The Brahmagiri trek

The entire experience is broken into the following chunks:

• About Brahmagiri Sanctuary and Itinerary
• Day 1 summary
• day 2 Summary
• The leeches story
• An eclectic group of trekkers
• The Guide
• My lessons with this trek

The leeches story

This is one thing that will remain etched into my memory for many many days to come. Never ever before I had such a close encounter with leeches. They were all over the place. No sooner than we were into the woods , we found them in hordes trying to creep through our shoes. I kept pushing them with my stick but they kept coming back. I couldn't’t stop at a place even if I wanted to catch some breath because they would crawl up fast. In the whole trek of ten kms, the leech infested stretch would be around six kms.

When we finally returned it looked like a battle ground with battered and wounded soldiers withering and nursing themselves. It was blood all over oozing out in copious amounts. Once the leeches drop off from the skin, the blood takes a lot of time to stop oozing. Few of them wore special anti leech socks. That had mitigated the damage by reducing the number of beech bites to single digits. Others weren't that lucky.