks); for­ward row­ing and back pad­dling and gen­eral fun­das to make you ner­vous. Since most of us are new­bies to raft­ing, the les­son is def­i­nitely needed.

What you can learn from river raft­ing: If you’re not syn­chro­nized, you’re going nowhere!

We find it a chal­lenge match­ing our strokes, in the begin­ning. Despite the rains, the river is rel­a­tively calm, the biggest being a grade 3 rapid, we are informed by Bharath, who is mak­ing life eas­ier for us by let­ting us rest at fre­quent inter­vals. We encounter about 4–5 rapids in the 14 km stretch. All around us are forests — green, lush and absolutely beau­ti­ful. With just the sound of the occa­sional birds, the silence is eerie some­times. We spot a few birds like the king­fisher, the com­morant and the endan­gered hornbill.

One guy falls into the water – Haider and fit­tingly that point is chris­tened Haider Point. (I am not sure we can find it again though!). Once our arms get used the row­ing motion, it’s eas­ier, though we still man­age to crash bang our pad­dles against each other at inter­vals. About half way down, every­one jumps off the rafts into the water to take a dip in the refresh­ingly cool waters of the Seetha.

After about three hours, it’s all over. Already! We are all com­pletely soaked and rav­ish­ingly hun­gry by the time we’re out of the water. A jeep col­lects us from the end point to take us back to the camp.

Get­ting lost in the for­est, pre­co­cious kid and all

Lunch. Yum! There’s noth­ing like a meal after hec­tic phys­i­cal activity :)

San­jeev takes a group of us on a for­est walk with the promise of a nice swim­ming spot (while the other group go for their round of raft­ing) and promptly loses his way. We go round and round in cir­cles for a kilo­me­tres of dense for­est until we find a house in the mid­dle of nowhere and much-needed directions!

A lit­tle girl called Shailasha accom­pa­nies us while her par­ents are raft­ing and proves to be a bonus as she keeps enter­tain­ing us with her con­stant chat­ter. Some of her price­less ones:

S: What is your name?
Me: Anita
S: Anita (pauses)… Why are there so many Ani­tas in the world?
(Now, I really did not have an answer to that one!)

She is enchanted and repelled by a big cen­tipede we find on the way. She touches it never the less and then exclaims, “It’s gross!” and starts giggling!

S: Why is the for­est so dirty?
Me: Ummm… Uhh…
S: When I meet the King of the jun­gle, I am going to talk to him about this!

S: Where are we going? I think he’s lost his way (point­ing to San­jeev)
A: I don’t know dar­ling, I think he’s lost too!
S: We should get a map, you know.
(This from a 5-year-old was really precious!)

After her dunk in the river, S: Potty is com­ing to me!
Me: Uhh… what? (not so used to child­speak).
Yamini looks on amused.
Me: Yamini Aunty will take you.
Yamini Aunty of course, pre­tends not to know us now.
So off we go, to find a right spot for her :)

She chats eas­ily with every­one and at one point Sujoy aka Stud Boy, com­ments: “This one is going to be a real heart­breaker!” Absolutely, man!

San­jeev leads us to a nice spot where the guys dive in. The ones who know swim­ming try to go upstream and real­ize after a while that they’re swim­ming in the same spot. They give up and just float.

Shailasha wants to go into the water. Once she’s in there, she starts shiv­er­ing. We get her out and find someone’s dry T-shirt for her. We are thank­ful that her par­ents are away raft­ing and don’t see all this!

After some hot chai, we head back to the camp, this time via the main road…

Get­ting to know each other – in the dark!
Inter­est­ingly, this is prob­a­bly my first trip where I don’t know any­one. In the evening, while wait­ing for din­ner, some­one sug­gests that we all intro­duce our­selves. With the lights off! This was all fine, except that we land up know­ing each other’s musi­cal pref­er­ences and hob­bies and other dark secrets, but we still have trou­ble putting names to faces the next day :)

There is a huge debate about what to do on day 2. San­jeev scares a few of us immensely by say­ing that most treks around the area would be leech infected at this time of the year. And since I am only pre­pared for river raft­ing and adven­tures in the water, I recoil in hor­ror. Why would I want to donate my pre­cious blood to yucky blood suck­ers? I am not look­ing for­ward to the trek.

We retire for the night with still no clar­ity about what we’re going to do. Five of us gals dis­cuss alter­na­tive plans in the cosy tent. Haider, who’s play­ing our night-watchman in the next tent, is unhappy with our noise lev­els, so we shut up and decide it’s enough chat­ter for a night! We fall asleep to the sound of the pit­ter pat­ter of rain and the sound of rau­cous toads/frogs and insects. Could get used to this, I think…

DAY 2: Next morn­ing. It’s rain­ing. And I don’t want to go anywhere.

Swapna does the good deed of wak­ing us up in the morn­ing. “I wanted to go into the for­est at 5.00 in the morn­ing”, she declares. Hmmm… right. I don’t want to be anyone’s break­fast, thank you!

