This is an intresting tale of an outing becoming an adventure trip. It's a recap from the good old college days, and that too from the golden period - the final year.
It was on 15th August 2004 when we skipped our college flag hoisting to visit Lonavala. After all it was the Independence Day and we too wanted an independent trip. So we, group of seven people, managed to reach Lonavala and headed towards the Bushi dam (it's a tourist spot there). The seven included Raj, Pandey (Manoj), Kotnala, Gaurav (Paliwal), Rawat, myself (all from same batch, then final year engineering), and Janki (our junior). We were clear with our plan, a bit of trekking, enjoying waters at Bushi dam and back in a few hours.
There had to be some excitement with people like Kotnala with us. He suggested taking a shortcut and reaching the Bushi dam by climbing up the hill and not taking the usual road. He also claimed that he had gone by that route previously, and so he can take us there. Except for me and Pandey all agreed to this, but we also went ahead with the majority. For those who are not acquainted with this region of Maharashra, from June last week till end of August it keeps raining here at varying rates. There would be clouds forming on the peak right next to you, and you would be drenched in no time! Or suddenly there would be a lot of mist and cloud around you. All the buildings, walls, tree barks etc. turn green with algae in this season. As we reached about midway on the hill in front of us, the clouds which were quietly getting dense over the same peak came in action and there was a rain for good amount of time. Many small waterfalls started becoming bigger, so at once we stopped and started enjoying in those waterfalls. After considerable time, about and hour or so, after getting wet to the depth of our hearts, we decided to move on for Bushi dam at about 11 AM.
Now Kotnala, as he had promised, was our torchbearer, leading the way on 'shortcut' to the dam. After following him for a few minutes on the hilly terrain we realized that we were now far from rest of the crowd; still we could listen to the sound of people, waterfalls and vehicles. We kept on moving, high on confidence. We knew that the dam we are heading to is right after crossing this ridge, towards left. Also the 'engineer' in us observed that water was coming down towards us, so we were still on ascent (the slope was very gentle after the initial rise).
What should have been a small walk of about 30 minutes seemed to become longer. We had crossed two ridges (it seemed the ridges had their ends joined forming a chain), changed the direction, but still nothing like Bushi Lake and dam were seen. The 'engineer' could still notice that the water flowing downhill had changed direction with respect to ours, and the sounds of waterfall and people seemed to come from an angle now. But we kept on moving; it seemed we crossed a few more ridges; we were no more climbing up; and the 'engineer' kept on noticing the direction of flow of water slightly rotating from our path. In the meanwhile there were a number of spells of rains, but we didn't stop. I guess everybody in their minds were thinking if we were on the right way (which was to be shown by Kotnala).
After about two and a half hours, it would have been 1:30 then, we seemed to reach a large and very flat area (still a few hundred feet above the road level). The only creatures visible there, apart from us, were a few buffaloes. There were some jokes cracked; somebody suggested chase the buffaloes and they'll take us to some settlement. (Still nobody was ready to admit that we had lost our way). The common feeling which all of shared at that moment was hunger. Unfortunately we didn't had anything since morning, some of us didn't even had water. Now even the sounds of people shouting had faded off. Waterfalls could be heard, but their sounds couldn't be trusted as they (falls) come up at all small rocks and cliffs as soon as the rain god becomes happy.
We could see dense trees to our left since quite some time, and they were blocking our view to what we initially felt to be the (Bushi) lake side. There was some mist also from time to time. It started becoming serious when my clock showed 3:30, and we did agree that we were lost. We were still hoping that we'll climb down somewhere after crossing the dam, but nothing for sure. We now started evaluating the options, because we felt that moving like this might not take us anywhere till the natural light dies out. (The 'we' here and in the next few sentences represent me and Gaurav, as 'we' did this 'thinking' and 'analysis'). There were two - first, to retrace our path and go back to the point where we started, and the second, to find way through the woods, with the water towards the lake (we were still very sure that we knew our location with respect to lake).
