The Accidental Hiker

Ashok signalled with his hands and we stopped in our tracks. The afternoon sun was pleasantly warm on our backs as we sank down to our knees. Ashok, ten yards ahead of us, motioned for us to be quiet as he retreated. "Gaur!" he whispered when he reached us. The three of us slunk into the fragile camouflage of a thorny bush. Less than a hundred yards away, a herd of Indian Bison were grazing. Their default leader had already sensed us and was sniffing the air, trying to pinpoint our position. We were nervous: if they decided to charge, we didn't stand a chance of outrunning them, we would surely be trampled to death by their collective hooves. At the same time the urge to take a picture urged me to poke my little camera through the gaps in the bush and press the trigger repeatedly, hoping that I would get one decent shot. I got my picture, but it was far from satisfactory; but I had reason to be pleased: after hiking for nearly three decades in the hills of the Sahyadri...

The soft pitter patter of the rain falling on my head was like a comforting rhythm. My feet went squelching in the mud but it did not matter. We had been walking in the rain all day and by now we had adjusted to this wet wet world. We walked in silence in the rapidly approaching darkness. As we walked past the few huts that comprised the little hamlet, we heard a female voice cry out. She said something but the words were lost in the moist wind that cooled our faces as we hurried past. "What was that?" I asked Anil, who was a few paces behind me, "what is she saying?". His command of Marathi was marginally better than mine, or so I thought....thus my appeal to him for a translation. Anil shook his head. "I can't really make out what she is saying." The voice called out again, but we ignored it and kept walking until we were out of earshot. As we approached the little stream that we had waded across 8 hours earlier, an ever increasing roar fi...

The sweat cooled off my shirt as we descended the gully between Chanderi and Mhasmal. I was glad for the respite from the heat of that November day in 2003. It was the first day of the month, but it had felt like a humid and sticky summer day all afternoon. The sun was now well hidden from us as we came down on the east side of the Chanderi hill and the light was quickly fading. Behind me I could hear Shreyas and Shruti and Shyama and Shridhar negotiating the trail : the sound of shoes slithering on the scree, the crack of twigs as they snapped beneath someone's weight, the rustle of dry leaves as tired shoulders brushed past, the occasional "ouch!" as one of them stubbed a toe. Shreyas Map by the late Arun Samant for Harish Kapadia's "Trek the Sahyadris" (5th Edition) The village of Chinchavli is spelt Chinchli on the map. I reached the point where the trail crosses a dry gully to the other side. It was almost dark and very quiet. I could b...

This time it wasn't me who fell. You might be forgiven for assuming that I, like Julius Caesar, "hath the falling sickness" if you have been following my other blogs The Accidental Climber ( http://taccidental.blogspot.com/2012/06/mayhem-at-mumbra.html ) and The Accidental Trekker ( http://accidentaltrekker.blogspot.com/2012/08/life-begins-at-10000-feet.html ) Franklyn Silveira, my hiking friend over many decades, was the Fall Guy this time! Worse, he had slipped on a patch of wet rock while carrying tiny little Shruti piggyback on his shoulders. Miraculously, Shruti was intact but Franklyn's psyche was not. Shruti's mother Shyama was even more perturbed and relieved Franklyn of his babysitting duties immediately! It was June 1995 and this was my first taste of Basgadh. Over the next ten years, Basgadh steadily graduated to become one of my all time favourite destinations in the Sahyadri. Why am I so besotted with Basgadh? When you ...