Where the Clouds are Darkest

I can imagine a person driving past Agumbe on a summer day and not being overly awed by what he/she sees. Having read about the significance and the magnificence of this little village and its surrounding areas, its initial low-key appearance somehow added to its allure.

I visited Agumbe in July 2015. 2015 was not one of India’s best years – the monsoon, India’s lifeline, had failed for a second year running. Drought was widespread and, while we have come far from the days of scraping the bottom of the food reserves in low rainfall years, farmers suffered great financial losses. Newspapers were full of stories of farmer suicides. Prices of vegetables and essential food items soared.

In Agumbe though, one would never have guessed it. The weather had been tempestuous over the previous month and power had been restored only a week prior to my visit after almost a fortnight in the darkness.

Picturesque, peaceful and rather unassuming, Agumbe is located on the western edge of the Deccan Plateau. Along this western edge is a range of hills called the Western Ghats which run parallel to the coastline of the Arabian Sea.

The Western Ghats are a UNESCO World Heritage (Natural) site and are also recognised by the UN as a biodiversity hot-spot. What was once a contiguous belt of thick tropical forest stretching parallel to the nearly 1000 mile long western coastline of peninsular India is now a patchwork of vegetation and forests often existing solely in government surveys and records.

Inarguably, the defining feature of the Western Ghat environment is the Indian Monsoon. Every year towards the end of May, almost like clockwork, moisture-laden winds from the Indian Ocean make landfall at the western shore of India. Confronted by the Western Ghats, these cloud-carrying winds rise and lash the windward slopes of the range with rains for nearly four months a year.

Several belts on the Western Ghats find themselves in contention for being among the wettest places on the planet. Agumbe is one such spot, receiving upwards of 7m of rain every year. The vast majority of this precipitation (over 70%) occurs in the monsoon months of June-September.  The high rainfall has earned it the sobriquet “Cherrapunji of the South”.

Cherrapunji is located in north-eastern India and for a long time held the record for being the wettest place on earth before recently being usurped by Mawsynram, a nearby town.

My visit to Agumbe in early July was quite a damp affair. Agumbe is located in the Shivamogga district of the state of Karnataka. The district is known colloquially as Malenadu, a portmanteau of Male (meaning rain) and Nadu (meaning land). The entire district of the “land of rain” receives almost continuous precipitation for three to four months a year.

My accommodation was at the biggest house of the small village. The house was named Doddamane, a portmanteau of dodda (meaning big) and mane (house). Apparently, living in heavy rainfall lends to people not bothering about sophisticated names.

‘Big House’ has a history of its own – the cult show “Malgudi Days” based on the eponymous book by the legendary RK Narayan, was shot in this very house. The house boasted a courtyard and spacious rooms built in the style of most large houses in the Malenadu region. The current inhabitants belong to a caste (Goud Saraswat Brahmin) famed for their culinary delicacies. They allow people to stay at their house and serve fresh-food on banana leaves. The meals are unlimited, much like the flavours present in the food, it seemed.

The “establishment” is run by the matriarch of the family, who at over 90 years young, engages one and all in lively conversation and very early in the stay lays down the rules – 8 pm curfew, no staying in bed beyond breakfast time and alcohol and tobacco are big no-nos. When I enquired about the rent, she replied, “Whatever you feel like giving.” (While it sounds rather flippant in English, the actual Kannada phrase used is closer in meaning to “how much ever you find it in your heart to give, I will accept”)

I was initially cynical and thought it would be the first step of the bargaining process but I was new to Agumbe and its homely honesty. She meant it. At the end of my stay when I did hand her what I felt was due for her family’s congenial hospitality, she cackled and said, “I don’t count what anyone hands me” and added it to a pile of money in her locker while hardly looking at it.

I stayed at Agumbe for 3 days during which the rainfall was subdued by Agumbe standards - Agumbe’s own version of the nation-wide drought. While on the evening of my arrival I was greeted by light showers, through the first night I could hear the wind howling outside and the rain lashing hard on the sloped roof of Doddamane.

On the agenda for the next morning was a trip in an auto to the top of a nearby hill whose name escapes my memory. (A simple Kannada name, perhaps?) The driver would serve as a local guide for the duration of my stay. The overnight rain had left several puddles on the way and the auto slowly wound its way to the top of the hill via steep hair-pin bends. The driver claimed it could carry 5 people - I was at times doubtful it would carry just the two of us. Mentioning the doubts I harboured seemed to offend the proud owner of the auto.

