This write up is about a trip that Aswin, Mack, Dev and me had done about five months ago.
It was Friday night when I took my baby out of the service station and headed to Aswin’s house to plan about the weekend trip. He gave me the expected news that Rabiya and Aarthi aren’t joining us for the trip, good news that Dev and Nithin macha are joining us and the bad news that Dev and Macha were more interested in going for the drag race than camping in forest. We sat down that night and planned that somehow we’ll convince those two buggers to join us to camp once the car rally gets over. Before we went to bed, Anil ( Aswin’s bro) was sharing with us his experiences of foresting and other adventures and offered us valuable tips on the places that could be visited.
Saturday morning we packed our bags and hit Macha’s place at six. There we began our journey. Four of us in four bikes!!!( three of them were Royal Enfields). Before the journey could begin, Aswin dropped down his bike and it did sound like a bad omen ( trust me, I’d be the last person to buy into any superstitious crap). I thought I’ll ask him to cut out his bike and make the trip in three bikes. But three hours into the journey I realized what a costly mistake it would have been, had I asked him to ride pillion.
The ride was too good, though the roads weren’t too good initially; it got better as time passed by. At some points I was clocking 120 km/hr. that’s the specialty of Enfields, you go past 100 km/hr and it still feels like your are sailing smooth in sixty! We reached the place(where the drag race happens) in no time and found a corner where the cars take a sharp turn. We had a bunch of people there sitting beside a black Scorpio smoking cigarette, sipping beer and enjoying good music. Soon the rally started and the cars hit the track at crazy speeds! They must have clocked 130 km/hr I guess. That ain’t a joke. Hitting that speed on a narrow muddy road when the roads have sharp curves is not that easy. Whats so good about it was that these were things that we could relate to, a Schumacher driving at 300 mph is good, but these guys were doing such things on Indian cars on Indian roads and taking quick turns at the curves.
Soon, there was some other curve that caught our attention and this time I am not referring to the curve on the road!!! There she stood with her hands resting on her back, highlighting her ‘you know what’! For a while, we guys were just blown away, had to put so much of effort to keep our eyes off her. But soon she started overdoing her “ I am sexy “ body language that quite cut off the charm we thought she had and made her look like just another attention seeking bitch. She was walking, fully aware of the fact that all men around were looking at her with their tongues sticking out. And as my thoughts wondered into how female courtship gestures are so much like the mating call in animals, our eyes shifted to another curve ( this time I am referring to the curve on the road). One of the competing cars had fallen off into a ditch while taking a sharp turn. The villagers helped the car out of the ditch and were talking and sharing with each other with so much of excitement about how the car had fallen and what the driver could have done to avoid the fall. Dev and I were just wondering about the kind of popularity this game was getting at this part of the world , eighty kilometers from Bangalore. Suddenly my eyes started seeing $$$$. What if we could construct some stages and host rock concerts ( something like The WoodStock in US), get stalls, eateries, places to stay, drinks, convenient shades for people to do ‘should I say?’ and other crowd pulling events along with the race. Then Dev burst out, “ This fuckin Indian government fuckin doesn’t know how to fuckin harness its resources.” Thanks to Nithin macha, he changed the topic and directed us to a sugarcane plantation. Aswin uprooted a couple of sugarcanes and cut them into neat pieces. Stolen sugarcanes always taste sweet! Then we headed to our bikes and hit the roads and rode to a restaurant. Macha was planning to leave to Bangalore. Aswin and I secretly desired camping. We were reduced to having food in a bar, coz we couldn’t ask for anything better considering the place we were in. The food tasted terrible and worst thing, it cost us 350 fuckin bucks! Aswin pitched the idea of staying out to Dev and he was game for it. But Nithin got a call from his boss who wanted him to do a few telephonic interviews and that required him to head back to Bangalore. Then Dev gave senti dialogues and said, “ dude, either four of us make the trip together or none of us make it.” Nithin finally agreed for the adventure.
We were finally set for our adventure. We were short on our resources – 1,400 bucks between four of us and we were in the middle of a place where people would have no clue what you are talking bout if you asked for an ATM. Some money had to go into fueling our bikes, damn these royal enfields are such hungry bitches! We were deciding on places to go. We spelled out mysore, bhandipur and many other places. Finally decided we’ll go to Shivasamudram waterfall. It was another 70 km journey and we reached the place in no time. The sight of the waterfall was a beauty. It looked like thick white and powerful foam just crashing into the rocks with great force.
