Saturday, August 27, 2005

My first Official holiday in the last 3 years

Ok!! so, the title says most of it...Here's the rest: I was never ready for the trip. Every moment that led me close to the bang bang time, I was more and more gettin dull and wanted to escape for the moment away from the bus and away from things that would make me spend money. Busy in shifting stuff to my new room , at about 7pm I finally decided that it would be a huge problem for the poor organisers if I dint show up coz it would mean another 1375 missing. So, I finally ran back to the campus, begged a tote bag and filled it with all the clothes I could find and ran toards the bus.

And Hey!! smoking just ouside the gate of the college, I felt really good...The guards were staring, but were all HELPless!!!!Yey...Anyway, The bus looked small and stuffed and in we went, and I found myself a cozy last seat near the window and settled my self down and off went the bus...
As we left the college behind, my disgust for the trip slowly died down...Something new was going to happen and something new always means something exciting..The journey seemed never ending, with people already dozing off..But, I found it rather interestin to look at all the buildings i had never seen, or never cared to watch, and check all the new roads..And enjoy the faint distant lights of small bonfires and wave at people smiling..

A quick check of what all I carried with me:
3 tees, two jeans, one of them used for about a week, and the other used everyday since a month while playin football or in the gym.3 books, a carl sagan,the fountain head,and the road to omaha...3 underwears and a brush.A pair of shoes that I threw in the bus coz I found no place for them in the bag. And BTw, of the 2 jeans, I was wearin one.

First Pitstop: the regular dhaba, I guess..At around 11 pm, our stomachs were growling and so, we stopped at this place near the highway about 140 kms away from that dreadful college and had some dinner. A CD of dungston checks in was followed by half a telugu movie and finally I lost interest in searchin for lights in the dark...Sleep hardly seemed like a necesity and so I lay there awaiting the destination...Come morning and the cool breeze was hitting like ice..the sweet smell of earth drenched by rain filled the nostrils and the eternal fear of the driver riding us through a cliff was dreadful.. But, the clouds, the fog, all those things , those fancy, sceneries somehow digitized or plastic sheets kept in those movies...Everything was just coming alive...It looked like everypart of a poster was dancing to life and was becoming real.....If anyone said, that 75% of the world, is water I never believed it till now...But here, There was as much water as there was land...If u saw land for a couple of minutes, hang on...There'll be huge lakes soon and water all over...Water from the sky, water flowing from mountains...There was water just about everywhere...
Breakfast time was when poha was made at some small hut in the mountains, just off the road, that was the time when a guy ran into the ladies toilet and shut himself in for an hour...Anyway, we were supposed to reach lonavla sometime in the morning, but it so happened that the route we took was a bit hard to drive on,(the ghat roads) and so, we ended up going @20kmph.
Lunch at a dhaba, was sheer ecstacy followed by a lassi!!slurp!!
lots of stuff yet to be written in.....

That dawn itself, we could feel the difference in the air, with the wind beeing mildly cold and smelling really fresh...Allday, we kept seeing water , water and more water...
finally, we managed to find ourselves in lonavla.Sleep and rest was the timetable for the day and so, out we ran tothe nearest wine shop, got some beer and a quarter vodka, and one economical dinner later, came straight back to the dorm to finish the bottle.

Come day2, the actual day of the trip, when we weere supposed to do something. we were dropped at this place called lohagad where land touches the sky through mountains or hills....And clouds keep hovering all around us as we keep climbing. We were sheduled to go see a fort and come bak before,...hmm..I think 1500 hours...The way up the hill was terribly winding and the wind and the cliff at the end of each wind didnt seem to be helping us poor travellers. we, took the lead by over 20 minutes overthe others and kept a fast pace so that we could seemore stuff than others, whatever it was in the fort....As we kept encountering people, we saw that every one in every group of people, wore some piee of rubber to protect himself from the rain..we were the only people going with normal clothes.....anyway, we kept walking and walking..an this in a loop ...And finally we reached a y-fork...with a tea shop at the jn. the guy directed us towarsd the fort and off we went, back on track.now, started the fort climbing....steps cut out off the hill, full of moss, and water literally flowing over them like you have some 2000 taps open just a floor above them.the stairs seemed never ending and so was our determination..At one wind, we decided to rest and I rested onthe stairs and just turned to my left to see if anyone behind us had made it to our position....and then, i realized....you do not see stairs from there...You cannot feel mother earth from that place...There's fog all beneath you and all around you...and between the fog,are small pieces of land..And with all these, comes, the eternal fear of heights..Anyway, we finally reached the top of the fort, unharmed and alive. so, we kept walking here and there to find a place to relieve ourselves when a guy choose a place about 2 metres away from an started peeing..I was wandering about looking at the sky when I could see a stream of yellow water flying towards me in the air...I ducked ,and escaped somehow....The rain became a bit more intensive and we could feel it. The water droplets were hellbent on putting us throw unlimite pain.Each drop was like a stone thrown by some one...someone up there sure is getting his saddistic pleasures satisfied.Anyway, I lost my way around the fort, and a lil'dog, took us back to the entrance of the fort, where we had kaandi..or pakoda.Off we ran down the stairs to find ourselves staring into the eyes of 4 monkeys.It took us about 15 minutes to collect enough courage to decide that we will somehow cross the monkeys without further assistance. So, down we went, still clean and clear...
and back to the y-jn, from which we were to go to the hmm....fort no.2.(help: wat was it's name plz??)
off we went, covering all the swamp, we coul find, "keechad" everywhere, till our shoes were covered with it. every ten minutes or so, we would find a water source to cleanse ourselves off all the dirt. and so, we kept venturing, till we came to a spot,at which there was a recent landslide...
and from the landslisce, we took the path that we found wider an cleaner.We kept walkin on an on in the swampy area till we reached a sharp turn where about a dozen monkeys screeched simaltaneously and scared the hell out of us.
We trotted back only to take a second try along with two different musketeers and reached the possible end of the path till where a mortal can walk. The swamp was too thick to walk.And there was a y-fork. the left one ended in a lake and the right one into a dark swamp with fog all over. A distinct sound could be heard. the sound of a bell ringing. a small bell....Later on, we were to realize that it was made by one of the buffalos there.And then, the ultra clean house...
we ran back to base camp to end the day somehow....
and when we came back to the foot of the hill, we realized this was not the end. Ther was this huge waterfall, huge enough to drench 15 people at a time, and we swarmed into it and the natural forces showed us their vigour...this is the smae thing that I drink at home and now, it was there, overpowering me, water, in it's basic, original state, and then it dawned that the water we see and we drink is no more natural than coke. water, that scares the shit out of you when you think of it, is real. water which makes you grasp and grope at anything soild nearby to protect you from falling is real. water is too huge, and its butchering by us, perhaps too small for it to reflect upon....Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, water

4 comments:

Rahul said...

What about the Mt. Abu trip ? I thought that came in before this one :-/

Naresh said...

You got the order wrong... Half tel mve first n then dunston chkd in :P
It was a real pleasurable xprnc man...

Alaknanda said...

wow yaar...sounds great...i wouldnt have done it anyhow...unless i had a guy around..:P

Alaknanda said...
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