Life is for us is out there in the wild
It took me more than 48 hours to recover from the PICNIC! I have been with Chennai Trekking Club since July 08 and my first trek was Yelagiri. I was struggling a lot in my first trek. Ok, why do I say all these things now? From then to till now I have done 25 treks with CTC but nothing like this PICNIC. It has given such a wonderful experience and the obstacles we faced are a lot!
Friday night, I called up Divi and told that I will be reaching her place by 10. God damn, my bike got punctured and thank god I found a puncture shop to get my flat wheel fixed. Reached Peter’s home by 12 after having nice Pizza Peter advised me to get some sleep and I couldn’t sleep. This is a typical syndrome for me! The previous night of every trek, I have never slept and I just said to myself, it’s just a PICNIC and not much of strain will be there. So, I switched on the TV and found RAMBO 3 was running. Pretty excited I started watching the movie and it got over by 3:00AM in the morning. Just an hour of sleep I opened my eyes and saw Peter packing up the stuffs. I woke up and we all packed our stuffs and got ready for the exciting PICNIC. Called up everyone and all were set to the long weekend waiting. The new comer Shilpa did not even have a clue on what is waiting for her!
I messaged Baskar saying that “Life is for us is out there in the wild” and I didn’t even have a clue what is going to happen for us! All set and stopped near pichathur for breakfast. With the US and Russian topo maps, we were able to get the village name where we are supposed to go! Man, believe it! This is not the usual Nagala entry and I could understand Peter’s smile about the surprise. First time in CTC, Nagala conquered from Western side. Yah, we are tired of Eastern entries: P We stopped near a place to ask for the village directions and Guru popped his head out, Peter!!!! We stopped in the Forest department check post! Thank god, Naresh told we came to PICNIC to one of our friend’s home in KV puram! Reached the village, packed all our stuffs! Believe me; we guys were carrying almost 20kgs of weight in all our back pack!
The Sun as usual no mercy with CTC! It started to rip off the sweat and very soon everyone got dehydrated. The steep climb reminded me of Tada, but this is steeper than we expected/calculated! By 2PM, we just checked the GPS and we covered almost 7.5 kms which is not at all bad phase. Soon the souls started to get tired and it’s time for me and Guru to carry the double bag job! Me and Guru exchanging the bags for long time and then Peter came down, Guru went ahead with Peter to find water and got water to the team! Then again we started to trek more, steeper the path, we covered more altitude which is only the good news for us. By 4PM we reached on top the hill and from there it was a flat walk on the grassland :P. Still, the crew does not even have the clue where the pool was and they just kept walking. Everyone forgot their lunch too and we survived with grapes and cucumber. After an hour of walk, at 5PM we found a small stagnated water pool were we refreshed ourselves. Peter promised that from now in 15 minutes you will reach a running water stream which made everyone happy. Soon by 5:30, we reached to a cliff of the mountain and it was a narrow steep rock and the stream which we need to join runs down. I believe to my knowledge, the steep drop was around some 70 feet? With Peter’s instruction, me and Naresh went ahead to check if it is possible to get down.
This is the most fatal mistake we have done. We left the back packs and went down to check the trail. We almost got down and it was just 30 feet left in the drop. I was trying to get hold of a tree, it slipped and for next 15 seconds I was screaming “NARESH”. I lifted my head up so, I prevented my face and was putting my fingers hard on the mud to get hold of something. At last, my leg struck in a rock and my sliding stopped. Naresh got down slowly. I was badly hurt on both the legs. It was 5:45PM, we were down. The game started and we were calling out Peter and Guru’s name! As per Peter, I calculated that the camping site is the PICNIC spot pool, so I decided to take Naresh to the pool. I saw from the cliff were the stream takes a 90 degree turn and where the Pool should. With that calculation, I started to follow the stream very fast. I should thank Peter here. With all the treks in Nagala with him, I gained the knowledge of navigating inside the new trail, my intuitions went very strong. I started to implement the lessons which I learnt/observed from Peter.
