Do you know what to expect in a Rain Forest? Well neither did I until I was there and until I experienced it bit by bit, I could recollect every second of my experience.

We started on a rainy June evening from Bangalore we were 3 of us traveling in a bus from Majestic, Bangalore to Agumbe. Prasad, Shaon and I. Prasad and Shaon were my newly made friends, they shared the same passion as I did, wildlife photography and a love for serpents (Snakes). Yes! Where most people do not dare to crawl in, that’s where I do and I got 2 new friends who would do the same. Geared up for the hunt with our cameras, macro lenses (important for snake, reptile, insect photography) and our telephoto zooms we were good to go for the hunt. Our journey was going to take anywhere between 6 to 7 hours down south from Bangalore. In anticipation of the King Cobra and seeing the serpent in the wild I could not get sleep while the rest of my team members where fast asleep, I was busy reading some books and at times tried to take a peek and watch the rainfall outside. One must know for knowledge purposes, that Agumbe receives one of the heaviest rainfalls in the country and could compete Cherapunji with 2,647MM of rainfall just in the month of July.

We reached our destination at 7 am in the morning and our host was waiting at the bus stop to give us a ride deep inside the forest. We were going to be put up at the KCRE reaseach station, which was around 8kms inside the forest (if you want to find out more just type KCRE on Google). The place is headed by a gentleman called Gowrishankar, a very famour herpatologist in India and second after Rom Whitaker. He had immense experience on reptiles, my next 2 days were set to be just awesome. Rainforest in the month of June of course we expected heavy rainfall, however we were welcomed by a kiss of early morning sunshine.

Upon reaching our destination, we kept our gear freshened up, just when we were about to hit the breakfast table, a person reported spotting Vine Snake inside the bush. So of course breakfast did not remain a priority any more, gears were unpacked, with all necessary equipment and all of us were inside the bush. The poor animal must have thought “Wow! for a day I am Leonardo Di’ Caprio” if it had the brains to think, but honestly everyone pounded inside the bushes to get a snap of this beautiful creep.

The picture above could tell you a little story about the beauty. I had clicked some 20 odd photos of this guy and chose to keep this, this was my favorite shot.

Mr. Gowrishankar had to finally intervene to get us back to the breakfast table and leave the animal alone. Needless to say he was not happy with us being so close to the animal, as some of us were 20 MM away from the guy above. Anyways after hearing a mouthful we settled down for breakfast and after filling in our stomach with whatever was left for breakfast (as most of it was finished) we went for our day harping. Now I must tell you, rainforests can have leeches in abundance so if you ever plan a visit to the place, either have well equipments, like a gumboot is absolutely must (protects you from snakebite and leeches) and anti leech socks which are available in the market, having said that leeches could crawl inside your clothes if you give them the slightest of chance. Coming back to our day harping, we could not find snakes but on our way through the forest, we could spot several beautiful creatures, starting from small bugs, snails, frogs (There are 157 species of them in these rainforests of western ghats) their colors are mezmerizing, though a lot of you could think it’s creep! Check out the snaps.

While walking through the forest honestly I was just trying to trace a King Cobra (very difficult to find during the rainy season, as this is the time the female build a nest and protects the eggs and males generally hibernate). After a good walk for close to 2 hours inside the deep forest and by now it was noon, we boys decided to take a dip in the stream flowing through the forest, so quickly got ready and jumped in the stream, the water was chilling down to the bones and I am not exaggerating but it was refreshing after the walk through the humid conditions inside a Rainforest. You have to experience it to understand the conditions, anyways it did not take much time for us to get used to the water and after a few minutes it started out to be real fun, with some of the guys (we met at KCRE) guarding our equipments we were having beautiful time in the water and we refused to come out, till the time it actually started to rain heavily in the interest to protect our camera and gears from getting soaked in the rain.

Well by the time we were back to the KCRE camp, we had taken a double bath and were hungry beyond control, so as soon as we returned lunch was served and we had a wonderful warm lunch with our wet clothes on, put the camera batteries on charge (Phones were not needed, as deep inside the forest anyways there is no network, so you are in a civilized world surrounded by nature) unlike the places we live in! So getting back after lunch we freshened up again and had an afternoon session with Gowrishankar and his team on Snakes, the different species found in Agumbe, the venomous and the non-venomous ones, the session lasted for couple of hours which of course enlightened our knowledge on several aspects, which we had no idea about.

After completing the session we started our trek to the highest peak of the Agumbe forest, it was a very difficult 12 kms trek uphill, in rainy conditions it was all the more difficult because the path was rocky and slippery, one wrong step could easily give you broken bones or a bad injury, worst case a pit viper bite could be a disaster as they are plenty in numbers, we had to keep a watch on the low hanging branches on our way since these are where the vipers generally rest, we unfortunately did not find a single viper through our trek, but once we were up the hill, it was a beautiful sight, with clouds coming down on us and infrequent rainfalls getting us drenched, it was totally worth the effort we took that evening. Unfortunately though we didn’t find even a grasshopper to click and Camera and equipments were mostly in the bag since it was raining and at times it was heavy rainfall.

On our way down Prasad slipped a bit, but he managed to control himself and the last moment, it was scary and a heart stopping moment I must say, there was no more disaster on the way down, we were careful about the branches and by the time we were back, this time a baby Vine snake was spotted and here it is. It was again a beautiful little guy.

We reached KCRE after getting this guy litterally mad at us, the poor guy decided to leave before we did and fortunately Mr. Gowrishankar was no where close this time!

