12 July 2008, time 1:30 PM, I called up my friend and told her "I am safe now". Tarun asked a bidi from "kaka" ( a local shepherd), kaka took out the packet of tobacco, "this is all i have got". Mohit was busy with tommy ( kaka's dog, mohit had rechristened it to tommy). We had just spent an hour in a place where there were, crabs of size of the great khalis palms, water oozing out of mountain rocks, possibly some dangerous reptiles, but we did not come across any ( I again thank God for this), and we were told by locals that there were some wild pigs in there, and that place is used by hunters for hunting these pigs.
It all started with mohits thought of going "out-of-the-way" to climb to the fort, we took a route, which i think was not taken by anybody in the past ( atleast not our kinds, trek loving Software Engineers), we climbed a hill and started following a path, which we thought would lead us to the fort. We could see the fort, covered with clouds now. Everything was fine, and all of us were marching along cheerfully. Untill we suddenly found ourselves amongst bushes. I thought returning from here would be a better idea, but mohit and tarun thought otherwise and started moving forward, I followed them, just when i thought nothing is so dangerous about this place, I slipped and fell on to the rocks, I don't remember how i got hold of some of the bushes and stood back on my legs, I was bleeding at hand now. Nevertheless we continued, thinking we would soon find our way up to the fort, but we could see only bushes around. 20 meters forward and we were again stuck, no way to move forward. Mohit by now was tired and could not move swiftly ( and my shoutings of "Don't stand in bushes" was just exacerbating the situation). We were now moving through bushes like animals, even holding cactus to prevent ourselves from slipping down ( I don't remember when was the last time i was so desperate).
Now, we decided to go back along the way we came. We slipped, we fell, the thorns in bushes were tearing our skin apart, we cared less. We took a halt near a small waterfall ( not exactly a water fall, but water flowing through the rocks of hill). We got a thought that, if we follow this water , we might reach the bottom of the hill. Bingo!!! we thought, the only problem was, water ofcourse, we knew that we would slip, but everybody was fine with that now. One step forward and mohit slipped and landed on his bums, tarun's one step forward and bang he too like mohit landed on his bums, it was my turn and i was not spared by the water either. We decided that this could be the only way we could reach the bottom of the hill and continued our "water rides", till we came across a sharp dip.
We climbed up again with great difficulty, and continued our "voyage" through the bushes. Few steps forward and mohit wanted to have rest. While mohit and tarun were resting, I saw a some long trees. I saw that the distance between those was less and estimated that if we reach somewhere near those trees we would reach the bottom. It took a lot to convince mohit and tarun, but finally we decided to go for it.
As we moved forward, we were cheering. The moos of a cow got relief to us. And we saw a group of people sitting there, kaka was amongst them.
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