First Trip to a Forest

I was about 14 when I saw a forest for the first time. My uncle and his family were on a trip to Thekkady, and so my sister and I joined them. I saw the Thekkady forest and the elephants, and enjoyed a boat trip. But the forest did not trigger any special response in me. As a foodie, I remember eating a tasty egg curry at a tiny, roadside tea shop there. Close by, I saw narrow bamboo stems, placed like a series of open drain pipes, that brought water from the hills. The water was really cold. It came from somewhere far away and flowed continuously. Passers-by and motorists stopped to drink, wash their faces and fill the radiators too. It was pure. These are the only recollections I have.

I developed closeness towards forests when I was studying Law at Mysore. I usually took a bus from Kerala, crossing either Gudalur or Muthanga on the way. The forests of Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu converged at the border areas. It was possible to go either via Gudalur, Mudumala forest and Bandipur or via Muthanga and Bandipur. At various spots on the road, along the border of Bandipur forest, we saw wild gooseberry trees laden with fruits.

Sometimes the buses stopped on the side of the road. Immediately the passengers, and even the driver and the conductor, climbed on top of the bus to pluck the wild gooseberries. The berries were very small and very bitter but the fun lay in the prospect of talking about grabbing gooseberries during our travel through the forest. Another sight – this was during the Vishu season in mid-April – was of blooming kanikonna (Indian laburnum) lining both sides of the road, stretching up to three or three-and-a-half kms, possibly a result of a social afforestation programme. If we were lucky, we would spot elephants standing right in the middle of the road. On such occasions, the bus had to stop and remain still for a long time.  But those bus trips never filled me with a sense of thrill.

I went on trekking for the first time when I was 30, and totally clueless about what it meant. I had gone to Mookambika temple at Kollur, and had to proceed to Kudajadri to collect some bit of information. I don’t recall the route. Rajesh, my cousin, who had trekking experience from his walking trips to Sabarimala, accompanied me. The next day, we took a bus bound for Kudajadri from Kollur. After some time, the bus stopped. We were told to step out and walk straight to get to Kudajadri. A billboard close by recommended the use of a walking stick. We were amazed. Why would youngsters need a stick at all? But by the time we climbed the first hill, I felt breathless, and it seemed my heart would explode. And there we saw an Ambassador car. Its axle had broken. The terrain was not fit for any four-wheeler, except a jeep. If you attempted to drive up the hill in a car, its axle would break. Just then I wondered whether the incline would break our axles too!

I had no experience in trekking through forests. I was not suitably dressed for it either. I was a lawyer at that time and had taken a briefcase in which I used to carry legal papers. It contained my clothes as well. So I climbed the hill, balancing my briefcase on my head using both my hands! Towards the top, we had to clutch at the grass to pull ourselves up. It took us two-and-a-half hours to cover a distance that the natives did in just one hour! I didn’t have a water bottle, and hadn’t known about its importance while trekking. At the summit seeing two houses, I walked towards the first. Its owner – I forget his name – was sitting in the veranda. He was the priest at the Kalabhairavan temple. He looked at me, went inside, and brought a steel vessel, full of cold water. The water came straight from the Sowparnika, quite like the water I had at Thekkady long back. These people collected river water at its source. I drank all of it in one long draught. I had never consumed so much water at any single time, ever before or after. We stayed there for a couple of days.

So this was trekking! I realized it only on reaching the summit of the hill and consuming all that water. Of course, I couldn’t enjoy it. But the story of my second trek is a big one. I shall narrate it in another episode.