The Adventures in Kabbinale forest

Photo Courtesy: Afzalul Haque Ansari

This was different, this time it was real. We had a real adventure. We have an actual thrilling story to tell. The place we visited is the notorious Ombattu Gudda. Every trekker's dream is conquering OG. It is one of the most dangerous and mysterious places. It has unfortunately claimed few lives, and everyone even with a GPS gets lost here. This mysterious peak is not even the tallest in the forest range, but still somehow it has managed to get the attention, and every one dreams of finding it.

Planning

After my last trek to Vallarimala, I was excited. Vellaramiala was the most difficult trek, but also this was the first time we were almost entirey inside forest for the complete trek.. Mostly the popular trekking places are grasslands, where you get mind blowing views of surrounding terrain. But the most difficult and challenging treks are inside forest reserves, where you donot even get to see the sky for most part of the trek. Vellarimala was the second type. After coming back I was thrilled with the experience. I wanted to do some real exploratory treks, not just following some simple trails or following someone else. I wanted to really explore and find out the route all by myself. Thats when Ashok suggested OG. I started reading about it on blogs. Initially it was easy to scare you to hell. Any blog you read begins by celebrating the mystery surrounding OG. Everyone said it is impossible to do it without GPS and maps. But as I read more and more, it grabbed my interest. It was as if we have to give it a try.

Our planning started, but the trouble was monsoon had already begun. And heading out to OG in monsoon was a strict NO-NO. But we could not wait, we were overly excited. And add to it none of us have a GPS. We started by forming a group, I made sure only experienced trekkers joined our group. Luckily at the end we formed the best group possible, all of us had trekked together sometime earlier. Arghya, Dyut, Ashok, Afzal and myself., 5 the perfect number.

Shopping

Other than gathering lots of information from all the blogs, we had to do major shopping for this trek. The shopping experience itself was interesting. We went to 2 major shopping places in bangalore. the KR Market and Shivaji Nagar. KR Market is the wholesale market. Nothing can beat the experience of visiting these narrow lanes full of thousands of shops as compared to the Big shopping Malls that's currently trending.
1. Sickle, a very important tool for venturing in forests. 120/- from KR Market
2. 50 mtr of 10 mm thick Rope, 700/- KR Market
3. Torch, 200/- KR Market, another life saver.
4. Dry tobacco leaves, 10/- KR Market, as a Leech repellent.
5. Leech Socks, 250/- Shivaji Nagar, another must if visiting forests in monsoon.
7.Maps from Survey of India, Koramangla
8. Orienteering compass, to use with the maps.450/- from Decathlon

We really did an extensive planning, considering everything that can go wrong, and backup plans. I even mailed some of my friends the details of our plan, so that if we donot return by Tuesday, they can send some rescue teams. We had almost everything for the trek, except perhaps the most important thing a GPS. Luckily Ashok had a smartphone and Afzal had the camera with gps, which we can use in worst case.
The maps that we buy from Survey of India donot have any plastic covering, so we cannot use it if its raining. I bought some cellophane papers and covered the entire map with it. I recalled my school craft works while doing this. Later we would realize how important this decision was.

All the planning and shopping had taken a toll on my office work. I had to suffer on friday. I was very tensed, an important customer issue was pending. I was no where near understanding what the issue was. My manager was also sitting with me to debug the case. It was already 7.30pm and I had planned to return home by 6pm. After some time we gave up, I told my manager I would be leaving and would continue the work on monday. I hurriedly packed up reached home by 8pm.

The Journey begins...

Myself and Ashok left from indiranagar at 10pm, and reached majestic just in time. Our bus was headed to Kukke Subramanya, but we would get down 30kms before that, at Gundya checkpost. We told our bus conductor to wake us up at Gundya. We settled down in the bus with our luggage.

The "Godsend" CTC Gang

Seeing all the sleeping bags and sleeping mats, some fellow passengers asked us where we were going. We got to know they were also trekkers going to Kukke Subramnanya to trek in Kumara Parvata. They were from CTC, Chennai Trekking Club. They were actually surprised to hear we were going to Gundya. We got to know, they were pretty experienced trekkers. They had been nearby and around Ombattu Gudda(OG) 3-4 times. They expressed their concern that OG is very dangerous, it is not recommended for first timers to go there without GPS, that also in monsoon. Then we had a lengthy discussion, they were kind enough to share their experiences and they gave us lots of tips. They told us a lot of things about the forests, snakes, elephants, the river, the confusing trails. They were almost God-Sent for us. We had read lots of things on internet, but all the knowledge that they shared with us on the bus was extremely helpful. We even opened the maps and studied it with torches inside the bus. After all their warnings and caution some of us were having second thoughts. I was actually more excited.

