Ombattu Gudda - Part 1

If adventure is what you need and trekking is your passion , if you are not afraid of the dark and you can face the dedliest of snakes , if you love nature and can spend night under the sky sleeping by a waterfall, if you love click snaps od scorpions nad if you are so uncaring that you can walk among the leaches OMBATTU Gudda is the place where you must go at least once.
This place is near Sakleshpur in Karnataka and is located among the ever green forests of western ghats. You must be well prepared before going to these forest reagion as people say that you are bound to get lost in the forests.
I was totally unaware of these facts, all I know is that I love the forests and trekking and would go anywhere for these, so when Gaurav asked me if I would like to go in for this trek my instant reply was "why not", then he said that theres a group going there and the leader seems to be a guy called Chandrashekhar, so go ahed call him up and he asks a lot of questions so just say yes yes . As he said chandrashekhar was asking a lot of questions , like:
Do you often go for treks?
Can you climb
are you in good physical condition , blah blah blah.... I told that I have been to Himalayas and I can trek thats it , then he says : "Its the toughest trek in Karnataka". I said ok no probs.
He gave me a green signal , said that we all would meet near Majestic and from there we would catch a bus, as planned we all reached there by Friday night 9.30 and took our places in the but, I was still wondering why do these ppl always make so much fuss before including people in treks as its always about climbing and nothing else, with these thoughts I went to sleep, in the morning we were in Hassan , from where we went to Sakleshpur had breakfast, packed our food for two days and then went ahead to a place where we had to start our trek for Ombattu Gudda. We had taken the help of two local guys who would be helping us in trekking and help us in finding our way through the forest, moreover we had a forest department guy also along with us so that he would help us in case we got lost in the forest or to prevent us from getting lost .
The trek begins: its 10.30 in the morning , we have to cover a long distance to the peak so that we can camp over there at night, our walk starts, the path seems good , after some time jungle starts, its really green and beautiful, we have walked almost 2 kms , till now thing look really great, we are clicking a lot of pics, a small stream comes, the water looks very good, I cant resist my self and have a sip of really feresh water , I cross the stream and walk ahead Gaurav and me are walking almost at the frost of the group we are leading the way, all of a sudden Gaurav feels something is there at his feet , he look down and says " Abe leach hai , aur bahut sara hai yaar " . I look at his shoes and his feet , I see a lot of leaches, there are so many of them , crawling and trying to suck his blood, then I have a look at my feet and SHIT I have the same thing on my feet , the intreting thing with leeches is that they can climb and cling on to you and drink your blood and you dont feel a thing , no pain only some blood loss.
We hurridly pulled these leaches away from the shows and feet and started moving forward, then I look in towards the fround I see its full of leaches.
For some time after that I tried getting rid of these but it was of no awail, moreover we were loosing the rithm of our walk so I thought come what ever may I am going to continue my walk and now bother about these creatures anymore. I would have walked ony a few feet when I saw people staring at something , I also had a glimpse at it , only to find out that its a SCORPION, hurridly I took 3-4 snaps of the cute looking guy and said bye bye to it. The locals were walking very fast and I wanted to be with them so I started walkingat the same pace as one of the local guys in front , after some time I realised that all others were left behind and only we two were leading the way, the forst had become denser and I could not afford to loose him at any cost now. We would have walked another 3 Kms or so when he took a turn and I see a stream flowing which we had to cross, he was not bothered about look back and offering me help and I also thought that it not that though so why bother, but nothing is as easy in a jungle as it looks, the rocks that were leading me to the other end were slipperey and it was a bit deeper then expected at certain paces, moreover I had a haversack , a camera and now I had my shoes in my hand so that they dont get wet , so I was totally loaded , I took me some time and a lot of concentration but finally I reahed other end safely. Luckly the guy had stopped and afr some time I saw the rest of croud coming up , we stopped at that place and had our food.
It was already 1.30 and according to Chadru we had to hurry if we wanted to reach the place before dark.
The same storey continues for a long time , we have a nice time walking and wandering in the jungle, its about 5 in the evening and we are not reaching somewhere, we have walked almost 15Kms or more in the day , I silently tell Gaurav this looks as a great adventure but dosent seem to be tough, he agrees and we start moving again. We are at a stream and I see the guys agruing in Kannad , I guess its about the direction(I dont know Kannad), we strat climbing , I see thers no route , the local guy walking ahead of me is walking on a steep slope and he is cutting trees and some bushes to make the way, I am happily enjoiyngthis thinkng that its getting tougher now, but the paths is getting riskier , there is steep slope , no route , some mud and lot of loose rocks , we have to catch trees and climb , and some of these trees turn out to be thorney ones and I hurt my hand , I hear guys from behind calling up and asking us to slow down as they are unable to keep up with us, I look back and see no one , then I hear voices , I see some one coming and I help him in climbing up , after that we start moving forward and I ask the guy how much is left ......and he reveals me the secret "WE ARE LOST DUDE" . No one knows where we are going its getting dark now and we are clueless , have have all our sleeping bags and tents but we can never sleep in this dense forest as there is no place to lie down , moreover animals are another big threat. More cutting and cropping is done by the local guys , we were already being killed by leeaches now there is no path to walk , ver carefully I have to catch trees , so as not to injure myself, and we cant even walk straight, we have to bend down and climb on a very steep slope , but after an hour or so we see a clearing , this is the place from where water is falling down so we are near a waterfall, chandru says we cant go anyfurther and this is the place where we would be spending the night. This seems horrible(actually I was loving the location but just to add sentiments), we cant set up the tents on the rock so we will be sleeping outside on rocks on sleeping mats or sleeping bags.
I must say this was an experience of a lifetime, never in my life I thought I would be in such a place with my life in danger (wild forest all around, fear of snakes and other wild animals, as we ahd already seen Tiger and elephants shit) and I would be loving this. The locals lighted some fire and started cooking Rice and Sambhar so that we could have food at night. After food every one found a safe place to sleep, unfortunately Gaurav and me were not that lucky , we thought we wil be awake whole of the night but the night seemed to be too long , after 11 it was difficult to keep my eyes open , there was some place at the corner just before the water started falling down , I could't control mysleep so I thought of taking the risk, both of us somehow made ourselved fit into the place and tried to sleep , it was like slip and you are gone or u turn in ur dreams and roll down, I kept o thinking on these line and couldn't sleep for quiet some time, thank God the fire was still on so that animals would not come to the place, I dont know when exactly but somehow I slept and started dreaming , I saw myself rolling down the hill and shouting , I came out of my sleep shouting , Gaurav asked me what happened but then I looked around cleaned my sweat and told him "Kuch nahi so jao ". After that I slept again and woke up directly in the morning (I guess Gaurav didnt have any sleep as I think he moved out and was sitting in some corner at night). Anyways that god for the night :) , I can never forget that and THANK U CHANDRU for taking us out .

DAY 2: ..Continued to Part 2 :)