We reached the river side where we met Velutha around 1330. No one had any idea, how we trekked so swiftly. There wasn't a single part of our body that wasn't aching. Except for Ravi, I guess most of us were too tired for anything. He kept on clicking photographs, even dared to ask us to pose couple of times :)
May be he didn't really gauge the situation. Or he didn't think the danger of getting stuck for one more night in the middle of nowhere surrounded by wild animals and that too without any food! Anyways, it was good to have someone with energy oozing out at this situation.
We met "Rajan", a nephew of Velutha on the way who suggested that we trek directly to Nilambur through plains rather than attempting a tiring hike up to Meenmutty. Considering the fact that he was the first human contact since previous afternoon, it was a blessing to see him. It was a choice between 4 hours of climbing or 2 hours of trek to another district and then hire a jeep to reach back in Wayanad which will take another 4 hours by road. We chose the latter.Even after 4 hours of slow trek along the river we were still far away from any sort of human settlement. Rest of the trek was like a pilgrimage.
No one even whispered. Legs were almost falling apart, hunger was burning every known senses in the body and the fear that we might not be able to get out of the forest was too much to accept.
Finally we saw a tribal settlement, (A unfortunate intervention of forest department and Hill Area Development Authority where tribal are "rehabilitated" and brought into the main stream!!) where the poverty stricken community couldn't even offer us rice gruel. After hearing our misadventure, the forest officer on a patrol who saw us at the entrance, came along with us and asked the community members if they could give us some thing to eat.
To some of the tribal whom we met on the way, we kept on asking like "how far?", how long"! The distance to the rubber and spice plantation was "just 20 minutes sir"! Great. That twenty minutes came after another two hours literally in a tea shop run by the plantation workers!
"Even raw bananas tastes good after 22 hours of trek in two days without food!" In a tea shop that saved us finally. The workers were so wonderful. while we ate bananas and had black tea (with loads of sugar!), one of them went to his house and prepared wonderful lentils and rice gruel with some mouth watering pickle !
© GP 2007
© GP 2007
1 comment:
what an incredible way to experience what was daily fare for our ancestors!
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