It had been Stanley’s dream, since the
arrival of his rough and tough machine years back, to try it on rocks and
rubble lining shallow rivers, à la advertisements. Let’s say, he wanted to
experience SUV advertisements in flesh and blood. As a doting family, we decided
to grant him his wish, before he forgot it in due course of aging. In my
defense, the kids were too young to take on a road journey so far, and frankly
where are women supposed to pee while on the road. Anyway, I decided to give in
before Tara got out of diapers. Thus, Stanley, Rose, Tara and I decided on Jim
Corbett.
We blocked our calendars, made
reservations and packed our luggage. At 5:00 A.M. on the D day, the alarm rang
on all the phones. I woke up instantly and shut them, lest the kids wake up. Stanley
and I had to get ready before the kids, else we would never manage to leave the
house on time to escape the city traffic. I nudged, pushed and punched Stanley.
But he refused to budge. In the process, Tara twisted and turned and as hope
would play foul, Tara opened her eyes. I jumped onto the bed and lay dead. It
was useless, she was awake. I gave up my fight at both ends. That’s when it
struck me to send Stanley a WhatsApp message, “wake up”. His phone pinged and
he jumped from his sleep to check. Then turned around and gave me a stare.
Muttering “technology!” under his breath he lay down again. “Yeah, technology!”
I sighed in relief. “Can you stop dilly dallying Mister, the kids are up, lets
get this going or we’ll be stuck in rush hour traffic today.”
Handing the kids over to Stanley, I
ran to the kitchen to pack some snacks for the journey. In my enthusiasm, I
made halwa sweetened with brown sugar (a travel staple for my kids), not too
sweet owing to the brown sugar and fulfilling as a meal. I was on a roll that
day and fried some healthy palak pooris as well for the journey and decided to
close with apples and water. ‘A wicker picnic basket with red and white
checkered cloth napkins would have been ideal to pack all the food.’ Alas! I
had none and so I packed everything in a reasonably sturdy Forever 21 black
paper bag, threw in some paper napkins and we were set.
Our driver arrived at 6:00 A.M. as
per instructions given to him. I quickly got Tara and myself ready. Stanley had
managed to push Rose, who was ready now, and then we waited for the husband. It
was 6:30 A.M. and the kids were already on vacation mode and were rolling each
other on the suitcase. I heard the phone ring, stop and then a ping. I cringed
when I saw a message “Too much noise; yoga class in progress” flash on my
phone. “Oh no! Girls keep it down,” I screamed in loud whispers. But, no amount
of hushing could get the girls’ adrenalin down. Finally, we locked the doors at
6:45 A.M. as I messaged my neighbor in the floor below an apology for perhaps disrupting
a meditation.
The world outside was new and bright,
with the sun splaying its oblong rays through narrow spaces between
skyscrapers. The stillness of a long weekend pleasantly covered the city with
its sweet morning dreams. Life was beginning to wake up from its sleep. Dogs
stretching up on the streets and an odd security guard cycling to his apartment
to begin his shift. A group of cleaner ladies in printed cotton sarees in earthy
yellows, browns and olive greens, lazily walking towards their workplaces to
disrupt some unlucky Saab or Madam from their sleep, perhaps. An odd car with a
health enthusiast returning from the gym, gear in place, sweaty but upbeat. The
shutters down in the malls, that would otherwise be chock-a-bloc with cars
spilling out on the roads. The road side cigarette stalls outside towering
glass offices shut on a holiday, maybe to open later. Huge cranes and machines
at construction sites moving purposefully to complete project after project in
this young city. Vehicular dust, pollution and count still not at full blast
owing to the sleepy or holidaying long weekend that lay ahead.
We soared ahead on the empty roads
and crossed two state borders to see some traffic on NH 24. By then, the
thought of going by road and leaving the city malls behind started getting to
my bladder. “Do stop at an appropriate location for breakfast dear,” I told Stanley
who was in the front seat next to Ravinder.
“Relax girls, we’ll stop at Gajraula
for breakfast. Most people have recommended it on the foodie group on
Facebook.”
“How far is that?”
“About two hours.”
“Okay, we need to stop now. I hope
you are getting the hint.”
“Oh ok!” Finally, he gets it.
He told Ravinder to stop at the next
petrol pump.
Eww! I thought. This is exactly why I
don’t take road trips. The anxiety of the unknown adds so much preassure.
Soon we stopped at a pump of
Ravinder’s choice. At the pump, Ravinder got off for a break, Stanley
disembarked for his smoke and nodded at me to proceed for my needs.
