I am not new to mis(adventure), but this particular report I am writing is a new experience for me because, it was wife's first (mis)adventure and hence the title. Getting lost in the jungle - oh that's nothing new. It is so common amongst the guys who love the jungle. Trekkers would feel "lost" if they don't lose their path at least once during their trek. I have been lost on a couple of occasions before during my trek to Bandaje falls and Arishina gundi falls (from kodachadri). You must be still wondering what I am talking about. Well, here it goes...

I am one of those guys who wouldn't prefer to go on picnics. Some people call me a "juglee", as I prefer to be in the jungles more often than in the city. But my wife prefers to be more in the cities (the PVRs, INOXs, the so called shopping malls of Bangalore) and likes more pleasure trips. So during Nov 2005, my wife (Sandhya) and me decided to have one of the pleasure trips. We had Sanjay and his dentist wife Deepa for company. After quite a bit of debating on where to go, it was decided that we would go to Jog falls and from there to Yana, Gokarna and then come back to Bangalore. The plan was all set and we booked the hotels in Shimoga and Sirsi. It was decided that we would leave Bangalore on Friday afternoon and stay in Shimoga for the night. The next day we were to leave for Jog falls and then head for Sirsi to see Yana, Unchalli falls and then head towards Bangalore on Sunday via Gokarna. The mode of transport was Sanjay's beautiful Wagon R. Sanjay was the only one amongst us who could drive.

As per our plan, we left Bangalore on time to reach Shimoga by night. We had a wonderful dinner and went to bed. Again as per our plan (at the later part of the report, I wouldn't be referring to any plans) we left Shimoga and headed to Jog the next day morning. The roads were pretty good except for a few bad stretches. We stopped for a quick breakfast at Sagar. We cruised well to reach Jog falls. Sanjay was having a great time on the steering. Luckily for us, there were not many tourists, but unluckily for us, there wasn't much water in falls. It was quite a disappointing sight. But it did not dampen my spirits from clicking quite a lot of photos (I have clicked more than 5000 photos in less than 6 months on my digital camera). I had found a fancy for clicking B&W photos. The weather was quite hot and humid. It had been raining almost every day in this region. The weather was explained owing to the proximity to the ocean.

We left Jog and reached Sirsi by lunchtime. We decided to leave Sanjay's car at the hotel and hire a taxi to see Yana and Gokarna. After a quick shower on a hot Saturday afternoon, and a decent lunch, we started in the taxi towards Yana. All this was according to our plan. What happened from here onwards was unplanned.

We left Sirsi at 3.00 P.M. We were expected to reach Yana by 4.00 P.M. We were told that the car would go up to 0.5 KM from Yana. We had decided that we spend a little time and then go to Gokarna for watching the sunset. Now we took off the main road and the driver stopped the car as we had reached the end of the motorable road. As we were at the end of monsoon season, the route further was damaged with fallen trees and big trenches. The driver asked us walk up to Yana, which was a good 3 KM walk on a bad/steep jeep track. It was the first jungle trek experience for my 3 companions. Sandhya was already making faces. She showed her displeasure for walking. She expected a more relaxed trip and I had exposed her to the jungle on a very cloudy evening. And I very well knew that she hates walking. Sanjay too had started grumbling. Deepa was however a little enthusiastic and was the first to start off walking. Cursing my luck, as I would have to face everyone's wrath for making them walk, I too followed them. Actually, I was feeling happy that I finally could force my wife to trek and trekking is something I love. To my surprise, no one complained. Sandhya seemed to enjoy the walk. We being the newly wed couple enjoyed walking holding hands and helping each other on the bad road.

leeches - the most expected friend on any trek was there to welcome us, waiting to feast. And there were a lot of them and they meant business. It was the first experience of leeches for Sandhya and Sanjay. I told everyone that if they stopped to remove the leeches, there would be atleast 10 more that would get on them. Sanjay seemed to be least bothered about the leeches. He started telling everyone that 'after all they are going to suck 3-4 ml of blood so don't worry'. The road seemed to never end. I was enjoying the forest sounds. After a couple of kms, we reached a small stream. There was not a single soul on that route, inspite of Yana being a popular tourist destination. There were a lot of fallen trees. We had to creep below a few and get off the jeep track on a few occasions. The locals say that this was not the right season for the tourist to visit this place as the road was bad and there were lot of leeches due to the humid/rainy weather. People say that summer would be the best season to visit the place, as there would be very few or may be no leeches. But, I preferred this time, as there would be fewer tourists. The reason I hate tourist destination is because people make a lot of noise and litter the place. I could see a lot of plastic en-route. As we were crossing the stream, we could hear group of people coming towards us. After a good trek, stopping in between for some rest and some photographs, we reached Yana after one hour. Yana is famous for some beautiful caves rock formations. The first sight of rocks made everyone forget all the leeches and the leg pain. Everybody got busy removing their shoe to clean up the leeches and I got busy with my camera. I shot some videos where Sanjay, Deepa and Sandhya were busy removing the leeches from their shoe. There was a discussion on how to kill the leeches and why there should not be temples at some really beautiful places.