We got some rest in the bus, the roads in these hilly regions are not actually made for comfortable ride. Winding roads, speeding bus,  the constant brakes were highlights of the night. Early morning 5am we got down at gundya. It was pitch dark. We were still felling sleepy, everyone scrambled in the dark and we planned to get ready in a tea shop. We shared our loads, changed our dresses, and wore our leech socks. By the time we were ready it was bright light outside. Last night the trekkers in the bus told us entering the Kabbinale reserve forest was not allowed. So we had planned to get inside the forest by dark, but our plan was not working because it was already bright sunlight outside at 6am.

Gundya

We started walking from the gundya check-post towards the Kabbinale river bridge. Its about 2kms. On the way, there were some shops, where a guy was screaming and asking if we have permission to enter the forest, but we ignored him and continued waling. After some time we reached the bridge.

 There was a small off-road like a Jeep track leading to the right after the bridge. It looked like the trail into Kabbinale reserve forest. We started walking on that route. There were quite a few houses by the side of the jeep trail. we could also see the Kabbinale river flowing by our right. Slowly we lost the sight of the river, but still we could hear it flowing.
We encountered a small trail leading into the forest, but separate from this trail by a ditch. We were not sure whether to go straight or follow the right deviation. Since the river was on our right and we were sure we have to follow the river, so we took the right deviation after crossing the small ditch. After which we entered the dense forest.

The Forest Trail

We soon realized that maintaining your location on the map was not easy. We were just 2-3kms from the start of the trail, but we were already not sure where exactly are we on the map.
After walking for some distance we decided to get ourselves walking sticks, We used the sickle for cutting out our walking sticks. A walking stick is very helpful in forest treks, they definitely distribute some weight over your hand, help in river crossing, or even for defense against wild animals.
Leeches were not new for me, but for Arghya, Dyut and Ashok it was creating lots of problems. They would stop every now and then to get rid of it. Stopping to get rid of leeches is a very bad idea. In these forests, if you stop for even a few seconds there will be more leeches climbing than you can get rid of..

We encountered quite a lot of diversions on the trail. Dyut was marking on the trees using the sickle at all the deviations By now we realized that most of the actual trails were missing from the map. The map was created in 1970, so obviously a lot has changed since then. But the most important guidance for this trek is the Kabbinale river. We were sure it was on our right. So we mostly chose the trail moving to the right on all the diversions. Initially the river flow was audible but after some time we had to try hard to listen to it. We also encountered a couple of small streams on our way, so our shoes and  socks were already wet.
We tried to stop a couple of times and guess our location on the map. By now we had to ignore the leeches climbing up our shoes and socks.
We used the compass to make sure we were heading towards North or North East.
Along the trail, quite a couple of places trees would be blocking the path, but always there was a trail bypassing the fallen tree. Which suggested, they were lying there for a long time. We were walking at a decent pace, looking out for snakes or other wild animals. The most interesting experience of these forests is all the unique sounds that you can listen, various birds and insects making distinct sounds if you keep quite.

One thing was for sure, according to our readings of blogs, the initial walk through the forest was a jeep trail and is very easy. The tough part was supposed to start after we cross the Kabbinale river. But we were already completely confused and not sure which path to take at any diversion and where on the map we were.

At a point I noticed we were walking South, but we ignored it thinking the road could not go straight all the way, and that it would head north very soon.

At last the river...

After a long walk we finally reached the river. We were greatly relieved, the river is the only landmark in this dense forest, which can help us in navigation. All of us sat beside the river stream, for the much needed rest. Now the task was to find out where exactly did we reach. If we were on right path this will be after Kabbinale river splits into Kabbinale and Addahole, otherwise we were somewhere before the river splits.