“No way, I’m not going in there.”
“Okay, I’ll go and check it out
first,” Stanley volunteered.
“You’re lucky, looks like they just
did their early morning clean up.” He confirmed on return.
“I don’t need to go,” my daughter
announced.
I looked at my husband in desperation
“I can’t go with all the men at the pump letching as I proceed to the loo in
this open, roofless pump.”
“Ok, I’ll walk with you.”
So I casually got out of the vehicle,
made it look like a stretch of tired legs and decided to take a couple’s stroll
around the pump, while the driver filled the fuel tank. When I reached the
toilet door, I quickly jumped in and shut the door behind me. It was clean and
thankfully Indian style. Nonetheless, I looked at the ceiling as I relieved
myself, lest I spot something that would stay in my mind the whole day adding
with each memory all that I had seen in public toilets in my past adventures.
A few minutes later, bladders relieved,
tanks filled and smoke, chips and water bought from the vendor standing at the
corner of the pump, we proceeded further through the villages of Uttar Pradesh.
Our next stop was an hour later for
breakfast. It was much ahead of Gajraula, but we could not wait for that long.
The dhaabas were beckoning us to taste their earthen cuisine. When we saw a
reasonably crowded dhaaba, we knew the food would be tasty and clean. The dhaaba
was a big, semi-permanent structure. An open hall with an asbestos roof
surrounding a courtyard on three sides. We parked on the red and yellow tiled courtyard
in the center and the smell of parathas, ghee and butter wafted our way to greet
us. Screams of lassi and jalebi made our mouths water and we could no longer
resist the temptation. We grabbed a table and ate some delicious onion parathas
and drank lassi in kulhads. As we left the Shiva dhaaba, I noticed a room on
the right. A reasonable sized room for people to perform namaz. The India I so
love, the India that defies the politicians and their divisive politics!
Later in the afternoon, we bought
bananas from a sabji mandi and munched on all the food we had stocked up as we
looked out the window at the fields and lives of people. Vendors by the road
selling produce from their lands, tractors overflowing with sugarcane, children
playing alongside the road, farmers working their fields, people going about
their busy business, weighbridges, small and large industries, canals and
streets meandering their way into the villages, roadside vendors selling cane
mudaas and a double-decker train in yellow and red marking the horizon between
green fields and a spotty blue and white sky.
There were contrasts everywhere: industrial
chimneys puffing out white smoke away from their adjacent fields, machines next
to manual labour, a village bazaar to which the villagers were dragging their
cows and bulls, band members with their French horns and brass drums resting in
the fields checking their mobile phones perhaps for calls they missed while
playing their instruments at some wedding, mosques and temples at close
proximity, people consulting astrologers on the road, and schools and huts intermingling
to form life.
After a seven-hour drive, when we
reached our hotel in Jim Corbett our joints felt fatigue, but our souls were
refreshed with the sights we had seen, our minds were satiated with diversity
and reality that covered nearly 70% of my country. Living a busy life in the
city had taken us away from the truth, a truth that enriched us with its
honesty. I was glad to be back in nature and how.
If that was the journey, the destination
was picture perfect. As we stepped out to the balcony of our room, Earth hit us
with her beauty. The Kosi river lined the backyard of our hotel. It was filled with
large grey rocks and pebbles as a shallow stream of clear, transparent water flowed
across garlanded by the lush, green mountains of the Shivaliks. The hotel was
situated in a valley and horses and donkeys were quenching their thirst by the
shallow Kosi. Clouds were beginning to gather in the sky and within an hour it
looked like the mountains had pierced the clouds open and drenched us in the
outpouring. The green of the mountains becoming brighter as if God had tuned up
the Brightness and Contrast of his Earth.
We spent that evening walking the
streets of Jim Corbett to get a feel for the place, to be one with it. At the
local store, we bought some juice and band aid and checked out the travel agent
at the next store for the line of adventure sports on the menu. There were
jungle safaris by jeep and elephant. There were tours of the place on the menu
and walks along a rope bridge on Kosi.
We had booked our safari via the
hotel and so after a heavy lunch, the following afternoon, we rushed to the
hotel reception for some adventure. The driver was waiting for us in his
military green eight-seater open Jeep. Ravinder accompanied him in the front, Tara
and Stanley in the middle seat and Rose and I in the last seat. Hats on,
sunglasses adorned, walking shoes on, a backpack with a DSLR and water bottles
set, we set off for our jungle safari. It took us an hour’s drive to reach the
DurgaDevi gate of the Jim Corbett National Park, though we had wanted to get in
through the Bijrani zone for photographs with tigers from that zone had started
trickling on our Facebook feeds. Unfortunately, we had not managed to get entry
passes for Bijrani.
