Man vs. Nature

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious- I don’t know the meaning of this word but I sure know the feeling behind it.

As said by Rudyard Kipling –‘The first condition of understanding a foreign place is to smell it’ and I was literally sniffing like a dog when we reached Kondivade village, the base for our monsoon trek to Rajmachi and just like the letters in English alphabet we were 26 guys in total who made it to the trip planned by HydVentura. It was not a foreign land but it was me who was a foreigner to that place and I planned to see things as they are instead of thinking how things might be. I had the company my best pals and few strangers (now friends) when it all started. As expected, it was raining non-stop and we had to cover a decent distance to reach our base camp in rajmachi. The route we took was definitely not the easiest one, so we were constantly off balance. That was the best part of a trip, it pushes you to trust strangers on the path who later become great friends and nothing is ours except the elementary things – air, rain, sleep, dreams, the sky and the hills- all the things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.

We took small breaks in between to munch 5-stars and the thepla’s we carried in our bags. We used raincoats to cover our bags and we walked re-establishing the original harmony which once existed between man and nature. We reached the rajmachi village sometime in the evening and dumped our bags in a hut where we planned to spend the rest of our night. We planned to visit the twin forts on the hills of Manaranjan and Shrivardhan but managed to visit only one due to poor light conditions. We were almost at an altitude of 2700 feet and the entire view around us was breath taking. I wish I could explain each detail but no matter how much I describe I will not be able to do justice because it is more than seeing of sights; it is a change that goes deep and permanent, where a man can lose himself.

The night stay in the hut was a fantastic experience. It was the time when everyone in the group sat together under the light of a lantern and made fun, shared stories and had appetizing dinner of nimbu achar, roti and dal made by the owners of the hut. Though few of us had difficult time sleeping because of the bedbugs, we managed to pull it off. One of the most pleasantest experience is to wake up in a strange place in the company of great friends. We were treated with early morning breakfast and it was Poha + tea after which we started the trek downhill. Since we cannot avoid the calls of Mother Nature after having such breakfast, I managed to finish it off in some bushy corner of the hill. We took the Lonavla route to get down which was comparatively easy but had great exotic locations, much more than what we saw a day before.

I experienced many emotions during the trip, sometimes as I walked alone and sometimes as I walked in a group. I saw nature the way it is, not the way I imagined it to be. I fell down and slipped few times and was compelled to come to grips with the laws of nature because not every path is same and I believe that is how character is built making us self-motivated, self determined and take those little risks which gives us first hand encounters with nature.

By the time we boarded the return train at lonavla, we were almost worn out and few of them suffered from the india gate syndrome (call me to know more about this) but our energy levels were still high and it was overall Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.