The Bandajje Abbi - a memorable experience

The first time I saw this beautiful falls was from GadiKal fort. It looked beautiful and immediately generated an interest in me to go to the falls.
This is beautiful falls, near BeltangaDi. The name "Bandajje Abbi" literally means Bandajje falls. This falls is some 4 km into the forest from the last house in Bandaje village. Its known for a lot of trekkers getting lost in the wilderness.
I wanted to see the falls, so 4 of us - Gopi, Muddu, Naveen and I... set out on the 2 motor bikes from our college at an early hour - 6:00 am, of 26th Jan 2005, to be more precise. We made our journey from our college to Beltangadi via moodubidre, we had out morning Tiffin here. We then set to reach Bandajje once we finished our Tiffin. From Beltangadi we have to move to Ujire, from ther we have to go to a village called Mundaje, take a left turn here and then we go to Bandajje village.
We reached Bandajje at around 9:30 am. We parked our bike at Mr Narayan Gouda's home. He is a very nice person, gave us some necessary information to proceed. In case you can get a guide from his home there is nothing better than that. We could not get one so we proceeded to go to the falls on our own.
Just some time after his home we get a deviation, most of the trekkers get lost in their route as they take a wrong deviation here, a assistance from the locals set us on the right path.
We then thanked the person who came till the last house on the route and continued on in the direction shown. Its around 2 and half hours of trek to the falls, from this point. We started off on the trek expecting we would reach the falls in some 1 and half hours, we continued trekking though the forest we found a peaceful path, there was no disturbance, occasionally we could hear the sound of the waterfall... some birds singing all the way; thatz all we heard and nothing else.
On the way to the falls we find a lot of small streams criss crossing our path. We don’t have to worry about these. Just continue walking further. We reached the main stream at 12 noon. We took some rest before we started some rock climbing along the stream to get as close to the falls as possible, we did this climbing for some 45 min then we reached a small distance away from the base of the falls. We could see the falls majestic an beautiful right in front of us. All except me had their bath in this stream that was flowing, form this falls on the opposite side we get a panoramic view of Beltangadi, GadaiKal fort and the surrounding areas. We savored this for a while, and then decided to take some rest before we would start trekking back.
We started to trek back at 1:30 pm, after descending some distance we realized that, none of us recalled the route back to the village. What till then seemed to be an easy trek to do all of a sudden turned into a night mare. We spent some time searching to see if we could get some path in the forest, but when we turn back... it was like - "there is no path, how did we come here then? All the directions look the same".
After some time we decided that we can’t do it this way, let’s choose the opposite direction in which we came and expect we reach before dusk. We tried this, but then we only seemed to reach into the deeper part of the Jungle. I was now getting dark (thanks to the tall trees there is a lot of shade, but now the same trees where making our return almost impossible.)
The other thing that was troubling us was our food reserves, expecting that we could make back by 2pm we had not got packed food along with us, we had 2 liters of water with us when we started back from the falls, but the humidity of the forest was just too high to contain the water within our body... So this was exhausted in no time.
We realized in some time that it would be impossible to get out before dark, with all the resources we had - the mobile lights!!! (Ah what an alternative???). So we resigned to the fact that we had to spend our night in this dense forest. We came up with a contingency plan... we had to first find a place where we could rest for the night, then have a good sleep so that we could conserve our energy for the next day.
After some small quest of half an hour, we reached a spot; which we thought was safe (don’t know if it was actually safe.); Gracious God! it was safe at least for that night. Now when I think back upon it.. I look at what all possibilities where there that night (snakes? poisonous scorpions, what about elephants? wild animals like tiger! leopards!!). Our survival that day was a pure chance - no doubts about that.
It was a full moon that night; we all slept quite early that day 6:30 pm. I am sure we were so tiered that we had to rest; we went into deep slumber almost instantaneously. The location that was chose was a slope region, so we used to slide down and then rest on some plant's root that was down there. I used to wake up when I hit the root then would realign my position, this continued on till morning 6:00 am.
I was done with my sleep, and waiting for the other so wake up. I could hear a bird or some thing ---> that blew a whistle very close to the way humans whistle. Slowly the sound got more distinct an clear; slowly all of us woke up; for some time all of us believed that, some one had come searching for us... thinking about this we started whistling back, to guide the sound in our direction, the sound came more close, got more clearer. Assuming it to be a human, we shouted out... Its then that we realized it was a bird (definitely non human!!!).
We waited for some more time at the same place, just to ensure that we had sufficient light to move ahead. Around 7 am we had sufficient light to see around clearly. We not sat for some time and thought what was the option that we had to make it out of this forest maze!( ya a maze, thatz what it was almost - you know you have to get out, but don’t have the route, all sides you find only trees.).
Naveen was an ace tree climber, we asked him to climb and look if he could spot any village in the distance... No result... So then we had to brainstorm again. We decide that we would go to the nearest peak and try searching for a village from there; once we spot it we would just go down in that direction... come what may!!! (ya, thatz important for us, we don’t want to confuse with the direction.)
We trekked for some time towards the peak, and lo all of a sudden we hear a phone ring (ah!! at least now we have this hope!!! in case we get lost we can call for help from our friends back in college.). Well we wanted to put in our effort. Ones at the peak we spotted the Bandajje village - having seen it, we said to each other. We know we have the village in that direction, we just have to make sure we follow that direction so that we reach the village.
We started walking down, some times running down in the slopes, some places we had minor ridges which we slid down, at other places we got down with some creepers that grew around, all the while ensuring that we maintained the direction of the village (we thought this was the only way of our immediate exit from the forest.)
After 1 had half hour of such a trek down the ridges and slopes we spotted cow dung!! oh and many of them, we continued a little further and found a few foot-routes on the ground, still not worrying about the routes we just continued in the route that was in alignment with our direction.
At 9:30 we reached a house beside the mud path - we asked them for water, they gave us water but ah!! What is this? We could not swallow even a single drop of water!! yes we had been without water for 7pm the earlier night, so our thoughts were all dry, making it difficult to gulp even water, still we were very thirsty. We just had some water, asked them for direction and then finally landed at Mr Gowda's home at 10:30.
We just had some rest and when we told them that we would leave now, they got us some idlis and tea. My thought was almost gone so could not eat many idli's, but the tea - it was simply superb. I don’t know it was the way in which they prepared it or was it because we were damn hungry - It just tasted superb. I have never tasted a much better tea than that one till date.
After this we, thanked them for all the food and place for parking and bid them adieu.
We reached college at 1:00 pm. We had missed classes that day, but were happy we reached the hostel safe. After this we had a lot of queries from our friends, about our experience.
Now when I look back on this incident, a mild shiver runs though my spine... I appreciate the guts we had, the cool head on the shoulders that we maintained, Its a lesson for life. I leant, "how ever sophisticated man might be, he is insignificant in front of nature". - You just can’t deny this.