When you are in your early or mid 20s in an IT City (Bengaluru of course), anything usually western sounds cool. No wonder when someone said lets go “Backpacking” it sounded so cool to some of us. MM, for some strange reason opted out and said he is going on a motor cycle trip by himself. The usual uber cool personnel KG, AM, SC, VM and I decided that we will backpack.
VM decided to get some work done on the way. We packed our backs in a car and went to some village to see if it would meet the needs for his next film shooting. It was a quaint little village by a river. After we were done, we were to “backpack” in the car again but someone saw a boat and decided that we should cross the river in the boat. We asked the driver to get the car to the other side and took the boat. We were to walk to the car which was supposed to be waiting for us on the highway. We walked, walked and walked but the highway seemed to keep moving away. We asked a villager who was walking by how far the main road was. He said something like “You are only a couple of minutes away”. We walked 10 times couple of minutes and asked gentleman who was passing in his bicycle and he said “You are only a couple of minutes away”. We walked 10 times couple of minutes again. I suspect that it was a conspiracy by the villagers to make a fool out of the people from the city. There must have been so much fun at the tea shop about how stupid we were.
Thankfully, the taxi driver lost patience and came in to the village to pick us up. The next destination was Agumbe. Agumbe is a small village in the midst of a forest. The brilliant plan was to trek in to the forest and look at the site of a plane crash which apparently happened before planes were actually used for flying. All 5 of us were dumped in an autorickshaw and taken to a point from where we walked in. The site of the crash was some deep valley. Everybody looked to see if they could see a wreck. I don’t know if anybody could, I couldn’t. And I don’t know if there was crash or if it was another story invented by the villagers there. With my earlier experience it was hard to trust them.
On the way back,our guide/auto driver took off on his own to get some rest in his vehicle before we reached. We lagged behind. I was ahead of my group and I heard something like a groan. I saw the group ahead of me and the auto driver starting to increase their speed to almost a run. I looked behind and could not see the rest of my friends. The groan was growing louder and I decided to run. On a typical day I could run 5 meters (No. No typo there) before I start panting. In my fear for life, I was able to do 12 meters before it occurred that giving my body to a wild animal might reduce my sins a wee bit and of course, would down the aches and panting. I lived and reached the autorickshaw alive without running. It was fun to see 4 people come running and panting saying “Did you hear that? “ The suddenly brave auto driver said “Don’t worry! its just a bison”. Did I see him almost running a few minutes ago?
Next we decided to go to Gokarna. We took a bus. We had to take a bus to Manipal and take another from there to Gokarna. The road from Agumbe to Manipal has about 14 hair-pin bends and is just about the width of the bus. And unfortunately, the bus driver of our bus had decided to commit suicide that particular day. He drove thru those hair-pin bends in great hurry and there were many times the passengers were almost dead thinking the bus was going off the cliff. Thankfully no words came out of people’s mouth to distract the driver. Despite the best of efforts of the driver, we reached Manipal and got in to a bus to Gokarna!
No comments:
Post a Comment