9 Gudda: Beginning

Prologue:

Bharath and his friends reached that point of the river where they cannot go any further. Unfortunately, lack of GPS has hurt them bad. Inside the deep jungle and nowhere to go, multiple suggestions started to come by. Finally they all agreed to climb a small hill next to the river stream and check if they see any path or destination from there, only to find out dense forest as long as eyes can see. Dense and green with thousands of unseen insects and no traces of human interference. They knew only one path from there. The path they had traced till now. Going forward would have been a risk. Just when they were about turn back, one more group arrived at the scene who has GPS. Bharath and friends completed the rest of the trek with other group without much incidents. That was what Bharath thought. Couple of days later, he observed small blisters on his body. One on his leg and one more on his hand. He neglected it. 2 days passed by. Now he saw some black colored object inside those small blisters. When he observed closely, he found out that it was a small insect inside his skin! There were two! On of them dead(unborn) and the second one when touched jumped off and started to inspect the place. Afraid Bharath went to a doctor who assured him he is safe and if there were any more insects inside him, would have come out by now. Bharath thought some insect might have laid eggs inside his skin during his trek of 9 Gudda.

2 years later

Bharath is still doing fine with no more traces of that insect.

With a midweek holiday in last week of Jan, I thought of going for long pending trek. Kumara Parvata was our last trek and more than an year had passed by since the last trek. Shashi had been to ‘9 Gudda’ last month. With lots of accolades heard about ‘9 Gudda’, decided to go for ‘9 Gudda’ trek. Roped in Shashi first to guide our team forward with his experience. And then started recruitment process for candidates for this trek. Mails were sent, phone calls were made, and with initial hiccups, finally there were 11 people ready for the trek. Interestingly @ a point there were only 4 people ready and confirmed for the trek and VK warned me that this kind of trek requires more people(so true).

Two days before the travel date me and Deesu went to Decathlon to check out compass and GPS. Ended up buying tents, sleeping bags and trekking shoes along with compass. But most of did not have trekking bags. Thanks to Moksh and Vijey, we were able to arrange few. Sleeping bags and sleeping mats for the rest were hired.

Barely minutes before ‘take off’ , Kalyan had to drop due to some personal reasons. Now we were 10 people. By the time we reached the starting point of our journey in Bangalore dodging Friday evening’s traffic, it was almost 11. Took some 30 minutes (or more…) to load the luggage to TT. Finally 10 people in TT were on their way from Bangalore for ‘9 Gudda’ trek. Couple of us were yet to have Dinner and most of the ‘Dhaba’ on highway were closed. Finally after checking out several dhabas we found one where we had delicious roti and sabji. It was now time to sleep like good boys in TT. But music in TT and bad road kept most of us awake . Around 6 AM (Day1) we reached Gundya checkpost. It was still dark. We decided to sleep till sun comes out.

Few minutes later, after packing our stuffs, we climbed back our TT to reach our starting point of the trek. After couple of ‘clicks’ our trek started. Fear that my back ache will do the spoil sport was always there. Now was the time for briefing! And introduction to the group. 10 of us. Me,Sunil(deesu),Nitin,Shashi,Chandra,Narayan(kummi),Kartik,Jeevan,Sharan,Bipin. Shashi did a briefing based on his experience. His own words ….

“ The trek is not going to be easy. There might be some wild animals in the forest. On the sight of any wild animal we need to stand still where ever we are (?? Shashi have u seen Jurassic Park movie? Part 3 to be specific). Do not throw plastic and papers. Be careful about snakes (there are some pit vipers there it seems). On the sight of Elephant/s, our trek will end.”

Everyone nodded their heads and Shashi started with his usual speed. He was thin and has less weight to carry apart from the packed stuffs. Same was not the case with all! It was decided that Shashi will be the leader and Deesu will be the sweeper. Initial few minutes of trek(walk??) passed through farms without any incident. Just before entering the forest, there was a small ditch which we had to jump and cross. First four people crossed it without any problems. When my turn arrived, I made sure not to give any sudden jerk to my back. Next to me was Jeevan. When he jumped over the ditch, he stopped at that instant and dropped the backpack on the ground. I thought he hurt his back. His back was actually fine. When he jumped, his back was with him, but backpack gave away. It failed to take the weight and somehow was managing his walk. But when he jumped, physics kicked in and jerk increased the weight momentarily and the one of the shoulder strap of backpack ‘broke up’ with the bag. I thought we should give strap and bag some more time to understand each other and suggested putting the bag back in the cab and pick a new bag, but Deesu played forced cupid and tied the strap and bag with a rope. We would later find out that the bag was really bad in relationships. (Two lessons here! Carry a good backpack where each and every part of the backpack gel with each other very well and keep their relationship intact for entire journey(trek)and be careful while jumping with a weight of 10 kg on your back)

After the minor bag incident, we continued our journey. Moments later I felt something crawling under the socks. Instantly I knew what it was! Surprisingly no one felt that till then. We were under attack!

Coming Up in part 2 : a nice 'swim', a steep climb,bush crafting, 'hoda putta,banda putta', change of plans, learn using GPS, plans to abort, unexpected beauty, camp site.