The view at the peak was about par, a few adjoining hills and a precipice. The real charm was the wind that raced in from one direction, ceaselessly carrying clouds that moved under my feet, often hiding the valley floor for minutes at a time. The rain was horizontal, not vertical. I was right in the clouds, below them and above them and the constant spray was refreshing. I thanked my stars the wind was far milder than the one I heard roaring past the village the previous night.

On descending from the hill, the road seemed different and the driver made what I thought was a wrong turn. I enquired and he laughed it off. “No way”, he boomed. He pointed to a band of particularly dark clouds in the sky and proclaimed, “If you’re ever lost near Agumbe, just check in which direction the clouds are darkest. They’re always the darkest over Agumbe.” That sentence stayed with me.

That evening found me at “view point”, a comfortable 20 minute walk from Doddamane on a highway through a thick forest. The drizzle was constant but there had been no downpour all day. This vantage point overlooked a deep cliff and was really the edge of the Western Ghats, the first elevated land encountered by the inrushing monsoon winds. The road from there winded and descended rapidly on to the coastal plain. My host assured me that on clear winter evenings, one could enjoy an unobstructed view of the sun setting over the Arabian Sea, about 25 km away as the crow flies.

Given the timing of my visit, there was to be no stunning view of the setting sun but rather the sight and sound of winds driving the clouds up the hills. The view point gives one an appreciation of why Agumbe enjoys (or suffers) the kind of rainfall it does. The clouds here allow one to “see” the wind and its trajectory much like a dye allows an experimenter to follow the trajectory of fluids in labs. Perhaps due to the shape of the surrounding landscape or maybe for some other inconceivable reason, all the wind over a large front seems to get funnelled into a narrow region. This narrow region lies a little to the side of the view point. Agumbe lies right in the path of these winds.

I stood transfixed by the view for a while, enjoying watching and listening to the wind while relishing the constant spray of rain it brought with it. One of the most peaceful and serene moments of my life.

My hypothesis about the funnelling of the wind into a narrow strip being the reason for the unearthly rainfall over Agumbe remains sadly unconfirmed.

According to the internet, Agumbe is home to a Rainforest Research Station, supposed to be devoted to the study of the Spectacled Cobra, the most majestic of snakes and also one of the most venomous. No one there knew much about this organisation. My rickshaw driver-guide assured me it was defunct. “The only use of that place existing is so that I can answer when people ask me the same question you just asked”, he cackled in his own inimitable style.

The following evening and last day of my trip involved a light trudge up to another vantage point. This time though, the rain wasn’t as kind and I got a chance to use the wet weather gear I'd carried. I also had to bring out the salt to detach the leeches that gleefully latched on to me. A view of the mist-cloaked valley from the vantage point encouraged me to whip out my phone and exercise the front camera for a bit.

And so I left Agumbe, a village spanning no more than a kilometre in any direction. A village that lies in the path of one of the most awesome forces of nature. A village with locals who fed me, housed me without asking for money and taught me how to find the village if I’m lost. They have come to accept lots and lots and lots of rain as a fact of life.

Ecologically, the area surrounding Agumbe is extremely sensitive. It forms a crucial albeit fast dwindling habitat for the King Cobra, the world’s largest venomous snake. The regions slightly inland from Agumbe and the surrounding districts form catchment areas for the tributaries of the large, seasonal rivers of south India which are vital for large agricultural as well as urban populations. These rivers are completely dependent on the monsoon.

Agumbe’s most striking and immediate problem though is of another nature. Yes, you guessed it wrong – water shortage.

Despite the massive quantum of rainfall that this region enjoys every year, the long dry period between monsoons means storage of water is essential. In Agumbe, the ability of the soil to retain water has been seriously compromised due to the loss of tree cover. Soil erosion and the host of ecological concerns that it entails have come back into sharp focus.

In this regard though, Agumbe needn’t feel too ashamed of itself - it is in elite company. Cherrapunji and Mawsynram, two towns vying for the top spot in the list of wettest places on the planet, share the same problem as Agumbe but to an even worse extent. People, mostly the women-folk, are seen every summer day often trekking for miles for their daily bucket of water.

It is cruelly ironic that these parts of India should be facing this particular problem. These are lands that experience outstanding weather and their ecology has been fine-tuned to a large degree. The human hand here has managed to take the defining feature and the most bountiful entity of the region and render it scarce, in a terrifyingly effective manner.

The monsoon is extremely Indian in its nature – unpredictable, often undependable. Almost unfailingly beautiful. Chaotic. Seems to be going back and forth with no discernible pattern yet somehow moves in a general, forward direction. The gifts of this monsoon are being put to waste as the face of Agumbe and several other spots in India undergo rapid change.