Underfoot at Thusharagiri: rock, root, vine and leech

Most people who come unstuck at Thusharagiri do not do it on the climb. They do it on a flat piece of rock.

The generous beginning

The trail begins as generously as any forest walk in Kerala. Through the painted arch the path is made up and level, wide enough to walk abreast, running between coffee bushes, cocoa and areca with the ridge line showing green above the canopy. There is a footbridge across the Chalippuzha, a couple of trickling side-streams to step over, and then a hundred metres in you are out on the apron below Erattumukku. Nothing so far has asked anything of your footwear.

That apron is the first thing to take seriously. It is a very large sheet of bare grey rock, tilted, scoured smooth by however many monsoons, and in the dry season it looks as harmless as a pavement. Where the water has been running it is not. The polished channels stay slick long after the visible flow has shrunk to a few white threads, and they are exactly the lines people walk along to get closer to the fall. Grippy shoes matter more here, on a slope you would not think twice about, than they do on anything above.

Where the path stops being a path

Past the first fall the made surface stops. What replaces it is a mixture: exposed root, packed earth, loose stone, and long stretches of stream-polished slab where the trail and the watercourse are effectively the same thing. The gradient picks up steadily. Trekkers describe starting with a steep hill and climbing out of it, and reaching for the wild vines that hang across the slope — not as a novelty but as handholds, because on wet rock they are the difference between walking and sliding. Keep your hands free. Anything you want to carry should be on your back.

Somewhere in this stretch the trail crosses the stream, more than once, and the crossings are where people get their feet wet whether they intended to or not. There are no bridges above the first fall. You step from stone to stone across water that is ankle-deep in February and something else entirely in July, and the stones are round and slippery. This is a good argument against sandals and an excellent argument against carrying a child on your shoulders.

The stretch from Mazhavil Chattam up to Thumbi Thullum Para is where the walk becomes a scramble. It is not technical and it is not exposed; there is nothing here that requires a rope or a head for heights. It is simply steep, wet, rooty and awkward in short bursts, and it will take you longer than the distance suggests. A kilometre from the gate, on this ground, is not a kilometre on a road.

The leeches

Thusharagiri has them in quantity, and the wet months are their season. Guides on the upper routes carry a concentrated salt solution for exactly this reason, and trekkers who have gone up with them describe the leeches as thoroughly present but manageable — which is the correct expectation to arrive with. They are a nuisance, not a hazard. Long socks tucked over trousers, a small bottle of salt solution or a leech repellent, and the discipline to check your ankles at each stop will handle it. Trying to keep them off entirely will not work and will spoil your day.

Shoes, water, rubbish

Footwear is the single decision that most affects how this walk goes. Something closed, with a real tread, that you do not mind soaking. Trail shoes are ideal; ordinary trainers with worn soles are worse than useless on wet slab; flip-flops and slide sandals, which a remarkable number of visitors wear to the first fall, are how ankles get broken. Take a change of socks if you are going above the first cascade, because you will be walking back in wet ones otherwise.

Carry water, and carry it up. There is drinking water at the ecotourism centre and nothing above it. There is no shop on the trail. The local advice, offered by more than one visitor, is to buy lunch at the shop near the information centre before you start, which is sound if you are going beyond the first kilometre and unnecessary if you are not. Carry your rubbish out; the site posts itself as a plastic-free zone, and the whole point of a community-managed forest trail is that somebody local has to clean up what you leave.

Season changes the surface

From roughly September to December the falls are full and loud and the trail is at its most photogenic, but everything is wet and everything is slippery, and this is peak leech weather. January to March gives you the easiest walking — dry rock, thin flow, the dragonflies out on the flat rock at the top — at the cost of the cascades being at their least impressive. The south-west monsoon proper, June through August, is a different question entirely: the trail is genuinely dangerous then, the river responds to rain you cannot see falling several kilometres upstream, and the site is closed outright whenever Kozhikode district goes to red or orange alert.

A short, unglamorous list of what actually helps: shoes with grip that you are happy to soak; long socks; a stick if you like one, though the vines do the job; a litre of water each; salt solution or leech repellent; a dry bag or plastic sleeve for a phone, because spray at the falls is not optional; a change of socks; and no umbrella, which is useless on this ground and occupies a hand you will want.

The thing that is not equipment

The trail above the first fall runs on guides, arranged at the counter, and the guides are not there as decoration or as a revenue line. They are the people who know which crossing is safe today, which rock is slick, where the leeches are worst, and — most importantly — what the water is doing upstream. On a trail whose real hazard arrives from rain falling somewhere you cannot see, the most useful thing in your kit is somebody who has watched this river for years. Hire them.