Call of the Nature

After Talakona, we planned a trip to Agumbe, a very little or rather unknown place for travelers.  This is a Rain forest in Western Ghats around 100km. from Mangalore. It is the second highest rainfall zone in India. Until my visit, the one uniqueness I knew about Agumbe was, the only King Cobra Research Centre is situated here in ARRS (Agumbe Rainforest Research Station). We also knew that the famous Malgudi Days was filmed near Agumbe.
Five of us planned (or rather misplanned) this trip in October. That year, during our visit, the record rainfall happened in Western Ghats.

After a long train journey from Chennai, we reached Mangalore in the wee hours of a Saturday from where we traveled by a Maruti van of ARRS. After a long drive up the hilly road, we finally reached ARRS where we would stay for next couple of days in a dormitory.

Mystic Agumbe

After freshening up & breakfast, we went out with Cameras. Raingear is a must in Agumbe throughout the year and hence we all carried ours. In next two days we had seen what is called a rainforest and what is rain in a rainforest.


Till that moment I didn’t know that a big experience was waiting for me out there. A few steps outside and they started to climb on us. Initially I distasted but they were everywhere and you cann’t escape them. Slowly I accepted that I am a guest to their land and no point bothering for some harmless bites of the localities. Wlecome to the LEECH Land.

It was a nice experience of drenching in and drying out on hourly basis. We came back for lunch and again gone out with full vigor. The forest  was all closed canopy and poor light. Photography remained only in trial mode with all our cameras and lenses thoroughly rain washed.

A Rainforest Beauty

Evening was a nice time with other residents, mainly post graduate students with their project work and volunteers connected with King Cobra research. Some of them were extraordinarily knowledgeable in rainforest and its habitats.

Next day we had a trekking with a local guide. Neither the guide would understand our language nor would any of us understand his. We walked across some walkways and little swampy area and started getting in the thickets. Our guide gave us some oil mixed with tobacco extract to put on our legs and some small sacks of salt to take out leeches.

He took the lead and all five of us followed. The bushes were so thick that, in every 5 minutes he would take out a machete and cut open our ways. Leeches were all around. If you stop to take out one, another three will climb up and hence we concentrated on our walk. The leeches continued to make merry on our urban blood.

In few patches we walked through water, streaming downhill. As there would be no leech in flowing water we drove some leeches out of their feast. Except one, all of us had our camera packed and stacked inside the bag when we reached the summit, a huge fall with its full might.



Colours of Agumbe

We obeyed our guide & went up to a safe limit to hear gushing water falling down and see the spray and mist coming up. Next day, on our way back to Mangalore,  we had seen this fall from distance and understood why our guide stopped us going further.

End of the day, we had a great trekking up hill through streaming water inside a perfect rainforest…. One of the memories I will carry to my grave.

Next day we started our return journey with a promise to come back again.

In my life I haven’t yet seen anything comparable to the ARRS Dormitory. Deep inside the Rainforest and with very little resources, it is an example of how human intelligence and discipline can work together to create and maintain a great place.

Absolutely basic arrangements, one big room with four double decked beds and one small room with two single beds. The big room had an extension with fire place. There all the soaked dresses and cameras would be left in night for drying up. The rooms and the Toilets had skylights to use maximum natural light and for night there are LED lamps.

A Misty Morning

The dinning hall was a shaded area with three sides covered with thick plastic sheets. There was a big wooden structure for a dinning table (also doubles up as operation table for inserting radio chips in King Cobra) and fixed benches made of logs on both the sides.

Everything was very clean and tidy. The timeliness was perfect to the minute.

What a perfect two days in the cradle of nature without any telephone, newspaper etc. etc……..

Today, even after two years I live through those two days while writing this. It was another eye opener for me to understand that it is nature that can offer much more than anything which human can make or even imagine. No window dressing, no make up…. Pure nature in its original form.