Narasimha Parvatha

I was down with viral fever for the last four days. The stud that I am, it is unlikely that this had anything to do with last weekend's trek to Narasimha Parvatha. The 7 km trek up to the top was fun. This was the popular trail and not difficult at all. Rains and fog spoiled some of the fun of camping at the top. The next day, for the trek back, some of the more adventurous members suggested we take an 18 km trail that would take us through dense forests. Reasoning was that since it was downhill, it shouldn't be difficult. Well, it did turn out to be downhill from there on (figuratively not literally).
For one, the trail went steeply downhill and then it was mostly uphill. The next problem lay in the jungles. The guy who thought of the phrase "jungle mein mangal" probably wasn't in his right mind (or in his left one for that matter). The only things that seemed to be doing any "mangal" there were the gazillion leeches that had come out in the previous night's rain. Getz you here, getz you there could well be the theme song for our trek through the jungle. It's hard to describe leeches satisfactorily without resorting to profanity. Suffice to say that you would be happier letting Dracula coochie-coo with you than having one of these slimy blood suckers in your shoes. The trek back started at 7 am and ended at 3 in the afternoon with two stops in between for "de-leeching". One of the stops was at Barkhana falls where I discovered that these slimy @#&*er$ don't drown. At the next stop I learnt that stomping hard on these slimy @#&*er$ only damages your knees.
I've posted selected photos from my camera here. There are more photos by Manjula and Prabhu here.