The toughest terrains, very often leads you to the most rustic and natural splendors. (Is that also the way LIFE operates?)
Nestled in the woods of Western Ghats in Kirtigadde, the Dodmane forest range, hides a precious pearl in the deep seas of natural splendor, away from prying and lurking human eyes.
27 kms from the coastal town of Kumta, Karnataka, this four km rugged trek in the forests overwhelms the nature-bug with cool air, green facades, tall trees, small leaves, some thorns and steep paths. Some silence and some rustle of the leaves on the trees and a hustle of the leaves beneath your feet...
That unusual deep echo that swallows the enormous forest, is of the mighty 'Woodpecker' (I learn and see) pecking … The woodpecker-bugger’s deed exactly goes into five solid beak-peeks into the hollow woods of aged trees to feast on the worms inside of it. While you follow you’re the sound and your’e eyes are delirious to spot the clandestine creature, the sun manifests in omnipresence felt through every ray of light that penetrates the forest and floods it off the otherwise nescience it’s engulfed by.
Huliya, a local tribe and our very interesting guide, grew up around this forest. He knows its nook and cranny and walks the forest like its his home... he makes around 50,000 from whatever he manages to pinch off the forest- honey, curative herbs and some spices etc. Local liquor enchants Huliya’s tongue much like the addictive beetlenut and supari he chomps on. We stop by his brother's home in the middle of the forest! Its aesthetics thrill me- that thatched roof and the indigenous home paraphernalia: the rug, lamp, cot, areca nutcase, the staircase, that stack of cane (soon to be weaved into baskets), the honey-making pot hanging outside the hut… the immaculate painting around the auspicious tulsi plant at the porch of the abode and the sweet hospitality, show just what a different world the people of the wild live in.
Soaking and basking in the MOMENTS, I learn how to hoot in the forest, which is a communication protocol, letting your camarade ahead of you know that your'e on the way. He must do so if he hears it... it means you’re together and all's well.
Once you touch the floor of the forest... you see the river flowing, gracefully yet wildly.
And there starts the second lap of the trek...by the river bed... a bed of rocks.
The sound of the leaves, the beak-peeks make way for the sometimes gushing and sometimes trickling water... making you feel you belong to it. You walk against the course of the water. (So, the water runs past you giving you a surreal feeling of going against the tide, walking back in time, of turning things around, like your going back in time to find something you might have forgotten)
The walk on the rockbed... ends with the graceful Mukti Falls surrendering its course of journey to the river. And I plonk on the rock like a nomad who finds solace in the wilderness, like a yogi in pursuit of liberation.
You can sit and gaze at her, you can sleep and stare at her… she’s all over you (am referring to the waterfall, if you're wondering ;)
The waterfall surrenders to a pool that cordons the waterfalls and the rocks that I sit on.
The pool drifts to the future course of the waterfall… gushing into rocks and paths that humbly wear off, making way for the never changing, ever new, water- the elixir of the earth.
