Armane Gudda, the name depicts a picture of prohibited, inaccessible, deadly and lethal jungle to me. Forest department does not give permission due to naxal issues. Stories like, there are tribes who sacrifice human till date, weed cultivation etc. made it more interesting. But above all this place is simply the best, a heaven on earth. It was my dream to be there since 2011 and now the dream came true.
Trek Route: A beautiful village 50Kms from Sakaleshpura > Kaginahare > Railway track > Shiradi ghat Jungle > Kempuhole River (climbing parallel to NH) > Armane gudda > Armanegudda range of hills and valleys > Exit at NH. And it was really a difficult and long route. Total distance we trekked was 35kms. The terrain was quite steep. Some of the places were slippery and also leeches were active. Imagine this is the situation in Feb, what it could be in monsoon?
The team:
Gururaj B S, myself, Swaroop Gopal, Aravind Kumar, Usha Maradi and Sushruth Kulkarni.
15th Feb: We left Bangalore by 10:30. There were weather forecast that its gonna rain on Thursday and Firday. So we all were happy. Most of the treks I do carry rain gear, but I dont know why I felt to not carry it this time. When we reached Haasaan, it was raining heavily. Swaroop told "dont worry we are trekking 100Kms away from here". We reached Sakaleshpura bu 3:30 AM. Our vehicle was crossing Sakaleshpura town, all of a sudden a Cat crossed our way from the left to right. We went ahead considering it just a coincidence.
16th Feb: We reached the village by 7 AM. Went to our guide's house, where we got refreshed quickly. Met his mother, she welcomed us with nice black tea.
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| In front of our guide's house... |
The guide asked us to board the vehicle and took us to his friend's (who joined us as a second guide) house where we finished our breakfast with nice Kadubu and delicious Coconut chutney. Packed our lunch with Anna Sambar and boarded the vehicle. We halted to buy some raw material for dinner. Our guide decided to take 5kgs of rice. I was shocked. He said they need at least one and half kg of rice each. Somehow I got him convinced to buy only 3kgs of rice. Soon we left for Kaginahare, our trek start point.
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| Our trek start point...awesome Shiradi Ghat view |
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| Ready to march |
And we started the trek. From here we started descending towards jungles of Shiradi ghat.
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| Descending through the Shiradi jungle |
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| And getting out of the jungle to the railway track |
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| Walked on the track before entering into the jungle again from the other side |
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| We ate some lovely little flowers |
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| And we reentering the jungle towards Kempuhole |
Here we reentered the jungle and continue descending. There was no trail nothing. We were moving ahead holding the trees. All of a sudden I saw a tree falling down. Swaroop and Usha got a narrow escape. It hit their head and shoulder. But fortunately nothing major happened. Thank God. In such a situation we take support on trees without knowing the tree is dead. And its dangerous.
Somewhere on the way all of a sudden guide told us to keep quite, although we were more or less silent. He sensed the presence of an Elephant nearby, but we could not see. Its truly said that, when you are in jungle you are being watched by animals but you cant see them.
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| Finally we reached Kempuhole, where we took a break and finished our lunch |
Here our second guide shared a real horrific experience, while camping with forest guards. They were in deep sleep. All of a sudden one of them got up and saw an Elephant is standing next to them. Some how they managed to get off the jumbo from there. The Elephant was escaping towards NH crossing Kempuhole. But the NH was full of vehicle and the Elephant again came their side and these guys ran off quickly. They had a narrow escape.
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| And continued walking alongside Kempuhole |
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| At some point we crossed Kempuhole |
At some point we crossed Kempuhole and reached near to NH. But we were inside the jungle and could hear only the vehicle sound. I was really getting irritated by the honking sound of the vehicles and was wandering what could be the state of the animals who live hear. Ohhh God! why did you give so much of intelligence to human being?
We went ahead and slowly got inside the dense forest land and started ascending very steep terrain. I stopped clicking and saved my energy to keep climbing. I thought it would be like another KP trek or Bandaje trek or Narasimha Parvatha trek, where you reach the grassland and steep climb gets over soon. But soon I found I was completely wrong.
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| And we reached the grassland by 3:30 PM, and thought that climb will get over soon. |
We kept climbing one peak after another. And it was getting cloudy making us scared. Guide alerted us to move fast, otherwise we wont be able to reach to the camping place which is down the valley and inside the jungle. To reach there we had to continue ascending. We were almost worn out all the energy. But mother nature was really blissful to us as it was not a scorching sunny afternoon, otherwise it would have been really pathetic to climb.
Somewhere around 4PM it started drizzling. I took my camera inside and continues ascending. After 15-20 minutes it stopped. We thought great. But again it started raining and it was not a drizzle. I remember, we were climbing up up and up and it continued raining.
After a continuous ascent of around three hours we reached the top and it was getting dark. It was cloudy but stopped raining.
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| it was getting dark |
It was around 6PM and Sun was about to set. But we were quite late and could not spend some time witnessing the awesome sunset from the top. We kept moving ahead. I could not control myself capturing few of those golden moments of Sun set with clouds surrounding .
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| Sunset |
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| Cloud surrounding |
We had to descend to reach the camping place inside the jungle.
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| We moved on |
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Descending towards the valley to the campsite inside jungle, fortunately our guide did not ask us to climb the peak visible from here....
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| The dark fall... |
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| And we are entering to the campsite inside the dense forest |
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| Our cocking spot was next to this stream |
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| Cooking in progress |
Both the guides got quickly involved in putting up the camp fire, cooking fire, making the campsite and started cooking. I am really thankful to both of them and appreciate their effort. We assisted them in doing some or the other activities. I am also thankful to all the participants for their active involvement.
Our campsite was little up from this place.
By 9 PM we were done with dinner and ready to sleep. All of us were little uncomfortable about the place where we were camping as the ground was covered with dry leaves and all of us spotted leeches. I saw one leech on my sleeping mat and removed, but this left me quite uncomfortable. Quickly, all opened the sleeping bag and tried to zip off. Soon most of us fall asleep. The campfire was on. We had to keep it on though out the night so as to keep any wild animals away. Sometimes I got up and found the fire was getting low and put some fire wood. Soon our guide joined us and put some big logs. They were carrying tarpaulin. But we did not have any rain gear. We were happy that it was not at all raining. By 1:30 AM it started drizzling and drizzle slowly turned into rain. Our guide called us to take shelter under the tarpaulin. After 15-20 minutes it stopped and we went back to sleep. But ohh God again at 3:30 AM it started raining heavily but not downpour. We came back to the tarpaulin shelter. And it continued till morning, sometimes drizzling and sometimes more than drizzle. We slept under the tarpaulin.