1) Did not panic – I stayed cool and started to tell Naresh that we will reach the pool soon!
2) Since we did not have the torch, we decided to reach the pool where we are supposed to camp.
3) We lost our bag packs, so the survival rate is very low. Decided to stay near water which is the only savior for till we meet the crew.
4) I believed and accepted myself that we are lost. I did not get tensed and kept following the stream and alas we found the pool. We jumped and crossed the pool. Reached a flat rock!
5) No camp fire, no food, no mat, no sleeping bag. Just water was the only resource.
Next to myself, I trust Peter! It’s not blind, being with him in the field, navigating, helping, wow, he is the one man army!
Back to story, we reached the pool and started to shout for Peter, Guru and Amal’s name. Every 30 minutes me and Naresh shifted the shouting job. Then we drink some water and then again we started to shout. It was almost 11PM, I lost hope that the crew will never find us here. But again to Naresh I just told Peter has to pass this way and he too assured that he will think the same. We both convinced ourselves and I told Naresh to sleep for a while. I guess Naresh was little scared as we were only two and he heard some fox fighting by 3AM in the night. He holded my hands and slept for rest of the night. I was not afraid and I was very much worried about the team. I know they will be missing us and we were worried as something happened to Peter. That is the reason they did not find us.
It was Sunday morning, the sun woke us up. I quickly decided and told Naresh that only known possibility way of camping is a dead end pool before this PICNIC pool. We started to trek and reached the pool, but we didn’t find any traces of the crew. We were much worried and then we decided that 12PM is the worst case we are waiting. If we are not meeting the crew by 12PM, we will start to move out of this place before it gets dark again. Since, 2 weeks before I came to expat trek with Peter in the same way, I was very confident in getting Naresh out before the sun goes down. It was 11:50PM, we took some charcoal (N10 camping remains) and started to write on the rocks “We are moving to DAM – Viki/Naresh” When I completed the “H”, I saw Peter’s face! Guru scolded me and Amal almost hit me! I could see a gentle satisfaction on Peter’s face. It was first time I felt very bad to see Peter’s and rest of the crew face. I apologized myself for the confusion and immediately we jumped in the pool to relax. Then Amal told me what happened to Guru which made me to feel guiltier.
It was quarter to 1PM and Peter decided to go ahead and cook something for lunch. After 27 hours, me and Naresh saw the food! After 17 hours, we saw our peoples face and everyone was very happy. This core group is not something which is formed by regular trekking, it is more than trekking! The bonding, the courage, the camaraderie shown by them made us really happy. I could see couple of souls shedding tears for me! Peter, I say here that Trekking is my life and for CTC, I am ready to go or do anything on field! I just mean it! Being regular with them and the friendship developed between us has no words! I sincerely thank CTC and my friend Peter.
After a good non-veg meal, Peter decided to go ahead with Guru to get him some medical help. Senthil also joined with them. Rest of the crew slowly started to pack the things. Peter gave the trail responsibility to me. I just had a word with Amal, before it gets dark, we need to reach the first pool were we have couple of diversions which is very easy to miss even in day time. Though the GPS has Google map marked trails, it does not have the actual trekking trail. I just closed my eyes for 5 minutes and got ready for the navigation. We have 2 dead end pools and one we need to swim across for sure. I was little worried about the crew as it was already 3PM. By 3:30PM we reached the first dead end pool with narrow gorge and no possibility of swimming. We decided to climb uphill and avoid the gorge and pool. The climb was very steep and one big rock would have blown Naresh’s face and he just escaped. The rock which I was standing moved and it pierced me on the same wound which I got from previous day sliding. I somehow managed to climb up first and went ahead to check the trail without bushes. After 20 minutes of search, I found a decent climb down without loose rocks. The first batch waited for 20 minutes and rest all got down. From there I made a quick check of how many torches were left out. We were totally 11 and we had just 3 torches.