Our drive to the National Park was through
a forest reserve. Forests of the Shivalik on either side of the road, albeit
not as dense as the National Park would be. Nonetheless, we could spot a dear
or two on these roads filling us with anticipation and excitement.
At the DurgaDevi gate, we got our IDs
and passes checked as guide Manoj Khumri joined us in the jeep. Thus, with an
acceleration of the jeep, DSLR out we started our safari.
“No stepping down from the jeep.
No noise in the jungle.
No littering in the jungle.
No feeding, disturbing animals.”
“Sure Mr. Manoj, we abide by the
rules of the jungle,” we pledged.
“Not our land, but theirs,” I turned
to Rose faking a roar.
As we drove in, the raw beauty of the
jungle wowed us. The thick jungle was carpeted in tall Sal trees. Predatory
trees wrapped themselves around younger juicy ones only to throttle them to
death, the warped structures showing off masterpieces by the creator. The
mountains on the one side, breaking out into little springs crossing over on
the path to flow out into shallow streams on the other side of the path. The
kallol of the spring reminding us of musical notes hidden in our very being.
The afternoon sun playing hide and seek as the guide looked up at the mountains,
tall trees, ditches, patches of shrubs trying to spot rare wild sightings to
show off his jungle to us the visitors. We were in awe of the wild, sights we
had never seen or imagined, sounds that pulled musical notes in the strings of
our hearts: birds, insects, water, leaves, animals, quiet.
A half hour into the jungle, Tara was
hungry. I passed her some apples, the only snack we carried because the safari
would finish by 5:00 p.m. and we would reach hotel for evening tea. With Tara
fed and asleep, we clicked away pictures of sights and sounds so alien to us
city beings.
Every few minutes, the guide would
ask the driver to stop. Shushing us, he would listen carefully to some sound,
look around to where he thought it originated and either pass on or show us
something our eyes could feast on. We started looking around like wild animals
on a prowl, looking for a kill for our camera and natural lenses.
The deer was a common sight in our
zone. We also saw a heard of elephants wading through the forest towards the
Kosi. From the mountain we could see the river down below. It was about half a
kilometer away from the elephants. It was fascinating to see a baby elephant
who was left behind and was trying to catch up to his family meandering through
the trees and path left behind by years of wild trips to the waterfront.
As we drove further in the jungle,
the guide pointed to a tree where the carcass of a deer hung from a tall
branch, “a leopard’s left over lunch from a few days back.” A machan was erect
in the jungle for visitors to catch a glimpse of the beautiful Kosi from above,
as she swung her hips through the forest.
At the machan, my heart had seen it all
and I thought I’ll ask the driver to return. But my greed forbade me. We
carried on and about half a kilometer later, we were crossing a small bridge on
the Kosi. This was the last point of the safari.
To return, we had to cross the bridge,
turn around and drive back and out the route we came. The wooden bridge lay
lower than the river banks. As the driver accelerated to get onto the higher
banks of the river, the jeep roared and came to a halt. The driver tried again
and my husband frowned. “Oh relax!” I chimed in.
By now, the driver’s head was behind
a raised hood.
“Ravinder, can you check what’s
wrong?” Stanley asked our driver.
Ravinder went over to the front and
confirmed my husband’s worst suspicions.
“Sir, its gone he said. This won’t
start now. We’ll have to get down.”
Rose and I were ecstatic. “Get down
in the middle of the jungle, where we were not allowed! Yaay!”
We jumped off onto the wooden bridge.
We could feel Kosi gurgling under our feet and fishes tumbling and tossing in
the water. The evening sun still bright in the sky and pristine, clear
surroundings welcomed us to click pictures. We posed on the rocks along the
river bank, while the men decided the future course of action.
“Sir, we’ll have to reach that check
post at the top of the mountain behind us,” screamed the driver. “We can either
climb the mountain or walk a path that winds around the mountain. It’s a small
climb, 10 minutes tops. The path, however, can take up to 30 minutes.”
“Let’s climb.” My daughter and I were
so excited at the opportunity of adventure, and it was hardly steep. In 10
minutes, we were at the dilapidated check post. There were four men sipping tea
on a charpoy on the terrace of the single room structure. They welcomed us
amidst a flurry of enquiries and phone calls. Our phones had no range, so the
driver requested to use the check post’s landline phone to call his office. As
we waited for another jeep to come, a forest guard made tea and served us with
a toothless grin. He was perhaps in his sixties and his warm accommodating
smile told us all was right with the world.
