GET AWAY

“Hey… you are coming with us to the weekend trip right?”
“Yeah sure, I did say that I would be coming, so count me in.”
“OK then I shall call you later when the arrangements are made”
“Yeah sure bye”
The call from Basanth came at a time when I was just back from a vacation or as I like to call it a 3 day escapism but I still felt that it was incomplete as if to say “something was missing”. When Basanth called me I got another shot to get out from responsibilities of work, I began to Basanth’s place to be picked up by his brother in law Hitesh and later to pick Ankit. I joined this trip with 2 people whom I didn’t know personally and as we all got together and the engine roared, I knew my escape from hectic life had begun, the road to Madikeri was dealt with confusion as directions were to be asked, hundred kilometers from Madikeri we were instructed to take a cut from the Highway of which we were apprehensive but reluctantly the wheels of our car rolled along in what might look like a road, but doesn’t qualify as one, going down the narrow strip of passage and a worn out surface we couldn’t find any forms of life or movements and it certainly looked spooky as there was not a soul to help if anything was to go wrong, just then we find ourselves in a situation where a truck laden with goods stands in the middle of the road blocking our passage and I could literally smell the fear among us as we feared being mugged in middle of no-where, as we found ourselves out of this dramatic situation we entered the jungle check post, I didn’t expect to see any wildlife but one of us was expecting an elephant to cross ahead of us but none the less we did find a few Sambars and a tiny little hare sitting at the edge of road. We made our way quietly to the “Jungle Mount Adventures” in Kakabe, few kilometers off from Madikeri and Virajpet but it seemed forever to find this place once reached, we were checked in by the camp assistant to our cottage to freshen ourselves up.
It was more of a jungle than a camp as we had to literally fight over our breakfast with other campers, Kayaking was something I hadn’t done before but once on this piece of wood floating over water I found tranquility and peace, the world to me stood still and without ourselves realizing we all had this sly smile as if to say “This is the Life” with blazing sun shining up our faces, slow moving water wading below us and cool breeze hitting our body. Once we were out of the boat Basanth and Hitesh wanted to take a dip in river both Ankit and me who were non swimmers took our time to get ourselves wet, but floating atop water made us forget rest of the world around us, feeding ourselves at noon we retired for afternoon, rising from the short slumber we found ourselves on back of 4X4 pick up truck after a bumpy ride we did reach our destination, the waterfall from which we were to do rappelling didn’t look much intimidating from where I saw it but once on top people began to look like little ants moving around and the rock from which we were to get down didn’t do much to my confidence as it was a long way down and the only thing holding me was a rope which allegedly holds 2000 kilo grams, I of course didn’t buy that crap load but I just hoped it holds onto the entire 85 kilograms of me, if you are wondering about others …. Well they had reached down and were waiting for me to crawl down and pretty frankly they had to wait a little longer than they had expected. After holding onto my dear life on a rope we made ourselves back to the camp, I cant vouch for others but I was hungry and by time we reached back to the camp it seemed almost vanished into the dark evening as thick cover of darkness had spread its tentacles all over the camp with a few dimming lights glowing at a distance. The night was young and warm with not much movement of air as we surrounded around the fire not many were consumers of alcohol in our part of the camp fire and all we could do was to empty a can of beer contrary to other campers, we finished with our supper and retired for the day.
Voices dancing through my ears birds chirping away at distance and half conscious state of my mind, just then a knock on the door baffles us all from sleep. The morning mist covering the mountains at distance in pure white blanket is a sight so beautiful and we were lucky enough to be there at that moment, we were hurried through the breakfast and then had to set ourselves for a long trek to reach the highest peak. The car was parked a few feet away from where we were to start our trek. Initially when we started out the long trek seemed fairly simple and all we had to do was to follow the lane as we reached a few feet higher the lane got smaller and smaller and the view was well not much, the age old mountains what we as kids used to draw, as we got closer to the peak the lane slowly disappeared and we were invited to a rocky climb, most of us found this part of the trek as tiresome and when we stopped to hydrate ourselves, we were left looking at each other as we had just one water bottle in hand, we had left remaining 3 in the car. The rocky climb was not easy under the blazing sun once we reached somewhere near to the peak, there was a forest patch for us to cross in order to reach the very top, but because we didn’t have medication with us for any untoward incidents like snake bite and nearest help was miles away we had to turn back from there and make our way down , the climb had left us very thirsty and that’s when mother nature decided to give us some water, it was a slight drizzle at start, we had to cross the rocky climb soon as it gets very slippery under rain, once out of the difficult part we made our way towards the car half way down hill the rain was hammering upon us, that’s when me and Hitesh who were following Ankit saw a bright blue light cross over our heads disappearing into the trees, it took some time for us to realize that was lighting, followed by a thunderous sound which rattled our feathers, Ankit carrying our electronic gadgets felt a spark on his hand and let go of his guiding stick, from there we literally had to run for our lives as more thunderbolts appeared over the skies, having been drenched like little kittens we had to get rid of our tops and get inside the car as we didn’t want the leather seats to stink later, just inside the car we were reminded by the dashboard controls that we were out of gas and nearest gas station was 25 kilometers away fortunately it was downhill all the way, every soul in the car was craving for food once we found the gas station and filled up our machine, we proceeded towards nearest restaurant and had sumptuous lunch, going back to camp was not as easy as we had expected as we had missed our route and taken another route towards Madikeri, by the time we reached camp, the whole camp which was filled with booze, people and camp fire the other night now wore a deserted look. We had our supper early and left the camp premises by 7 30 and headed towards the state highway driving under headlights and music hitting our eardrum, the way back was eerie quiet and finally made it to our home city at 1.15 AM, I just hoped then … that this camp would go on for few more days as we had to face our Monday blues in the next 7 hours or so, with each one of us heading different ways, it was a “get way” from the busy streets and ever working people of Bangalore and it was holiday worth getting lost in…………….