There was no way for us to be sure where we are. I suspected we have reached Kabbinale river before it splits, because of the direction the river was flowing. But rivers anyway have lots of twists and turns, to get a better view of the river we planned to cross the river. The other bank seems to give a better view of the flowing direction of river. The river was not very strong, the water level was little above our ankle. But the under current was very strong. We had to use our sticks to get a stable hold. Finally all of us crossed the river safely.

The view of the meandering river is awesome, both sides of the river covered with dense forest, with trees hanging on to the river, it looked marvellous. But we were still not sure of our location on the map. Finally we decided to use the gps on Ashok's mobile, even Afzal had a GPS on his camera. Both tried to get the coordniates from their GPS devices. While their devices were searching for satellite signals, we had our breakfast. Goodlife milk with kellogs chocos and some fruits. Enough to fill our empty stomachs.

And then luckily we got gps coordinate from both devices. When we tried to locate it on our maps, we were Astonished. We were completely off track. We were just 6-7 kms from our starting point, much before the point where the river splits. As we were always trying to get closer to the river, and always taking the right deviations on the trail, we had taken some wrong trail and reached the river much earlier than we had planned to. At this point I was both amused and afraid. We had managed to get lost in the forest in the first 7kms of our 21 kms of trek. We thought that reaching the point where Kabbinale splits onto Addahole would be easiest part of the trek, but we were so wrong. Now we were too afraid to continue our trek to OG, without a proper GPS, we were bound to get lost. From this point at least we can trace back our path with the markings we made. Luckily this place had a clear sky view, so we got the GPs readings, otherwise we would have continued walking on a wrong trail without realising where we are going.

The Riverside Exploration

After some discussion we decided to return to the other bank and continue walking for some distance along the Kabbinale river, then camp in the forest for tonight and trace back our path tomorrow. So we had given up our plans to attempt OG, our new objective was to just explore this place.

Dyut and Arghya crossed over to the other side. Suddenly Dyut screamed, he saw an elephant crossing the stream. All of us were excited and tried to get a glimpse, but only Dyut and Arghya were lucky enough. They saw the elephant emerged from the forest and entered the river. Apparently the elephant was completely under the water while crossing, which gave us an idea of how deep the water is just ahead of us.

After this sure sign of elephants being present so near us inside the forest, we continued our journey. This time we walked on a trail just beside the river. River was almost always visible to our right. I have always wanted a trek where we walk beside a river. And this was a dream come true. Sometimes we could see the sky, walking over rocks, and sometimes we had to climb into the dense forest where the vegetation blocked the sky.

Soon we reached what looked like a rocky river bed. We stretched out and relaxed here for sometime. Not that we were tired, but since we did not have a concrete plan of reaching a particular destination. We were much more relaxed. We did not try to hurry, we were enjoying the experience. Often in such treks, when we have a plan to reach a destination, we miss out a lot of fun due to the strict schedule. After some rest we continued our journey.

Whats amazing about this kabbinale forest is that, there is no single trail which you can follow. Quite frequently there were diversions, some trails which went deeper into the forest., but we always chose to keep the river by our side and followed it. In a way this turned out to be a real exploratory trek. But we need atleast 3-4 days to explore this forest. Since we had to get back to Gundya by tomorrow afternoon, we could not afford to get lost inside the forest. So we chose to stay by the river and so that we could backtrack it tomorrow. The river is the only landmark which one can use in these forests to estimate their direction.

The Heavenly Dip

We reached a big rock beside the river. We found a small safe place, where we could sit and bath in the river. This place was safe because it was away from the main flow of the river. The river was sort of cut of into two by a bigger rock ahead of us, and the tinier part of the river was flowing by our rock. Actually these rivers are extremely dangerous, its almost strict rule to never bath here. We only decided to take a dip after checking and cross checking the safety of the place.

Just imagine, the kabbinale  river, dense forest cover on both sides, clouded sky, presence of wild animals, and absence of any human being at least 10-15kms around us, actually you cannot imagine. You are at peace, you are relaxed, at the same time you are excited, and alert. For me, nothing can beat this experience, sound of the flowing river, green trees all around the river as far as you can see. What makes the river more appealing is the sight of the flowing river. You can see upto quite a distance until the river decides to bend around and hide. And knowing that there is so much unexplored region just ahead of you is amazing.

