Every year, without fail, I make it a point to do at least one monsoon trek or one Western Ghats trail. It's become a kind of personal ritual — something I look forward to more than most things on the calendar.

Since Chennai doesn't have many travel partners who arrange Western Ghats treks, I've always relied on operators based out of Bengaluru to plan and organise these trips. It works well enough, you just have to know where to look.

This year though, the trip found me before I went looking for it.

I was mindlessly scrolling through Instagram one evening when a post stopped me mid-scroll. A group at Dudhsagar Falls — water crashing down in full monsoon force, people completely drenched just from standing near it, the kind of scene that makes you put your phone down and say I need to go there.

I showed it to my officemates and that was it. We opened the travel partner's website the very next day and booked the trip.

The trip itinerary from the travel partner was straightforward — depart Bengaluru on Friday night, reach the stay by Saturday morning, trek to the falls, rest the night, explore a couple of nearby spots on Sunday, and be back in Bengaluru by Monday morning.

Since we were coming from Chennai, we had to factor in getting to Bengaluru first before any of that could begin — which meant our journey actually started almost a day earlier than the official itinerary.