A Taxing Journey to CKR Waterfalls and The Isolated lands of Western-Ghats

Unexpectedly it rained for the entire night on October 1, and a little more on the next, and has been continued for three days. Udupi, Ghat regions received most of rainfall on October 2, a day when I went to one of the most treacherous pass in the Ghats to trek the most isolated waterfall I’ve been on this year. It is raining as I write, but October month was not supposed to be rained on this region, it was good Monsoon in our district then compare to some other places even though it rained late.

After an elongated drive we able to find one person who known well about this waterfall and also the entire region.  After 10 minutes walk we crossed one small brook, by now we have started to understand that this is not going to be an easy trek ahead. We found a great diversity in plant life along the way. We are certain that we didn't miss any alternative trail along the way but there is still no clear way ahead.

Halfway down the views were amazing. We then hiked through the rain forest for several hours, where it was raining. Somehow discovers that there is a sparsely vegetated walkway through the dense bush ahead, and claims that the trail is lying beneath it. We move into the vegetation, unsure of what we are placing our steps on. Within a few minutes, any possibility of a return becomes remote as the trail we just passed through becomes untraceable. The trees are blocking any view of the outside world.

At least it was when we could still see the sky. We are in a soaked and shadowy world. But we need to go ahead. We can't accept defeat so easily. An hour passes by we are still alive and have reached the edge of the rocky plateau. Guide said because of weather condition it can’t able to approach further downer levels, the rain and overflow in river the waterfalls becomes not accessible to reach. Our legs don't really want to walk further because of uncertainty, so we decided to try this waterfall in some occasion.

The River becomes visible to our right. Few hundred meters downer of us lays Roaring River with overflow and it's time to take some rest on plateau. We are somewhat hungry but decide to take lunch on the completion of day's trek. The watch shows its 2 pm. The trouble starts shortly once again heavy rain started we restart our journey and the track became worst and more slippery than before. Because of thick fog the jungle become denser as before and the trail is not clearly visible.

Wherever there are rainforests, there is the potential for leeches, during the trek, we found dreadfully leeches everywhere on our legs sucking blood, those Leeches got inside the boots and under socks; we doing a leech check often but still they are in huge numbers so we couldn’t flee from leech bite. I found Detol and Vix to rub around the tops of my socks kept them out of shoes. I believe they inject some sort of anticoagulant to make the blood keep flowing.

In the end, I had to take off at least 50 leeches from my body. They're clever! - They crawled under my sock and inner-wear so I wouldn't spot it until after it had a good feed the leeches would have loved it. We got all the leaches off then began to return home.

There are numerous trekking routes throughout the Reserve, some involving risky camping in the jungle so the Reserve is certainly for the adventurous. For most of the trails, it's sensible to get a guide - unlike climbing mountains, I can imagine it would be easy to get lost by yourself - also, there no signposts or details available. There is a Grass canopy hill is called Gopigudda at western-end of the Reserve. Here at sunrise and sunset, you might see millions of birds and also sight of Arabian Sea on a clean sunny day from the top of the hill. Most of these places seemed to me to be very isolated, innovative and attractive.