So eventually evening had set in and let me tell you this, Rainforests in dark has its own life and beauty, this could give you a separate kind of a high! With crickets creeking and pitch dark outside, we settled in to watch a couple of documentaries on King Cobra. People who love snakes, will have a separate affection for this species and of course I do needless to say! Though I was tired from the entire day and without much sleep from previous night, I continued to watch both the documentaries, by the time this was over it was 8 in the evening, Dinner was served and after our dinner we went out for Night Harping (Night harping is much needed in Rainforests, since a lot of reptiles and Amphibians are nocturnal species for example, Vipers almost all kind, Malabar gliding frog etc. ), we walked through the forest holding a torch in one hand and camera on the other, the darkness was haunting with a light drizzle and crickets and frogs keeping the forest alive with their sounds. Though the night harping was not very successful on this occasion, since I could get a shot of Malabar Gliding Frog and nothing else, I guess the vipers went separate direction that night or already knew we were coming. Here is a snap of the Malabar gliding frog.

This snap was taken with the torch stuck in my mouth, the light on the frog. My camera had to be manually focused as unfortunately the lens couldn’t focus in low light conditions. This is all the more special as the effort put in, into this was immense! BTW one must be wondering why couldn’t I use flash. To answer that this picture was taken in a manual mode and flashes generally disturb animals and wildlife leading to unprovoked attack or the animal running away from the place. At 10 pm in the night we were back to KCRE camp and by 11 we all were fast asleep in the peaceful environment of the forest in our warm and cozy tents.

The next morning June 17 2018, I remember I woke up to the chirming of the Great Indian Horbill, unfortunately I could not get a good shot of the bird, due to the overcast conditions. Let’s come back to the more interesting bit of my waking up, I woke up and there were birds chirming all around as we were in the middle of a rain forest, I was trying to hurriedly get out of my tent, I opened the zipper of the tent and there I found a juvenile Indian Cobra resting in front of my tent. I tried to check if there is an alternative method to get out of there, but our dear Cobra was in no mood to oblige with me, since it was already raining outside I guess it did not want to get drenched. Next thing I did was, I called Shaon, he was occupying the tent next to me and told him about the problem, he got out of the tent and with all might tried to shew it away, then came the even more beautiful part of the scene, provoked the unhappy Cobra opened it’s hood, though it was not a big one but a snake that juvenile with hood opened and hissing, just looked marvellous, only our cameras were kept with our luggage at the common area and most of us had put the battery on charge, else we would have certainly taken a few snaps. The morning adventure was nice, while we were busy watching the Cobra a few other guys appeared there who were residing in other tents and this might have disturbed the poor little guy and off she went out in the rain. Here one must understand that snakes have nothing against the human being, it opens the hood to warn the victim of the upcoming danger, when cornered with a huge hissing sound, still if you provoke the creature it will bite with no options left. One must also know that snake venoms are basically their saliva with a complex protien content, it helps in digesting their prey and snakes generally hate to use this protein on other animals that are not their prey. So most Cobra bites are actually dry bites, unless of course you are bitten by a Juvenile snake, that wouldn’t know about dry bites. Additionally Juvenile snakes have very potent venom and could kill an adult instantaneously.

With the Cobra now gone we got up and freshened up quickly and got back to hut had breakfast and decided to go in search of a King Cobra nest, generally finding a nest is extremely difficult and it is deep inside forest. Shaon, Prasad and I decided we were going to get deep inside the forest and try to locate nest, BTW if you are interested watch a documentary of Rom Whitaker on YouTube published by the National Geographic Channel on King Cobra, he states that in his 2 decades of research he found only 4 King Cobra nests and Rom Whitaker researches primarily on King Cobra. Even Gowrishankar did not mention about finding too many of these nests, anyways having said that we left for the jungle and this time we did not take a guide with us since those parts are forbidden and we were not supposed to be there. Who cares, we went on the path all geared up, took a few snaps of some frog species and were looking for nests, this particular place was covered with trees and was dark with already overcast conditions, so at times we had to use torch lights, to our tough luck we could not find a nest but we were infested by leeches, leeches entered the boots, inside T-shirts, so by the time this trek was over we were removing leeches from each others body. These creeps are horrible, they could get in and start sucking on blood without a person knowing about it, and once removed you would continue to bleed for sometime as leeches disable a clotting agent of our blood with a chemical in their saliva. Anyways after getting rid of these creeps, we were back on the road and decided to do some bird photography and went to a beautiful part of the forest where we found birds, though this was not the birding season, we found a few jungle barbets and bulbul species, which was a consolation for us after that heck of a trek. Here are some photos, infact I found a beautiful cartepillar.

The morning ended on a good note, after a hearty lunch back at our camp, it was time to rest a bit as we had eaten too much. Mr. Gowrishankar meanwhile was kind enough to show us a unexpected thing, he had rescued a few Cobra eggs a few weeks back and they were hatching, to our great joy we saw a kiddo Indian Cobra hatching out of the egg, since we were only 3 of us, we had a lot of time to sit and watch, with strict instructions of no photography. It was an experience in itself, all this while I had seen such scenes on National Geographic Channel and couldn’t believe I was watching it sitting in middle of a Rainforest. With this done, finally the Sun had shown up on the rain forest for a bit, we once again went out for Birding, in the afternoon, but could not find many species, we spent around 3 hours roaming the forest and it was 5.30 pm when we returned to the camp. Packed our bags had tea as we were drenched in rain multiple times. Spend some time reflecting on our photography, and 7 pm we left for the bus stop. That marked an end to a wonderful weekend spent in the Rainforests of western ghat and by 8.30 in the evening we were on the bus on our way home, with Mr. Gowrishankar traveling with us, we had a nice time chatting till late in the night and it was an experience in itself.