The Absolutely demanding Arisinagundi Falls Trek

2021 has been very special and kind to me as almost 50 trips were possible in this year and especially 3 months went away in lockdown. I always wanted to try out offbeat places and this time around we planned a weekend trip to Arisinagundi falls and Belkal Teertha both situated near the Kollur Moogambika.

We started on a beautiful Friday night with lovely rains and reached the homestay around 6am and took about 2 hrs for a quick nap, had our breakfast and started the trek to Arisinagundi falls. The homestay is situated next to a beautiful stream and the tents where placed next to the streams.

Then we got ready with breakfast and started the trek. Well this is a total trek of about 8 kms one way and its a very demanding trek so the homestay arranged a guide to navigate us inside the forest which is full of Leeches.

I will advice anyone to not do this trek without a guide and there is lot of chances of getting missed and the same happened to me and I will narrate the incident below. The initial path was a easy mud road and was for about 4 kms and then we have to go inside a forest trail which got very slippery due to the constant rains.

We stopped so much and had to carefully move as everywhere it was getting slippery and was wondering if peak monsoon is the right time to visit this place. The final 4 kms took us about 1.5 hrs to reach and once we got closer to the falls and saw the majestic majestic majestic hugeeee roaring falls in front of us we forgot all our struggles to reach this place..

This is for sure one of the most huge and mega sized falls I have seen and due to peak monsoon it was roaring. We can observe the falls from 2 places and please be very careful as its quite slippery. The flowers which were blooming near the falls made the place quite scenic for some photoshoots.

We spent about 1.5 hrs sitting and enjoying the falls from both the views and had our packed lunch too. The guide was telling post December its possible to reach closer to the falls and swim in a pool it forms.

We started back around 3pm to the homestay and the gang went in the front and I was accompanying one of my friend who had hit a rock and was not able to walk fast so I had to come with him and we were lagging behind. The tricky part was at one point about 5kms back to the homestay there is a small deviation to the right and the team went ahead without realising we are lagging behind.

We missed the deviation walked straight and post 4 kms realised for sure we are lost and in a place where 100s of leeches jumping over us and no network to call anyone. This is where experience comes to play and I decided not to panic and as usual I always loaded offline maps and used that to see where we are currently.

I could sense If we can climb a small hill there is a road which leads to a village and we had only that option and turning back and going wont make sense as we need to walk 8 kms again. So we decided to climb the hill and luckily after we went up we saw a village with some people in it but the tricky part was, there was a stream running in-between. We called someone for help in the village and one young guy came with a rope and helped us to cross the stream and made us feel very much better. Post crossing the stream I saw my leg and realised there was 50+ leeches sucking blood and it took about 10 mins to get rid of them ufffffff.

We thanked the Guy named Shiva Kumar who helped us to cross the stream and he arranged an auto for us to reach the homestay safe. It was one great and thrilling experience of life and once reaching back the homestay the other folks were waiting tensed but were very sure being a traveller for 15+ yrs now I would get back to safety so the lesson learnt is never panic when we are in danger zone and use our instincts to get back to safety and always keep offline maps in ur phone.

Took a nice dip in the stream and slept with warm food and memories for the day..Thanks once again to Shivakumar and will be grateful for him for ever...