The true love story!

          This story is about love. But be aware - it is not the love usually found in romantic novels telling tales of nature. Instead, I will tell you about my actual experience with all its highlights and downturns. Tales of what nature at its purest has to offer. It's no sleek paradise of hygienic cleanliness. If you look for that kind of story, stick to your favourite love novel. But let me tell you one thing: it's nature, where true perfection can be found.

          I arrived in Agumbe with many expectations in my head. Not necessarily concerning my stay there, but when I left Austria, my trip to India was clearly something I dreamt of all my life. I had just finished my bachelor's degree in zoology and didn't want to go on studying without knowing in which direction my path should lead me. Just blindly walking on, without a roadmap to happiness seemed unfulfilling. So I decided to take some time for walking even more unexplored paths.

          After one overwhelming week in Delhi, making my way through the loud and bustling streets full of honking cars, vendors and a masala of smells, both good and bad, a strenuous journey to Bangalore, and an absolutely sleepless overnight bus journey, I finally arrived in Agumbe. And at the same time in another world. The sounds of the streets gave way to birds and crickets engaged in an eager contest of melodies, the crowds of people vanished and were replaced by diverse flora and fauna and the smell - well, let me just say, the masala changed from an almost inedible hotness to a level of spiciness that keeps you excited the whole day.

From crowded streets of Delhi...

to the misty and mysterious rainforest of Agumbe.

Photos by: Katharina Rogenhofer

          Of course, at first, I could hardly grasp, what being here meant. In retrospective, I was still blind for all the wonders surrounding me . I arrived with much respect for the forest , I had formerly just seen in colourful, high-quality documentaries with a soothing voice in the background. It was the same kind of respect, that naturally develops when exploring an unknown terrain. "If you get bitten by a snake, there is not much we can do" was the first sentence I got to hear and, honestly, it didn't make my arrival much easier. Then of course there were stories of leopards and wild elephants, that were spread out before me on the dinner table, before even finishing my first day. So what exactly was it, I should be doing here? The answer to this question pushed my former respect in the direction of uncertainty concerning my whole stay. I was here to sample spiders. That, in turn, meant that I should go out both in daylight and at night and catch these eight-legged fast creatures, put them into a vile and bring them back to the base for identification. This decision was delivered with a half-twinkling smile by Dhiraj, who was going to be my supervisor for my stay. And at least five-hundred different species, he added.

My adorable companion of the forest.

          What would have made most people freak out, soon became my daily routine. Now imagine a foreign girl, that has never been inside a rainforest before, with a bag of rattling vials, making her way through the undergrowth, eagerly trying to manage the whole set of tasks. First, make a picture of the web, second, catch the individual, third, note down all necessary information and number the vials. Let me just tell you, that I got five individuals on my first day, which was not very uplifting. Anyways, as the days went by, I became better and also my relationship to the forest changed.

View of the Western Ghats from Agumbe. Photo by: Katharina Rogenhofer

          If anything, the spider-hunting foremost gave me the opportunity to be outside as much as possible. Soon, I grew accustomed to the cold sensations of leeches, making their way up my legs, looking for good spots to get their share of my blood, I got used to going around in slippers, which was in so many ways more practical than wearing shoes and I managed to ignore the itching tick-bites. When I began to push the thoughts on these topics into a far off corner of my brain on the second day, I started to notice the real beauty, that only those can see, that are willing to take some inconveniences. After three days Dhiraj started to accompany me on my outings. That was the starting point of a new friendship and a step into a childhood dream, that was about to come true. He was the one who finally removed the veil from my eyes and made me see the unbelievable richness of the lush green forest, that would soon become my very own paradise.

Exploring stream for spiders.

          But first, let me tell you of the night I fell in love. In that particular night, we went out to hunt spiders. Dhiraj went first. He was the shining security in the unknown night of the forest. We made our way through the dense vegetation, following small trails between the trees. On my naked feet, I felt the motion of leeches. Suddenly, we heard the loud cracking sound of twigs breaking on the ground. Something big was on its way through the undergrowth. Out of a reflex, I turned my head torch off. "Freeze", Dhiraj whispered in the front and I stopped moving altogether. But when I stood still, my thoughts began moving to the leopard-videos, I had been shown just two days before and the headlines that I read in the newspaper lying on the dinner-table. Even if all these worst-case scenarios were highly unlikely to really occur, I couldn't stop myself from being a little worried. My heart raced, my thoughts followed its lead, but at the outside I was calm. I didn't move an inch. Dhiraj thoroughly searched the surrounding with his torch. The steps became louder. He indicated to slowly go back the way we came. We managed to take three silent steps, before something broke through the vegetation. Dhiraj's light caught it, the animal freezed for a short time, got scared, and escaped into the jungle again. My brain took some seconds to process the image delivered to my eyes. It was a wild boar. A big one for sure, but still, just a wild boar. A relieved laugh escaped my lips.

          We went on and soon heard the burbling sound of flowing water and frogs singing their songs. As we approached the stream, the sounds stopped. With a questioning look at my slippers Dhiraj went on - right into the water. With my first step, I could feel the cold water embracing my feet. The slow motion and the cold wet were a welcomed change for my hot skin. When I shone my light through the liquid surface, the rocks reflected all tones of brown and red, and water plants slowly swayed in the flow. Above our heads, the canopies touched, forming a natural corridor over the stream of crystal clear water. "Torch off", Dhiraj whispered. All of a sudden, there was perfect blackness. In the moment, the night's ink closed my eyes, uncountable sounds broke through the darkness. Crackling and chirping, gurgling and splashing and calls of all sorts surrounded us. But all of that seemed to be just the prelude for everything that followed. Slowly, a frog began his lonely solo and soon others tuned in. The tunes entangled, the melodies became a choir and the voices swelled until bursting in an explosion of sounds.  What followed was a total silence, that left me with the sensations of what just had happened. After some times, the sounds started coming back and the concert started again. I was fascinated and marvelled by the magic of the moment. Nature gave me the privilege of a private nightly concert inside a stream in total darkness, with a cold breeze on my cheeks. At this moment my life couldn't have been any better.

The singer of darkness - Bronze frog (Hylarana temporalis).
Photo by: Dhiraj Bhaisare

          On our way back, we stopped at the grassland and turned off our torches again. But instead of being followed by darkness, this time, millions of little lights replaced the beam of our torches. They twinkled from the sky in uncountable numbers and as I looked at them, I realized their significance. There was an infinite universe out there with an infinite number of stars, whose light tell us about times, that passed long ago. Suddenly, I felt like a small part of the natural wonders surrounding me. Small, yes, but not insignificant.

The magical star gazing moment. Photo by: Dhiraj Bhaisare

          In this night, I realized something with unquestionable certainty: being here was something, that not many people would get the chance to do and with no doubt I got to see some of the most breathtaking natural phenomena I will ever be able to experience.

Article by: Katharina Rogenhofer, Vienna, Austria

Volunteer: 12th November to 19th December, 2015