We went to the water stream and the rocks were too slippery and the currents were strong. Aswin hit upon the crazy idea of crossing the water stream. A misplacement or a slip, you would have to pay dear in the form of your head splitting against a rock and the fishes ending up feeding on your brain. But if you guys had known Aswin a little better, you’d know that he’s the guy with the ballzz for all the wrong reasons(the prodozoans would agree with me on that!!). Soon Macha and Aswin carefully placed their feet on the rocks and started crossing the stream. Somehow with a lot of struggle and getting drenched upto their underwears, they made it to the other end. Then Dev and I started to cross. We went past the difficult passages, getting drenched to the neck and there was a one last place which we had to cross to make it to the other end. We could barely stay at the place where we were staying as the water currents were too fast and it was squeezing our bodies against the rocks. Dev was confident of crossing, but after seeing Macha struggle to cross earlier, his confidence did take a beating. Nithin is that street smart and athletic dude who is usually known for surviving all tight corners. While returning back, Aswin had a slip. He was clinging to the rock in one hand and his whole body was pulled in the direction of the water flow. He was battling for life for a while but soon he managed his foot in a crevice and got away with some deep cut wounds below his knees. Then I went up and gave my hand to help him out of the place.
By now we were drenched to our neck. Apart from me all the others were wearing jeans, they were forced to strip down to their underwear to have their clothes dried. We sat there for a while sitting chatting. All of a sudden, a dude walked up to us. He looked like a pro trekker. He had a good built, was about my height and was wearing a red sleeveless T-shirt. He had a good camera in one hand, night vision lamp tied around his neck and a cool trekking gear on this shoulder. He walked upto me to try and make a conversation, but I was too busy enjoying the moment to actually make any conversation with him. The result: I acted a little snobbish and he ended up walking back. I was thinking of the book Celestine Prophesy which I had read a while earlier, according to which there is nothing that is called a co-incidence, everything happens for a purpose and its all about how much aware you are to the opportunities that come around you. I became restless and began to wonder why on earth should that guy walk out of his way and bump into us just to say a HI?? We soon got off the place and started hunting for him. Luckily, we found him at a tea shop where he was having a smoke. Aswin and I ran to him and got ourselves introduced. His name was Karthick and he does camping every other week. He shared with us valuable information about where to get the tents, trekking gears etc. Dev and Macha joined the conversation pretty soon. Till we met him we were thinking that we might have to stay in a lodge or something worse. But thanks to Karthick, he planted in our heads the idea of actually camping in a forest. Still camping in a weekend might turn out to be too expensive. For one reason we wont have vacancies and another, we had no money between us. We continued the adventurous ride in the direction pointed by Karthick. We kept traveling on and soon it was beginning to get dark and my headlight was not in the best of its shape. Dev pulled up his bike stopped all of us in the middle and said in a voice that had full authority, “ listen up guys, doing what we do is not taking us anywhere. Right now the priority is to find a place to stay.”
We channeled our efforts into looking for a place to stay. Meanwhile, I was keeping my eyes open looking around for some people who could give us valuable info. ( the insights of Celestine prophesy were still running in my head). As expected, we bumped into a person who told us there is a place close by where we could stay. We took a narrow passage, following the lead of a green board which read “ rural development program.” We followed the road which was so narrow and full of stones and the trees around either sides were literally brushing our bodies at times. Finally we arrived at the cottage and parked our bikes to realize that, I have landed up in the most romantic place I’ve ever been. The evening was slowly fading into darkness – I was so much aware of the moment of the night arriving. The stars were slowly beginning to appear. The breeze was spine chilling and I could feel it against my face. The only sounds you could hear are the ones of the beetles and the birds. The grass was moist and the hill was just hundred meters away- you can even pinch the tents on the hill. It was a beauty spot: no fences, no noise and most importantly NO HUMANS! We were just wondering how different is life just about 200 km away. Trust me, nature in its true clad ness is a treat to watch ( no pun intended).