I decided with Amal that I will move little fast and at last I went very fast losing 6 people behind me. Then myself and Samyak went back to search the lost one and found them. Team getting lost got frustrated too! I got scolding from couple of people but still I stayed calm as I know we have a very long way to go! After 30 minutes of walk, we met the dead end pool where we have to swim. Indira, Sunita, Bala, Selva can swim and cross. Sheetal, Samyak, Shilpa have no clue on swimming. Myself, Amal and Naresh decided to ferry the bags and people. So, we tied the mats together and started to ferry the bags first. For the 3rd round of ferry, Naresh got a cramp badly and we asked him to stay near the shallow region. Then we ferried people and when it was Shilpa’s turn, she slipped from the rock where she was standing. Fortunately myself and Selva were near that rock and she fell on me and I was able to hold her!
It was 6:00PM and I could sense the darkness is ready to play the game with the 11 souls! I asked everyone to take their torches and started to trek. Soon it was pitch dark and as I expected we missed the right turn which we are supposed to take in this tricky trail! Thanks to Amal for getting the GPS and he found the right which we need to take. But again for next 2 hours we were walking on the hill horizontally which was not right for me. I saw the hill on the left and I was very sure that we should start descending now. But it was intuition and I was very strong in it. But still the crew liked to move with the GPS directions and we decided to check the trail. By 10PM, we started to hear a wild life sound moving near to us and it was none other than Peter! He went ahead, dropped Guru with Palani and came back inside in search of us! I could see the smile on people’s face when they saw him and he took us immediately down the hill to stream. From there for 2 hours walk, we reached the village where Senthil was waiting for us with the share auto. His Banglore bus was on 11:45 and he intentionally missed his bus, went ahead with Peter and again waited for us with the Auto! Such a selfless attitude guy!
All the 13 people boarded on one share auto! And then we started our journey to Sathyavedu. Since 12 were fit in the auto there was no place for the 13th guy to stand. So, with shift basis everyone hanged out for a while in the auto. After 45 minutes of travel, we reached the Sathyavedu bus stand and the share auto guy called his friend who has a sumo with him. Just 15 minutes, the sumo came and we all 13 dumped ourselves in the sumo. Dumped means literally dumped! All were damn tired. After 30 minutes people started to ask for break as their legs were in a bad shape. We got down and Peter and few just slept on the road for a quick nap. There came our friend (AP police) and Naresh managed with them and got us out in few minutes. We reached our cars by 4AM in the morning and luckily the villagers were awake and they were so nice to help us. Soon, we got into our cars and started to search for the dhaba for food. No hotels were open on that time and we are almost dead. Suddenly the Scorpio started to do a zig zag and in few minutes Peter stopped and asked Selva to drive the car. I switched to Indira’s car and I was talking to her for a while. On the highway, we saw a tree blocking the road and our guys cleared the tree. I asked Sunita to come in the front seat and I went in the back seat and closed my eyes!
It was 7AM, horns honking everywhere and I opened my eyes it was Koyembedu. I switched to Scorpio and Peter dropped me near Saidapet. With my boxers and Hawaii slippers, I reached my home. Our back packs (Peter, Guru, Viki and Naresh) are still waiting for us up there in western Nagala. My bike keys, our office ID cards, RSA and all other STUFFS are left as it was very heavy for others to carry since we both lost in the jungle.
I came home and sat for a while, recalling the entire two day weekend. The 17 hours missing the crew was an amazing part. We both staying near the big pool, talking all non-sense to keep ourselves awake and I bet none would have called Peter, Guru and Amal’s name more than us! 27 hours of survival with water only. It was another terrific experience. I got dressed my wound by Baskar and all set now. Back to civilization! This was the amazing PICNIC which no one could give us other than the Captain Peter. He is the man and we always learn from him a lot. Keep observing him, but don’t disturb him this is CTC and I am loving it! Trekking keeps me alive.
Peter - Life is for us is out there in the wild. Life is calling….
More pictures are at
http://picasaweb.google.com/selva.pn/NagalapuramPicnic#