Tara, who was now up from her nap,
was hungry. But, we were left with no food. “We’ll be back before tea,” we had
said while packing our backpack, ‘and, who packs for a disaster, anyway’ I
wondered. But, we were stuck in luck’s test.
I took her to the edge of the
mountain. We could see the beautiful Kosi and the bridge we had disembarked
upon. I tried to distract her with beauty. The rays of the setting sun shining
through the trees forming a halo on the ground. But, she refused to budge. Her
wail grew louder and more irritated. Ultimately, we asked the old guard if he
had some biscuits in this jungle. With a toothy grin, he ran up to the kitchen
on the terrace and brought a packet of butter cookies back.
Fed and free the kids began to
venture around the check post verandah marked out by boulders, beyond which lay
the jungle. We were told not to leave the verandah as the men sat on the
terrace smoking and chatting. It was beginning to get dark as the driver of our
Jeep screamed down that another jeep had left his office. That would mean at
least 1.5 hours to reach us, long after the closing hours of the jungle and the
setting of the sun. Reality dawned on me, and I felt fear creep into my brains.
‘Driving through the jungle in the middle of the night!’
As I prayed and saved the only
biscuits we had, I could see myself imagine all sorts of possible situations. ‘The
return journey in the dark, the possibility of wild animals, the kids, alternate
vehicle not arriving, having to spend the night here…’ and a shudder passed
down my spine.
On the ground floor, I could see a
room with windows and ragged bed sheets for curtains. Outside the room, a
flight of steps led to the terrace, which had another room being used as a
kitchen. There was smoke puffing out of the open front of the soot-layered
kitchen and men’s underwear drying out on a string across the breadth of the
kitchen. As we sat on a cemented slab in the verandah, a teenaged boy carried a
bucket of water from a tap on the left of the building all the way round to
behind the building. “Madam, the toilet is behind the building, if you want to
use.” He came back and let me know.
I thanked him with a smile. Rose
refused to use it, so we had to discreetly perch her up on a rock behind the
toilet and let flow on the mountain that hoisted the check post.
We had one bottle of water and two
biscuits left, which we saved for the kids, who seemed to be enjoying
themselves in the jungle, oblivious to the dangers of our return journey. As
dusk fell, mosquitoes began their dinner. We fought for as long as the Odomos
we had applied in the hotel lasted on our skin, but soon we were dinner.
Somehow, two hours later we heard the
tires of a jeep. The sweet sound of arrival was greeted by joys of relief from
us. The alternate jeep had two drivers, packets of chips and biscuits and
bottles of water. Relief was beginning to creep in. We were glad to leave after
tipping the old toothless guard for his kindness.
We jumped in to the jeep. Ravinder
and the jeep’s driver in front, us in the middle seat, the guide and two new
drivers in the back seat. We drove down to the river, tied the old jeep to the
new one with one driver in it as we started our return journey.
The night commanded us to stay silent
through the return journey, as the children hungrily ate the snacks. We huddled
because cold and the fear of darkness froze our bones. The guide and driver on
the back seat stood tall looking out for the wild. There were owls hooting,
bats flying, crickets chirping and leaves silent. As we passed each spot or
covering, I could hear animals look up from their slumber, turn around and look
at our tracks in the jungle. Or maybe I was imagining that.
Soon, we were being guided by Night
Jars, who preceded us for almost two kilometers. A rare species, but we decided
against their pictures, for fear of our endangerment.
At every accelerated movement of the
jeep, we worried about a repeat of the breakdown. The drivers scolded the
current driver and I could hear fear being contained in each voice.
After driving for about 1.5 hours, we
reached the DurgaDevi gate. We were so relieved when the guard opened the gate
and let us out. We were back among humans.
On our drive back to the hotel, we spotted
some deer and wild pigs by the road. But neither of us clicked pictures,
instead we thanked them for their kindness. That night Stanley and I decided, “no
more venturing into the lives of the wild.”
Live and let live!
P.S. Be prepared (perhaps, for the worst) when you travel.
NOTICE: You Do NOT have the right to reprint or resell this story!
You also MAY NOT give away, sell or share the content herein!
© 2016 by Donna Abraham
A nice read with a moral.
ReplyDeleteWow what an adventure!! awesome Donna
ReplyDeleteThanks.
ReplyDelete