Suddenly someone mentioned a cave temple at Yana. Till then I had not realized that there was a temple at this place. It was getting quite dark and the there were more dark clouds. We decided that we would quickly go to the temple and head backwards to the taxi before it started raining. The priest inside the temple informed us that we could go around the temple to see the real beauty of the Yana caves. We took fifteen minutes to go around the temple as most of the time was spent clicking photos and deciding if we should really go around the temple. By the time we came back towards the temple main gate, all other visitors had left.

After taking one last group photo, we started heading back towards the taxi. By now, everyone had got used to the leeches and fatigue. The only goal was to reach Sirsi for a good rest. After walking back for 0.5 km back, we saw that the road forked. We were now debating which way to take. Both roads were looking quite prominent. Decisions had to be taken quickly as we were losing sunlight and the clouds were thickening. It was decided that we would take one of the roads to see if we could reach the stream that we crossed earlier. We randomly chose one of the roads and started walking. After a short distance, we felt that we (?) were on the wrong route. Everyone assembled together for another quick discussion. Everyone agreed that they didn't remember taking this route earlier. One of facts often neglected during treks is people failing to notice the surroundings. For a few people walking on heads down to reach the destination is the sole motto during treks. They forget to stop by and admire the nature's beauty and to mark the route. Needless to say that we were one such group. Unable to decide what to do, we headed back to take the other route. After a few minutes on the other track, we landed at another fork. This time, it was easier to decide which road to take. We took the more prominent road. After covering a KM, we realized that we were definitely on the wrong route, as we had not reached the stream. Not sure if the earlier route was the correct one, we decided to continue on this route as we were sure that this route would lead us to some place safe (either a village or a main road). But the tension had started creeping in everyone's minds – “The feeling of being lost in the jungle”. Sandhya had started fearing about being eaten by wild animals. Little did she know that the mankind had killed all the animals in the wild? In the last 6 years, the only carnivore I have ever come across is a fox in Orissa, which ran away after spotting us. Many people think that the only thing that the wild animals do in the jungle is attack and feast. In fact these animals are equally afraid of us, and would prefer to get away from sight quickly (source Kenneth Anderson's novels).

We were losing light quickly. We had to walk fast to reach some safety, but the fatigue factor was showing its effect. I was some how very confident that we would definitely reach somewhere safe, and if not go and stay back at the temple in Yana. Now there was almost no light and we hit a final fork. We were now clueless about what to do next. I had a torch with me, which I pulled out of my bag. But the battery was low and I had to pull out the cells from my camera. In the pitch darkness, we flashed the torch in the two directions. Both the roads looked quite dense with jungle growth. There was no clear path ahead. After a quick discussion, we decided that we would head back to Yana. I was now very sure that we would spend the night at the temple, but the others were hoping against hope that the priest at the temple would take us back to some village. No one wanted to discuss the fact that the priest would have already left the place, though everyone was thinking about the same. Then it started raining. None of us had any sort of rain protection. We quickly pulled out all our cameras, cell phones and put them all in a plastic bag and put it in my small backpack. Now we were all holding hands and marching towards the temple thinking about all the worst possibilities. I was holding sandhya's hand and in the other a torch and showing the way. We could see a lot of glowing objects on either side of the jeep track. We wanted to believe that they were fireflies (jugnus). We were now almost close to the temple at Yana when Deepa hit a broken tree and hurt her leg. But at that time, she was least bothered about the pain and we finally reached the temple at 7.45 P.M. Being quite used to such situations, I decided to go ahead and look for some shelter. The rain was quite heavy now. After leaving my three companions under some shelter, I went to check if the temple was open and if the priest would be around. As I had guessed earlier, the search was useless. The temple was locked and the priest had left. After informing others about my findings, I decided to explore around the temple, when others patiently waited for me in the dark. The temple had a few rooms attached to it. After some investigation, I found that all the doors were locked. I was now getting worried, of course not about the jungle and the night ahead, but about the wrath of my wife's anger. After all, I knew that she would blame me for everything (she later surprised me by not talking anything bad about the trip). Well, I guess the luck was on our side (at least a little), I found one of the rooms with a door 6 ft high and a 1ft gap above it. I jumped on the door to reach the opening on the top and then put my head in the gap. Now my half body was inside the door and my leg dangling on the other end. I couldn't make out much inside. I pulled out the torch from my pocket and flashed it inside. I saw that the door was latched from inside. With the torch in my mouth, I reached for the latch. I managed to open it before I could realize that the door started moving and I was dangling on the door. Somehow I managed to balance myself and get down. The place happened to be the bathroom attached to the temple. It had a couple of taps, a big metallic pot (Hande in Kannada) that was kept on a fireplace. Needless to say that there wasn't any dry wood. There was a small platform on the far corner. The other end of the bathroom wall was the of rocks, from which there was a small quantity of water dripping. Happy with these discoveries, I rushed back to the others to share the good news. Everyone was happy that we found some shelter. All of us headed to our luxurious suite in the middle of the jungle. We decided to clean up all the leeches before we entered our room. Again I got down to work and removed all the leeches from everyone's legs.

