The other day I had the pleasure of starting on a trek with a group of friends, most known, a couple unknown. The word trek was virtually unknown to me until this latest expedition. So in order to expiate the doubts of clueless souls (like me) I hereby give you a gist of my favorite parts of the trek… nah contrary to popular belief, they don’t include time spent gorging on calorie-loaded foods. Atleast I shall spare you those details, again as a gesture of solidarity, which only food lovers like me would know.
So being the ignoramus I was I started gathering information from my more experienced partners on what one does on treks. My friend who was in charge of the travel and stay did a good job of keeping us posted on what to bring, what to wear and what not to wear (though I got terribly confused at one time and thought I’d have to wear a bright coloured tee to keep off the bison! Oh yeah, I am capable of that). But still mental pictures of people who wore trendy tracksuits and jerkins and mountain boots with huge rucksacks came to mind. I didn’t think I could stand with those on, leave alone trek the wilderness! So you could imagine my relief when my friend A assured me that all that was unnecessary.
On the D – day we started off from Madurai to a place called Manavannur, which is just below Kodaikanal. It’s a beautiful picturesque village with lovely sloping hills filled with green lush grass. The seemingly innocent hills could hide some real weather beaten hard tracks, not many would know at a glance. And for a change it was nice to be in a place where there were not many tourists and foreigners and to be gawked at instead by the locals.
The first day of our stay in the basic but charming little cottages we went for a 6km trek down the hills to a pond. Well if you thought one would have had to push away thorny grasses and intruding branches out of the way through a gloomy forest, you couldn’t be more off the mark, coz the first day was definitely a roll in the hay… ahem. With uplifting spirits I realized that this was all there was to trekking. I mean, enjoy the lovely weather, the beautiful summer flowers, the fig trees and the sheer brilliancy and greenery of the surroundings and walk back to the cottages for a well-deserved dinner and sleep. The second day however put things into perspective. We had to er... trek double the distance to reach a water falls and considering the fact that water needed to drop from a height to qualify as waterfalls, we had no doubts in mind that it was an upward trek. And so we started the journey in a bus...
Yeah a local bus, which was to take us to a point to start off our trek. The bus was our idea of roughing it out a bit as the other easy option was to hire a jeep to take us there. I wouldn’t be doing justice to my conscience if I were to omit the er… little fact that the bus ride we considered only when we were denied the jeep to travel in, due to the election campaigning going on in the sleepy town. The bus however was anything but! We tried merging with the locals which was pretty tough considering we were dressed in branded jeans and tee and acting like silly tourists, taking pictures of ourselves trying to maintain equilibrium in the precariously loaded and swaying bus (yeah act of bravery there) and surreptitiously taking pictures of the interested co passengers too. I don’t know who was happier to see us go… (attempting modesty here) the spouses of the men who couldn’t quite close their jaws from the time we’d got in or the superb hero of a driver who handled the bus on hair bending curves as if it were a toy, but whose ear drums must have been shot with all the squealing we were doing. Anyways we managed to get down in one piece and the ride made for interesting conversation as we made the long lazy climb from one hill to another to reach our waterfall. This is when the first absurdity of the situation struck me. Here we were, adorned in goggles, caps; good shoes and of course western wear ploughing along like ants about their work, while in front of us our local guide Kannan, a puny little fellow was walking with slippers and a muffler wound casually around his neck. In one hand he had an umbrella, which he kept twirling lazily, and which he used as a good tool to scratch unreachable places on his person. Whenever he got bored doing that he would clasp his hands behind and thoughtfully measure the distance to the peak. The sheer ease with which he trekked…er… walked on while we were trying hard not to burst at the seams in our endeavour to take in great lungful of pure oxygen, made us do a double take. Still keeping with the purpose of the trip we spiritedly decided to trek our way and so we used props like the one Dev Anand used in the movie Gambler, only we used a long stick instead of a fishing rod. And so labouring hard yet content we reached the beautiful waterfall.
Well if you are still with me after this rather long account of the trek I am sure you will be there when I write to you about certain Shylocks who inhabit the wilderness. So I am serializing this blog. Happy trekking!
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