Camping the tents

After finishing the heavenly bath, we had our lunch. It seemed this adventurous trek was turning out into a picnic.
Soon it started to rain. and since we have changed to fresh clothes after bathing, our only set of dry clothes got wet. This place on the rock was a very good camping spot. We decided to camp on the rocks, as we may not find a better place if we move ahead. It was not possible to set up our tents inside the jungle because of abundant leeches, and also there is very little chance of finding a clearing for two tents in the forest. So we cleared up some bushes and set up our tents on the rock. Rest of the evening was uneventful. We spent some time sitting beside the river, gossiping, enjoying its flow and sleeping inside the tents when it was raining.

The Mysterious Intruder

I was awakened from my nap, when Ashok started making some noise from the other tent.
While Dyut, Arghya and myself were in one tent, Ashok and Afzal were in the other tent. It was already dark outside and it was raining continuously. We were startled, both Ashok and afzal say that they heard some footsteps very near to their tent.
Now began the tensed part of our trip. My heart beat increased. There were lots of concerns that we had overlooked in the afternoon.

We were camping beside a river, and animals could come here to drink water. Ashok and Arghya went out with torch and scouted our surroundings for presence of any human or animal, but there was nothing. We were now making plans of how to escape or what to do if attacked by some animal, or atleast what to do if we spot some animal. Everyone was making crazy ideas, like afzal suggested cutting the other side of tent and running away, as if we can outrun them. Mostly the only thing that keeps wild animals at bay in forests is a fire. But that was not possible in this rain. For our satisfaction we kept a torch hanging inside our tent. I have no idea how animals react if they see the light, will it intrigue them and bring them closer for inspection or will they be frightened and go away.
From now on we decided to stay together, so all 5 of us were cramped inside out T3 tent. We had to be alert, everyone tried to listen carefully to any sounds around us. As it was already raining with blowing wind, and a flowing river there was lots of action outside our tent. Every now and then one of us would sit upright and try to explain the source of some strange noise. We were imagining all kinds of things by just our heightened sense of hearing. When we think of it in retrospect, it seems funny, but at that time we were really tensed. Even repenting our decision to come here.

The Underestimated Kabbinale River

This time special planning had gone into our food. We were prepared with packed food, aware that we would not have the luxury of any kind of fire for cooking in this heavy rain. After finishing our dinner we were ready to go to sleep. Till now we didnot go out of our tent because of the non-stop rain.
I went with Afzal out of our tent to fetch something from Afzal's tent. It was already completely dark, and it was still raining. I just wandered close to the river and was really surprised to notice the water level had risen considerably. It was time to panic, I called others outside, everyone was shocked. The river water level was now a serious threat, if it continued to rise, our camping spot, the rock would be flooded. We waited for sometime, estimating at what rate water was rising. We all took out our torches and surveyed the surrounding areas, for possible places from where the river could overflow.

We were camping on a huge rock and the forest was there about 10-20 meters behind us.
And soon our conclusion was that the rock would be flooded within an hour or two, so PANIC. Everyone hurried to prepare their bags, we packed everything from inside the tents into our bags and were ready within 20-30mins. We packed one tent but left other tent as it is. The water level had not risen much in past hour. We left our bags here and went towards the forest to scout for some camping spots. But we were already afraid of getting inside the forest. We were even keeping our feet on the rocks carefully scanning for snakes, leeches and other possibly life threatening creatures. We could not find any safer higher ground, suitable for putting up our camp. The forest is extremely dense, with scarce flat clear ground. And anyway we were warned of deadly snakes in these forests. So venturing inside the forest in this dark night is out of question. During these times all of our new torches came real handy. They were powerful and gave at least some amount of confidence. You cannot afford to miss this important piece of tool. Each and Everyone must have their personal working powerful torches, when we camp at night in these jungles.

Anyway after spending some time standing at the edge of the forest, we realized we cannot move our tent anywhere else. So perhaps we have to spend the night out in the open waiting for the river to flood. By this time it had again started raining. We went to our camping spot and sat on the rock, watching the ferocious river flowing. We spent lots of tensed moments unsure of what to do next, feeling damn cold because of the rain and completely drenched upto our inner-wears. Then we had to make some decision, it would be difficult to spend the entire cold night out in the open, under the rain. We were already watching the river for a couple of hours now, and i think we understood that its not going to overflow after all. It would require huge amount of rain to cause a flash flood, and only then could this rock be possibly drowned. Earlier we were just frightened by the much increased force of flow of the river since morning.
Finally we decided to go inside the tent, and every hour one of us would go out and monitor the water level. All 5 of us slept inside the T3 tent, and every hour one of us would wake up to go and see the water level.

