9 August 2010: 5 AM:
It is very cold. I am walking on an empty road from Kumaraswamy latout to my place which is almost a kilometer. I'd look around carefully after every step making sure no stray dogs attack me. But then I am missing some sounds too, sounds that could only be heared when you are in the middle of a thick forest. Sounds that i could hear 24 hours ago....
DONIGAL:
We were a team of 10. Me, Aditya, Umashankar, Santosh, Vasu, Prasanna, Nandeesh, Darshan, Shashi and Karthik. Our first objective after we all met at the bus stand was to (obviously!) catch a bus to Donigal from Bangalore. The bus was scheduled to leave at 930 and we all made it to the bus stand at 10. The bus had left. I pity the bus, it could ve made it to my blog and history had it waited for us. Finally, after a lot of waiting and roaming around we found our bus, a good one kilometer away from the bus stand. It was a private bus( it is a part of history now!!). We managed to take our seats and were all set only to find that the bus was not ready yet!! After managing to fill it up and sorting issues with a disgruntled passenger who lost his seat to us(mainly due to the number of us), the driver finally started the bus at 11 PM. A Kannada flick was playing on the Television and we had a fun time commenting on it and that acted as an Ice breaker for me and my bro Adi,the youngest in the group, and the rest of the group. US had warned me saying that the rest of the group may rag us but that didn't happen( thankfully). Everybody was very friendly and i shall talk about it later. The journey wasn't the most comfortable thanx to the seating. The legspace was too little but we did fine. The driving was very good though. Vasu joined us a lil later near the outskirts of the city. The bus stopped at 130 in the morning and we stepped out for some fresh air. I looked into the sky and could see it filled with stars. Yes! We had finally crossed Bengaluru!!
Finally, after dealing with some more land turbulence(:P) we reached Donigal at 4 AM. Ah! Nothing smells as good as rain at 4 in the morning! We got down, bid goodbye to the driver,
took our torches out and left for the donigal railway station at 412 AM. It was awesome!! Ten people in the quiet road in the early morning. We took a detour only to find elephant dung on the way(gulp!) Then we found out that it wasn't the way(Thank god!). We got back to the roadand took a detour again. This time we got it right. We reached the train track. It was raining, cold and very slippery. We walked a 100 meters before reaching the station at Donigal. Once at the station, all of us got rid of our bags, placed some newspapers on the floor and slept at 5 AM. As Santosh had previously said, it is a rare privilege we get. So I made the most of it. However, my sleep didn't last long. A cat's shriek and rainwater played spoilport and I woke up. Some of the other team members were already making plans for the next stage. The food packets were redistributed among all of us so that everybody could carry it without any fuss.
615 AM:
"It was raining cats and dogs", that is the standard metaphor. Here it was raining Hippos! It was raining heavily.The beautiful stream we were looking at ten minutes ago was looking like a flood on a miniature scale. We were shivering in the cold. None of us expected heavy rains on this scale. Everyone was looking for the other one's opinion. Finally, we decided "Come what may, We are here for adventure and we shall have it!!" We finally started for Yedukumari at 715 AM
Top: The stream I was talking about, will show the flood part later. Bottom: The track at 412 AM
To Be Continued
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