A Slice Of Life - Part 5

And so we were stuck in the valley at Jog falls 250 meters below the closest civilization and hopelessly lost. We decided to take stock and noticed that we were out of all food and water and that finding a way in the dark was going to be difficult without us knowing which rocks led to what and where we exactly had to go. We were not too worried at this point as we were all confident of finding our way out. We were engineers, capable of rational thought. We headed back towards the waterfall base and tried to find the right way again. Anand with his sprained foot initially found the going a little difficult but his inimitable spirit carried him through. And this is where the true hero of the evening- danny came into an element of his own. He loved the situation and happily led the group around rocks jumping into total darkness before letting us cross after him. His energy kept us in good spirits throught our ordeal.

We reached the base of the falls again and filled up our bottles and set out again. This time too we lost our way and were climbing too many rocks. This was simply not the way we had come and we headed back towards the falls to regroup and catch some energy. By now the moon was out shining down on us and apart from my torchlight and varuns flickering torch, was our only source of light. We made totally 7 or 8 trips back and forth from the base of the falls to different trails and each time ended up cropper. This was taking a toll on all our strengths as all of were sweating profusely and the repeated failure to find the right trail was driving all of us crazy. In the middle of crossing one such particular path, there was a slight jump that we had to make to cross a small gap about 5-6 feet in depth. Here, my footing slipped and even though i did not go into the crack, i tumbled and landed badly on the opposite rock twisting my ankle. I was in tremendous pain and for a few minutes saw only stars. Varun, the guy closest behind me, immediately pulled out a little can of relispray that he had been carrying all through but quite forgotten about it, and immediately sat down next to my injured foot, removed my shoe and socks and sprayed the spray in a liberal quantity and massaged the ankle gently. My pain was unbearable for a while and I closed my eyes and waited for it to ease.

In the midst of this break caused by my tiredness (or clumsiness), we noticed that the intensity of the water falling through the falls had increased ever so slightly and suddenly we were struck by fear that if the intensity went up a few more notches, the place where we were standing would be submerged in no time. We decided not to panic and to calm down and find a way soon. The time by now was somewhere around midnight. We clutched together our last reserves of energy and started again from the base of the waterfalls. This time, Danny found another trail that had been submerged by a rivulet every time that we had passed it before. He waded out into the trail and let out a cry of pure joy as he had found the original trail. All of us sploshed through the trail and within the next 5 minutes made it to the base viewing point which we had been so adventurous to cross earlier in the evening. We had made it! We had pulled through! Our never say die attitude had won again and we hugged each other in pure joy slapped backs and sat down at the viewing point to let the adrenaline rush slow down a bit. We still had about 100 odd steps through the steep cliffs to make before we could reach our rooms. We huffed our way through these steps with both torch lights dead and our last reserves of strength really being tested to the hilt. We reached the top at around 2am and went to our room. Inside the room was the first time where it hit us how dangerous our situation had been. What if we had not decided to wade into the trail? what would we have done if we were still stuck down there even now? My internal sense of danger had been to its limit, been somemore and back.

Anand crashed on the bed ans was asleep in a few minutes. Danny was still looking as live as a lily and looked as though as this had been a walk in the park for him. Without him maintaining his composure, I am sure we would have found the trail much later and would have had to face even higher stress on out internal resources. I felt filthy and needed a shower before i could sleep. All of us were asleep by 3.30am and we had decided to sleep late the next day and start out for our next destination later in the day than usual.

I woke up the next day at 7am in the morning unable to sleep. I had been shaken and my view on how we consider life had changed forever. I have no belief in rebirth as it is an unproven concept and my belief from that day became that every human being should live the once when he knows he lives fully. When you reach a stage and look back at your life, you should feel responsible for all your decisions, there should not be anything that you regret. This was a new direction for me and i felt a new energy within me.

We packed, loaded our bikes and left Jog Falls to ride towards chikmagalur. We had heard that it was a great place and would be cool at this time of the year and we decided to spend our penultimate night on the trip in chickmagalur. We reached chikmagalur at around 4.30 pm and we found it hot, dusty and not in the least the hill station that we had expected it to be. We were dejected after riding so many kilometers to come to a place that just looked like any other town. We stopped to have tea at a shop and we asked the shopkeeper for some places close by with cool climes. He told us to head towards Bababudangiri which he told us was a very quiet place on the hills close by. He also told us that the Muthodi wild life forest range was on the way and it was a must see for us. Rejoiced by this piece of information, we gunned towards bababudangiri away from the bustle of Chikmagalur.

To Be Continued..