We picked upon a conversation with couple of other campers and came to know more about the place. We learnt that stay in the cottage would cost 600 bucks a head a day. ( food included). Tents are available, if you want you can use them too. This place is managed and run by this person called vijay. He was about to organize a barbeque party along with a campfire that night. There is also an acoustic guitar in case you’d like to take it out and play it during the campfire. After reading some of the above descriptions, don’t assume that this place too sophisticated or something of that sort. The cottages were made of brick and mud ( not cement) and the roof above was thatched. Moreover a room could not hold more than two people. These arrangements(rather lack of) were made to keep this place close to nature.(Remember!!! Nature in true cladness).
We guys made up our minds this is the place we are gonna camp, for it was too good a place to be missed out. Though we didn’t have enough money, we were determined to talk our way through. We were told that Vijay will be there in about ten minutes, but it somehow took him two long hours to reach us. This was the first time in my life I had ever enjoyed waiting for someone. We lay down gazing at the open sky. The stars were beautiful. Occasionally we caught glimpses of shooting stars and we also had an opportunity to see a satellite pass by. Dev was a bit worried whether if Vijay would let us stay there with the money constraints we had. The time was about eight. If we were to leave now, we’ll be in the middle of nowhere. He pulled Macha aside and told him many times, “ Macky!! Lets decide what we are gonna speak to him??” But Macha was more of that balls care attitude dude who said “ Lets speak whatever comes to our minds.” As we were sitting, soon there were a couple of cute women and Macha started hitting on them. He started conversation asking if they have any cigerrates. They were a bit shy and not really comfortable talking. Soon we came to know that he was hitting on one of the camper’s wife and a relative of Vijay too.
Very soon a tall, built man with slight beard on his face and a very warm smile greeted us. We learnt that he was Vijay. Macha was the one who broke the ice, starting in a rather nervous tone explaining how we set off on an adventure and happened to bump into this place. His only words were, “ don’t be worried of anything, I’ll take care of everything”. He took us to the room and offered us fags, which we gladly accepted. As we were talking, we realized how content and how much in peace he was in with himself. We asked him why he doesn’t advertise such a lovely place. He was like, this place is for true nature lovers, no point commercializing it. If people deserve to find it they will. Then we told him that we were short of money and that we had just 950 bucks between all of us. He just shrugged his shoulders and said, fully understanding our position,”just give how much ever you can.” He then directed to a place where we had dinner. It was the best food we’ve had in a long time. The people out there were so sweet to talk to. I guess the food tasted great because of the special ingredient called LOVE that was served along with it. We thanked the people for the food and went a little deep into the forest. We were talking some crazy stuffs and soon my mind started wondering. I thought people back there in the city seem to run a race they themselves don’t know why they are running and what they are seeking. It felt like this is life, this is eternity. Whatever it be wherever I am, I swore I’ll make a trip like this once in a while and spend time with nature.
Macha was not feeling well, he had his wisdom tooth removed a couple of days before, so he had gone to bed. Aswin, Dev and I sat and spoke for a while then grabbed a bottle of beer and headed to the campfire. There were many couples and most of them were drunk. There was a guy playing the guitar and singing and a girl sitting beside him and singing along with him. The guy was punch drunk and he just went crazy with the guitar. Later I walked up to him and asked for the guitar. He was like “ take it its all yours”. He was so happy to give it off to me. I felt a bit jittery in the beginning. I told that female that I wont sing and that I’ll just play some instrumental. But I was too sloshed I guess, I started singing along as I was playing. I played a few songs soon the rain started pouring and saved the people!!
We headed to the cottage. Aswin and I shared a room, Macha and Dev the another. We were recollecting the whole trip and decided to catch on some sleep to have a good ride the next day.
The ride back to Bangalore was eventful too. I lost my way in the middle but somehow managed to meet the guys. We also went to the drag race spot to catch the next stage of the race. I felt getting a glimpse of that lonely beautiful chick was inspiration enough to go there. Finally we reached Bangalore and hit Dev’s place and sat there with some beers and took an oath that four of us are going to have more adventures together.
Aswin, Nithin and Dev… I have no words to describe what it feels like. Thanks a lot guys. You guys simply rock! This trip is a landmark in my life. Looking forward to more trips together.
