Agumbe

Agumbe sits at the top of a ghat in the Western Ghats and receives around seven thousand millimetres of rain a year, which puts it among the wettest inhabited places in India and gives it permanently wet evergreen rainforest. The Agumbe Rainforest Research Station, founded in 2005 by Romulus Whitaker, ran the first radio telemetry study of king cobras anywhere, tracking snakes through this forest and changing what was known about their movement and nesting. The village is also known for a sunset point looking west over the Ghats to the Arabian Sea, and for having been the setting of a well-known television serial.

What you actually see

• The rainforest - permanently wet evergreen forest at the top of the ghat.
• The research station - the base of the king cobra telemetry work.
• The sunset point - a view west over the Ghats toward the sea.
• The monsoon - among the heaviest rainfall totals in the country.

When to go

October to February for walking; the monsoon from June to September is extreme, with constant rain, fog and leeches, though it is when the forest is most alive. Sunsets fail entirely in the rains.

Honest expectations

King cobras are rarely seen and should never be sought without a guide; the research station is not a visitor attraction and access is by arrangement only. Leeches are constant. Accommodation is homestays.

Nearby

Kudremukh lies south; Udupi is west down the ghat.