The Station Camp

It was getting rather late, and Ujjal, who had half the lunch with him, was way ahead of us. (He wasn’t, but we didn’t know that until later). So to catch up with him, we sped up and didn’t stop for photographs again. We made rapid progress and reached our night halt point, Edakumeri, by about 4:00 PM.

There were a couple of other trekker groups who’d already set up camp, but no sign of Ujjal and Maryam (motto: Chennai rules… you just don’t know any better. Amma Vazhgai). Whoa, this was getting scary. Everybody remembered them take off ahead of the others from the mega bridge… so what happened ?

We grabbed a quick bite of the Paratha-Subzi. Lunch ? Dinner ? Linner ? Lunner ? Sadly, all the Aloo was ruined, much to the chagrin of the poor sods who carried them for 18km. So it was more of Paratha with Mango-Thokku. Anyways, a few quick bites and Satsang, Sid and I started back with torches and whistles. We had to find Ujjal.

We needn’t have worried, though. Not too far from the station, in the first tunnel, we run into Dada and Maryam. They’d tried to circumvent the big tunnel with all the bats, and got lost. Well whaddaya know ? Thankfully, there were no casualities or injuries. Sapna had a minor ankle sprain, that’s all.

A short runabout to gather firewood, and we headed to the waterfall to have a bath. We kept going in circles… over a bridge, by the bridge, behind the bridge, and all we ever found was a small trickle. And a leech each, to boot. They say people tend to lose bearings in the dark, but this was downright comic. I wound up asking Dada the way, and in Kannada, no less. No bath on day one. Ugh.

The ex-boy-scouts got a nice fire going, and people cooked food and played games and stuff. I can’t tell you much about that… I found my six-by-three and was out cold. A nuclear disaster couldn’t have roused me. When I did wake up a few hours later, there were noodles and soup going around… I think. I was rather fuzzy at that point, so I just took my six-by-three inside and resumed my most important purpose here on earth.

Sleep.

Sunday morning, when all honest folk are in church nursing hangovers, we were miles from civilisation. Gary rose and shone a little before the rest of us. He apparently had to get to work the same day and Sat, Sid, Reena and Yamini decided to go along. If only India was full of people as conscientious…

The rest of us relaxed, had a nice cold bath under the waterfall, had a light breakfast and packed up to leave camp by about 10:00 AM.

There was steep descent from behind the railway station to the valley. We made rapid progress here and reached the river below in record time. The water level was quite low, and the river was just a couple of feet wide in some places. We jumped right across it. On the other side was a jeep track along the river, which led to the Hassan-Mangalore highway.

We followed this track further on, till we hit the same river we’d crossed earlier. The highway was visible on the other side, only this time around, the river was all of 50 metres wide, full of rocks and ranging from knee to waist deep. Gary and gang were still there trying to cross over. Apparently they’d followed the jeep track in the other direction and lost thier way. Poor Gary’s diligence, all to nought.

There was a bridge across this river, and the ruins of this bridge were still standing tall amidst all the greenery. The local public works department are planning to re-build again, and we actually ran into a group of locals taking surveys and measurements of the place.

But back to reality. We needed to cross the river. And quickly. The locals chose to wade through the waist deep water, whereas the trekkers were struggling through the knee deep rocks. We decided to go with the waist deep . The four guys, BC, Ujjal, Shriram and I got across with our backpacks first. I had to hitch the backpack over my head to avoid getting it wet.

We then crossed over again, and took the girls’ backpacks and 2 of the girls (Archana and Usha) across. We went back a third time for the remaining girls. What was waist deep for most was neck deep for Maryam and entirely too deep for Sapna. BC had to hitch Sapna up on his waist to cross the deepest parts.

Well, just across the river was the highway, and we had to wait about 3 minutes to hitch a ride back to Sakleshpur. BC and Sapna headed the other way to Dharmastala. 2 hours atop a rickety truck and we were nestled comfortably in a busy restaurant in the crowded Sakleshpur bus stand.

There were no delux buses to Bangalore with seats available, so we took the standard KSRTC red bus. They say that these buses are uncomfortable and cramped, I didn’t notice anything. I was busy involved in my favourite hobby… sleeping. 6 hours later, we breathed the familiar Bangalorean carbon monoxide, with only about an hour to spare for Maryam’s train back to Madras.

Bangalore is home and I love it, but if I had a chance to spend the rest of my living days amidst the natural unspoiled beauty of the ghats… we can all dream, can’t we ? Meanwhile, it’s monday morning, and if that wasn’t bad enough, I haven’t been fired yet.