The New Day

Tired and lazy we woke up next day early morning. We were too happy to have survived the ordeal last night. After finishing morning chores and having breakfast, we packed up everything. Now we would follow our trail back to Gundya. I would never forget this place where we camped. Perhaps one of the best places I have camped. The view of fierce Kabbinale river flowing with full force, the dense jungles on both sides, and the unexplored regions as far as you can see along the banks of the river. We took some photos before leaving this place.

We started our trek back on the trail we came yesterday. Last night's heavy rain after-effects were visible on the river. We were actually startled to realize that at one place, the river bed where we were relaxing yesterday, was now completely under water. Most of the jungle had changed overnight.  We did not take chances with exploring new trails. Whenever the trail diverted inside the forest, we came back and followed the river instead. We followed the river till the point where we had crossed it yesterday.

You realize how dangerous this place is in monsoon when we saw that it was literally impossible to cross the river today. Yesterday, we had crossed the river to get a better view of the trail, and after that we crossed it back to return to the trail.
Luckily today we were on the right side of the river, if by chance we had camped on the other side, we would be in serious trouble today. The river flow, its width and depth, everything had increased many-folds. We could not recognize the place until we saw our marks on the trees. We thanked God for our luck, and followed the trail into the forest.

From this point on, we would not be following the river. We had to rely on the sickle marks that we made yesterday. This was another extremely important thing that we did yesterday. We had marked at some points on the trail with a sickle on the trees. Without which it would be extremely difficult to come out of the forest. The important thing is to make some permanent marks, which would survive something like the heavy rain. There were lots of deviations on the trail. We had a lot of difficulty in finding the actual trail, since there were lots of deviations where we didnot mark our route.

This is the same trail which we followed yesterday, but such terrains can change overnight. We had already seen how the river was not comparable to yesterday. Even the forest had changed, with visible destruction by elephants and elephant's dung all along the trail, we were scared. We were lucky to have missed any serious threat from any wildlife in these forests.

Except few places where Afzal and Dyut could identify the trail, we had a really tough time finding the correct trail. We were now thinking we should have made our marks on the trees more frequently.
At one point, we had some clearing, so Ashok and Afzal tried to get their GPS coordinates. After a long wait, finally we had some coordinates, but it was way off on our maps. we were much more west on the map from our trail. It did not make any sense, so either the map was wrong, or the GPS was wrong or we were again lost. Still we had no choice, so we continued following the trail. At some point we found a couple of villagers working in the forest, we were actually relieved to see some signs of civilization. Still we didnot interact with them, since we were illegally inside the Kabbinale Reserve forests. We got past them hurriedly.

Back to civilization

After a long hike, we finally could see the actual point from where our trek started yesterday. We were all so excited to return back to civilization safely. Even few hours earlier, we were not sure where we are, and when can we exit the forest. This is the first time we were so  happy that our trek was over. We were now thinking of all the things that could have gone wrong during this trek. I think we made good decisions, had a good team, and a lot of luck.
After our excitement was reduced, it was time for getting rid of leeches. Since we were wearing leech socks, leeches had climbed up to find a suitable place to bite. so my pants, jacket, rain coat everything was full of leeches. I had several leech bites on my neck and hands and of-course legs. The most challenging task was to get rid of leeches inside our shoes and socks. One leech was hiding inside my shoes, which bit me while returning on the bus.

Finally we had a quick dip in the kabbinale river near the village. Then we called up hiranya to book the return KSRTC bus to Bangalore from Kukke Subramanya online.  We went to Kukke by bus from Gundya check post. We had ample time till evening so explored Kukke, and even went to base of Kumara Parvata.

Lessons Learned

Well definitely the best (mis)adventure till date. Lots of first time experiences. Saved from plenty of possible mishaps. Definitely a new respect for Forests, rivers and the wild. And lastly the burning desire to RETURN to these forests.