Mean­while, a mini-bus is arranged. We are going to the Kudlu Teertha falls, about 15–16 kms from our camp site. We start off at about 8.00 am packed like sar­dines into the vehi­cle and are deposited at Nal­likatte. It’s a beau­ti­ful morn­ing. In the dis­tance, the misty moun­tains lit­er­ally call out to you.

From this point, the trek to the falls is about 7–8 kms. Ujjal and Har­ish who have come here before obvi­ously know what to expect so are really calm and assur­ing. I am really ner­vous since
a) I have not gone for a long trek in a while (the last one was the 1000 steps, but now that seems pretty tame!)
b) I have not trekked through leech infected forests and
c) I am not leech friendly!

I am armed with a HUGE dabba of salt. The first few kilo­me­tres are pretty okay. The for­est is absolutely lovely. I want to keep look­ing up, but it’s time for the blood suck­ers to get to work when they smell our fresh offer­ing so my atten­tion is diverted!

Once they start attack­ing, I am not a happy ducky. I curse every­thing and every­one near me. Most unfor­tu­nate are the peo­ple walk­ing around me. Stud Boy is reas­sur­ing, Haider and Shri­ram are encour­ag­ing, Ujjal, the expe­ri­enced trekker, is really cool. Hav­ing had sev­eral new­bies pass through his hands, he takes in my dis­tressed state and says, ‘just keep walk­ing, just keep walk­ing’. Thanks Ujjal!

The ascent that stretches for two kilo­me­tres of a nar­row slip­pery rocky leech infected trail is the tough­est for me. I finally have to give my back­pack to Haider since my back is killing me.

Finally. Finally. The mag­nif­i­cent Kudlu Teertha.

There is a roar in the dis­tance and we’re all excited as we approach the water­falls. It’s pretty amaz­ing. Hav­ing being brought up in the North East, you get used to water­falls, but this one was a beauty. Most of the gang shed their clothes and their inhi­bi­tions and head straight under. Some of us hang around at a dis­tance just tak­ing in the sights and sounds.

Refreshed, leeches for­got­ten for a while, after an hour or so, we head back. The return is so much eas­ier. At least I know what to expect now! I keep apply­ing lib­eral doses of salt to my feet and walk much faster this time around. It starts to pour and we are drenched again. The for­est turns even greener. We sing rain songs (rim jhim gire saawan) and trek back.

Back to Nal­likettu and we check for our leech bites at a deserted stall. Some of us have had it a lit­tle worse than oth­ers. It’s time for com­par­i­son now and our feet don’t look pretty at all. We find a cot­tage and ask the own­ers if we can use one of their “rooms’ to freshen up.

It’s around 2 pm and the place looks exactly the same as we encoun­tered in the morn­ing – the clouds hang­ing low over the moun­tains beck­on­ing invitingly.

It’s a good feel­ing to know we were actu­ally there and came back. In one piece – well, almost!

Side­note: I def­i­nitely need a pedi­cure when I get back :)

Chicken Biryani in Udupi
We are all madly hun­gry. When the bus stops at Hebri we rush to the near­est place for chips, bis­cuits and any­thing edi­ble. I’ve never seen bis­cuits and chips dis­ap­pear­ing so fast! Har­ish is dream­ing of neer dosa and chet­ti­nad chicken. Dream on, buddy. By the time the bus gets us to Udupi it is close to 4 pm and we’re def­i­nitely not get­ting any­thing close to Harish’s fantasy.

We (I mean the non-veggies) set­tle for biryani and pom­fret (which is pretty deli­cious) and it all tastes good. Though it might have been the fact that break­fast has long been digested.

… and Chicken Roast in Man­ga­lore
We take another bus from Udupi to Man­ga­lore, about an hour or so away. Carielle and me sit right in front along with the dri­ver and get a sam­pling of what Schumi feels like when he’s in his Fer­rari. If we had race tracks in the coun­try, this dri­ver could have def­i­nitely given Shumi a run for his money. We clutch on to any rail­ing or object we can find.

Obvi­ously the umpteen pack­ets of chips and bis­cuits and lunch not enough for most of the gang. The bus deposits us in a shop­ping area and the first thing we notice is a Chicken Halal place.

Every­one heads in for another round. Lunch long for­got­ten! Huge bowls of ice­cream com­plete dinner.

We board the Mangalore-Bangalore bus at about 10 pm, a tired but sat­is­fied bunch. It’s been a fun-filled (some­times blood-filled) but absolutely great two days.

The leechy hang­over
It’s only on Mon­day morn­ing sit­ting at my desk, aches and pains ema­nat­ing from strange parts of my body that it all sinks in! The fact that we have a leech hang­over is appar­ent when mails fly back and forth about how they can lodge them­selves and sur­vive for months in warm places. And I get a really queasy feeling!

When I get back home I quickly do a recheck of my back­pack which I had hur­riedly dumped on my bed. Ouch! And all clear :)

I’m ready for another trip now. And maybe bat­tle some other crea­tures. But God, not leeches please. Not yet, anyway!

(PS: And pedi­cure still pending).

Trip pic­tures: Shriram’s album

Harish’s account

More pic­tures