Coorg Diary: A Trek to Nandi Betta

In my wildest imaginations, I dream of wandering wild places, untouched or scantily touched by human presence-unspoilt, virgin landscapes of dry, golden, desert sands, dense, dark forests, high hills with round views from pinnacle, oceans turquoise to deep navy, extending to infinity.

All Coorg imaginations were green and blue, of shrouded cobalt hills, rolling lilac mists, green wet, growth, at the underfoot, besides me, around me, in my eyes, nostrils, moistness on my skin. I wanted to experience a Coorg that was non-peopled, where elephant herds roamed, wildcats ruled, a land of beasts and birds, butterflies and moths, an abundance of insect world-I wanted a forest trek.

We walked in a single file, through a narrow, beaten, barely visible path, a line of mostly strangers and I-walking a fast pace, brushing past overgrown bush, trees, ferns, stone jumping creeks, balancing logs stretched across bogs, fast, focussed, attentively moving. This was not what I had imagined, but this was real, more real, as were the leeches reaching out towards us from blades of grass, leaves, an occasional branch, ever present, ready, in their bid for survival, to grab warm blood, to suck, to live and propagate. We walked in a voiceless file, with brushes made of a particular tree bark, to flick away the suckers at every rock surface we stepped on;pausing anywhere else was out of question. And, we climbed as we walked, in short steep stretches, slippery in a wet, shiny, clayey way till the trees thinned out to tall grass and flowers, only blue-purple flowers on round bushes, all around, everywhere the eye fell. The ceiling had changed from overhanging many tiered trees and was now a dark, leaded sky-a feeling of space, our smallness, till we were at the edge-of the world. A ledge looking into a blanket, a blankness of being the sky-rolling fluff around, colorless, moist on us, and soft series of gray beyond...we were on Nandi Betta.

First things first, immediately unlacing the shoes, removing the socks, checking if the suckers had got to our insides-most of us had escaped unharmed. Tentative exploring the ledge, the edge, peering to view the beyond. A small fire to the rain gods, for the rains have been less, or should be more, to help the farmers. Huddling around, soft conversation, quiet bantering, some snacks. Then the clouds clear-we view Eden across - steep mountains, thickly forested-Brahmagiri National Park. Silver vertical lines glitter unbelievably, three waterfalls.A white river snakes below in a deep ravine, viewed in bits and pieces between torn clouds, for a glimpse, now there, now gone, of paradise lost.