After that we decided that we would go in to the room one after the other to inspect ourselves if we had leeches anywhere else on our body. When I was inside looking for leeches on my body, I heard Sanjay calling out for me and he seemed to be really worried about something. I came out and he told me that he heard a wolf. In my past experience in the Western Ghats, sleeping in tents in all possible kinds of places from deep in the jungles to the top of mountain peaks, had never heard any such sounds. But not to take any chances, as we had a couple of ladies with us, we quickly entered the room and latched it from inside and in silence tried to hear hard. There weren't any sounds. But, Sanjay was quite sure about the wolves. Was it his imagination at work, was it his fatigue, or was it really true? Not worrying about it, we all decided to inspect the place. It was very homely - with a few crabs, a frog and a few spiders (does anyone know if the ladies fear spiders). Wondering what else was in store for us, we looked around and found a plastic bucket, 3 plastic mugs (Chombu in Kannada), broom and soap. I quickly covered one crab and a frog with the plastic mugs. They tried to escape through out the night, making noises and scaring us. Then we cleaned up the platform so that we could at least sit, if not sleep. There was very little room for the four of us on the platform. The place was cleaned using the broom and the four of us managed to get on the platform. Then we took turns to clean our blood stained hands and legs (thanks to the leeches) with the soap. Till then no one had thought about the food. All we had with us was a little MTR Bhel Puri and a few Hershey's chocolates. But no one was in a mood to eat. Deepa made some earplugs for all of us from the tissue paper so that we could keep our ears safe from spiders and other small life forms in that cave room. It reminded me of the movie "Cast Away" by Tom Hanks. We sat quitely in silence and by then Sanjay had made himself quite comfortable in one corner. He was ready to sleep. But, how can he, before doing a lot of bak-bak (a.k.a. lot of talking). To kill time, I started narrating some of my previous forest experiences - how I was lost on a couple of occasions and how we managed to get out the forests successfully. The forest has never harmed us.

Sandhya was silently praying, she had made big plans of visiting a lot of temples if we got out of the jungle safely :). Sanjay was happily snoring while Deepa was in deep pain as she had hurt her leg. And I was happily thinking about the latest kannada chart buster songs of the movie Jogi. We were wondering what the taxi driver would have done. Would he have gone back to Sirsi, would he have come looking for us, would he come back for us in the morning? All of us in our own mood waited for the daybreak except for Sanjay who was already in deep sleep. It was close to 11.30 PM when suddenly Sandhya said she saw some light at (probably from a petromax). We were now a little alert, hoping that it was our taxi driver coming for us with help. After a while, we could hear some men talking at a distance. We decided to wait for the sounds to approach us. But no one came looking for us. We were debating on whether to call out for them, but decided against it as the women had a lot of jewellery and we had a lot of electronic items with us. What if the guys were hostile? We could take no chance with the women around. Deepa later told us that she was wearing Diamond earrings worth Rs 70,000. We remained very still not making any noise, as we didn't want to attract those men's attention. Later in the morning, the villagers told us that some Shikaris (hunters) roam in the jungle at night. It had stopped raining now. Luckily it was not very cold in the night as it was a cloudy night and the forest is known to preserve some heat during the night. The night never seemed to end. No one except Sanjay slept the whole night. He was least bothered about his surroundings. At around 5.45 a.m. we could hear the forest waking up. The birds were singing happily. Finally there was sunlight at 6.30 a.m. Sanjay and Deepa went out for a small morning walk. There was enough room on the platform and I slept for around half hour. Then at around 8.30 a.m. Sanjay and I decided to check out the correct route and see if we could find the stream. Leaving the ladies behind, we both went in search of the correct route. I asked Sanjay to wait near the first fork and went on the first route. I quickly found the stream and headed back to inform Sanjay about it. Then we heard some voices and saw two villagers heading towards us. We told them about our previous day's experience. One of the men was kind enough to come and show us a different route out of Yana, which would lead towards Yana village. He told us that we could find transportation back to Sirsi from there.

We took some more pictures of the beautiful Yana in the pleasant morning sunlight and headed towards the village. I had never thought that Sandhya would face situation so bravely. I had expected her to panic and crib about our state. But she stepped up to the occasion and behaved like a very bold girl. This was something I discovered new and appreciated much about her. At the village we found Ram Bhatru who upon a lot of persuading agreed to take us in his jeep to KaDgal. The 16 KM route to KaDgal took us a good one-hour in the bumpy steep road. We bid good-bye to the forest. It was close to 1.00 PM when we reached the KaDgal town. We had spent 24 hours without food. After grabbing some light snacks there we hired a Maruthi van to go back to Sirsi. After a nice shower, we left Sirsi and headed to Bhadravathi to spend the night at Deepa's uncle's house. The couple was very nice to us and fixed us a very delicious dinner. After a good night rest, the next day we headed towards Bangalore. The trip till to Bangalore was less eventful. We stopped occasionally for some good scenic photographs. Everyone was happy to be back in Bangalore. Sandhya is still visiting some temples to thank God for saving us. I am not sure when she will agree to travel with me again. I am looking forward for more trips like this one.