Western Ghats, India

The Western Ghats are a mountain range that runs along the western coast of India. The mountains cover an area of about 160,000 sq km stretching from the country's southern tip to Gujarat in the north.
Of the 372 species of mammal found in India, 63 are in the Western Ghats. Sixteen of these are endemic.
Faced with enormous population pressure, the lush mountains are at risk of a biodiversity crisis. Important populations of Asian elephants, Indian tigers, and the endangered lion-tailed macaque are threatened as agriculture and logging intensify.
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Agumbe and Kodachadri by ManjunathKP

Here I present our experience of trekking to Kodachadri. It was full of misadventures. The unexpected of the unexpected things happening even after careful planning (should recheck). We friends did fell in love at first sight with this place (Kodachadri) and decided to go there even without thinking what season we were in. Later we came to know that we were in rainy season. As they say, true love survive, many of my friends dropped out and three of us with true love for this place decided to go. Let me introduce our self. I am Manjunath(Manju) working for Synergy in Hyderabad. Narahari(Hari) a lecturer of Mathematics in PESIT and Mehboob Basha(Basha) working for GE. All of us are basically from Bangalore, but myself and Basha are put up in Hyderabad and Hari in Bangalore. Our plan of 3 days was like me and Basha from Hyderabad go to Shimogga and spend a day in Agumbe and back to Shimogga. The second day Hari joining us in Shimogga and we leave towards Kodachadri the very same day. And the third day was a buffer day. We knew that we will be very tired and we had strict orders from our parents to visit Kollur Mookambike temple. If we had time we wanted to spend some time in beach. All I can say is Man proposes but he only disposes.

Day 1(19th Oct 2007)
Shimogga is around 700kms from Hyderabad and Agumbe is around 100 Kms from Shimogga. Our bus from Hyderabad was at around 7:30 pm (ticket of around 500 rupees per head). I was at Hyderabad bus stand by 7. Basha didn’t know that we were going for trekking. He was thinking that we were going to some hill station which was just partially true. He literally gave me a shock when he arrived at bus stop. He was with his full luggage as if we were going to Kodaikanal. With all those thick blankets, towels, sweaters and also a book!!! I immediately knew that it has to be dropped some where in cloak room as we will be walking in the thick jungle on the second and third day. Mr. Basha who wants a TV where ever he goes was shocked to know that our bus didn’t have a TV. KSRTC buses except Volvo will not have TV. They will leave you alone to entertain yourself, which I consider as the best Idea. We had our dinner packed before in hand. As a regular traveler in that route, I knew that the bus’s gonna stop in a place where eating looks like a punishment. The bus started exactly at 7:30 PM and at the same time we started our conversation. Our conversations since 9 years is usually like he does the 90% talking and I do the rest 10% and I do the 90% listening and he does the rest 10%. We talked about each others company’s working culture, about technology, movies, etc. The bus did stop exactly at the same place for dinner at around 9 or 9:30 PM. We had our dinner inside the bus itself. Rest of the journey was peaceful and we reached Shimogga around 9:00 AM next day. To our surprise there was another team of Tamil guys in our bus going towards the same trekking as us. We exchanged our ideas about the place and our plans and took our own ways. We took a room just opposite to the bus stand for 340 bucks a day. It was a pretty good one. The room had a pretty decent bathroom and double bed cot and a TV (Mr. Basha was happy). We refreshed ourselves there and made our necessary phone calls to our dear ones to prove that we are safe.

There were 2 places in our mind to visit for the first day near Shimogga. JogFalls and Agumbe. As we have explored JogFalls couple of times before, we thought that it’s a good idea to go to Agumbe and get a glimpse of the Western Ghats and amazing sunset. Agumbe is a rainforest manifesting rare and unique flora and fauna in India. It receives one of the highest rainfall in the world and 2nd highest in India next to Cherrapunji of Assam. One can reach to Agumbe from Bangalore via Shimogga. It's around 350 kms from Bangalore. Most of the buses going towards Udupi and Mangalore go via Agumbe.

The Sunset from the Sunset point is said to be a breath takingly amazing. One of the best in the world. I was exited to catch the Sunset from there and have a lovely view of the amazing landscape and breathe the fresh air. Here I have to confess that I have an amazing rapport with this Sun setting. I have romanced with sun while setting very well before. I enjoy that very much. I was exited to get that thing in my camera and heart.
We had a decent break fast and started towards Agumbe. We got into a local bus which goes over Agumbe to Udupi. With in an hour and half we were there. The place was calm, serene and picturesque. It was a village. We got down exactly at the place where the rain forest starts (remember we were there in the rainy season).There were no places where any one can stay back as far as we saw. We did see an Agumbe Guest house which was completely deserted. And ya, a school too

We decided to walk towards the sunset point. We reached a point where left turn goes to Shringeri and right turn goes to Agumbe. Shringeri is just 15 kms from the place where we were standing. Sringeri is another beautiful place with Sharadamba Temple. It is situated at the banks of river Tunga. The first thing that comes to my mind about this place is the big and plumpy fishes in the river. I am vegetarian , so I just adore watching them. Anyway, I have been to Shringeri many times, so we took right turn and went towards Agumbe. We were just few kms away from the sunset point. The road lying like a black carpet, the forest on both sides of it and we loners walking on it. It was a great feeling of being in the laps of the nature.