A for Agumbe...

I spent a few weeks of my summer in 2013 (actually during the monsoon) at Agumbe Rain­forest Research Station (ARRS) doing an internship on the microhabitats of frogs. I hadn’t heard about Agum­be until a friend of mine (Neha) mentioned it casually one day. Agumbe is a village in the Shimoga district of Karnata­ka. It is situated at an altitude of about 642 metres from sea level. It is known to be home to the world’s longest ven­omous snake, the King Cobra, which is also the flagship species of ARRS.

The day I reached Agumbe, I got off at the wrong place, Thirthahalli, which is about 30 km from Agumbe. After a lot of phone calls to the base camp, I got on to a bus to Agumbe. The path that led to the base was a kilometre or two away from the village and was densely forested on either side. The research station was inside a four-acre areca plantation. There were a few boys playing crick­et in the yard in front of the research station. I was greeted by Ram bhayya (Ramprasad), who was working on fish­es and frogs, and Jiggu (Jignasa Patel), who was a volunteer there. They intro­duced me to the others at the Station.

Every morning I woke up, to my sur­prise, at 5:30 AM, to the calls of the whistling thrush, which used to sit on the rooftop and whistle away to glory. When the whistling thrush stopped, it was Chikki and Naala’s duty to keep the music going with their barks, howls and growls. Chikki was the calm and composed one while Naala was the naughty one, even though she was the mother of four puppies. The Research Station was like a mini pet shop with various animals including tadpoles and the Malabar pit viper around. I had the pleasure of seeing these tadpoles at the different stages of their metamorpho­sis. I also spotted vine snakes and cat snakes during the course of my work.

Agumbe is rich in amphibian diver­sity. Even though we looked for them, it was their calls that made it easy to find the frogs. Pseudophilautus amboli, Raorchestes luteolus, Raorchestes tu­berohumerous, Ramanella marmorata, Rhacophorus malabaricus, Hylarana aurantiaca were a few that I saw. It is known that mouse deer, sambar deer, leopards, boars, slender lories (I was only lucky enough to hear them) and giant squirrels are abound in the in­terior of the forest though I got to see only a mouse deer. Once, Ram bhayya and I went to a meadow across a stream, in the forest in search of mammals. The path was blocked by fallen trees because of which our walk was more adventurous. There were only jungle fowls in the meadow. We saw some marks on the trees made by the Sam­bar deer. My luck with big mammals during field work was quite bad and my record still stands at one with a mouse deer saving my record from zilch.

It rained cats and dogs most of the time and when it did not, it was misty. On one such day, when rain was the norm, we decided to go swimming. While we stood there admiring the stream, a log came through and Siddharth, the director of ARRS then, jumped onto it and went down the stream like in ac­tion movies, minus all the safety belts. Nagana, the cook at the base, set up a net in the uncultivated paddy field to catch fish for later when the water lev­el would drop. Thanks to the heavy downpour, I never got to eat those fish but that was compensated for by the mouth-watering chicken and pork served at the base. He could make won­ders even out of simple vegetarian food.

While getting dreamy about the food and place, I must not forget to mention the leeches, the vampires of the rain­forest. When a group of us went to a waterfall, 1KB, (I am oblivious to the etymology), about 4 km away from the field station, I was made a good meal of by a few leeches. Though I had got­ten a few leech bites before, I had never seen 10-15 leeches at the same time on each leg. But 1KB was worth paying that price for. I stood on top of the waterfall stretching both my hands out and tak­ing in the view. I could see the whole of Shimoga from there. We spent some time playing in the water and then re­turned to the base, tired to the bones.

When I run the reels back, I see those wonderful days I spent in Agumbe.