These two options had their problems. For the first one, we had already spent four and half ours simply walking, so going back would mean equal amount of time, and just in case we take another wrong turn, it would be worse. The second option wasn't better either. We did know the slope, the destination of the streams which made us think on these lines; may be just in case all these one foot wide streams join together and fall in the lake from a great height! We decided to keep moving for another half an hour, and make an about turn if the second options doesn't seems good till then. We hadn't seen any other human being since last 4.5 hours!
We moved for some more time until the trees turned our way, and we could see a pathway between the woods to some green patch on the other side. We decided to move towards that. Suddenly I remembered of my cellphone - I don't what I could have done with it then - but it wasn't with me. I recalled that I had put it in somebody's bag when we were enjoying the fall. I found it, and looked at the screen and almost shouted with a little joy - we were in the network coverage, which made us believe that we were not far from some inhabited area. After moving ahead for another fifty metres or so I saw a microwave tower with a small building next to it. I told it to others, and when I next tried to see in the same direction, there was nothing! Dense mist and cloud had engulfed us; we could barely see twenty metres far. We gathered everybody by calling out, so that nobody moved away from the group. I was now wondering if I had actually seen a tower or it was some hallucination after being so tired (we left our hostel before 7 in morning and had slept late the previous night). But everybody confirmed of seeing the tower, and so now we started moving toward it's direction with a lot of hope.
After a few hundred metres we did reach close to the base of the tower. There was a small room where we could see a fluorescent lamp glowing, we were too happy with the sight. But now there was another problem. We could not reach the base of the tower because there were three layers of barbed wires with electric current running on one of them. This portion of the fence seemed to be the end of some complex, so we started moving along the fence which we felt would take us to the other side. The trees on the side of the fence were dense, but still found our way through them, making sure that we didn't go far from the fence. Now the people were enthusiastic again, and we moved fast taking big strides. We saw a few cadets and a flag at a distance from the fence. On looking carefully through the mist we could tell that the flag was that of Indian Air Force. We kept on moving, and we saw two people sitting and chatting in front of a room not very far from the fence. We called them, and luckily they heard us, they told us that we'll reach the road in a short time if we keep moving along the fence. Our eyes lit up! And we almost ran, and yes, we were on the road in five minutes!
We sighed our relief, but we still didn't know where we were. We saw a bike coming and we desperately tried to stop it, someone from us even went to the extent of standing in its way. We asked the person what was the place called, and he replied "Tiger Valley". None of us had heard this before, so our next obvious question to him was how far were we from Bushi dam, to which he said it was about 8 Km towards Lonavala. We couldn't believe our ears! Bushi dam was just 3 Km from the place where we took the 'shortcut', and now we have landed 8 Km ahead of it! But still we felt relieved now, at least now we knew which way to take.
Now the first obvious search was food, unfortunately there wasn't any. We roamed about there for some time, visited Tiger dam (so as to compensate for Bushi dam) and started moving back towards Lonavala. We found a very small shop after a very long walk, may be 10 or 11 Kms, selling hot vada-pavs. We wouldn't have had those ever, but on that occasion we feasted on them like anything, even the price couldn't bother us. We reached Loanavala station sometime after it got dark, reached back hostel at night, and fell on our beds as if we were not to get up for next few days!
It was on 15th August 2004 when we skipped our college flag hoisting to visit Lonavala. After all it was the Independence Day and we too wanted an independent trip. So we, group of seven people, managed to reach Lonavala and headed towards the Bushi dam (it's a tourist spot there). The seven included Raj, Pandey (Manoj), Kotnala, Gaurav (Paliwal), Rawat, myself (all from same batch, then final year engineering), and Janki (our junior). We were clear with our plan, a bit of trekking, enjoying waters at Bushi dam and back in a few hours.
There had to be some excitement with people like Kotnala with us. He suggested taking a shortcut and reaching the Bushi dam by climbing up the hill and not taking the usual road. He also claimed that he had gone by that route previously, and so he can take us there. Except for me and Pandey all agreed to this, but we also went ahead with the majority. For those who are not acquainted with this region of Maharashra, from June last week till end of August it keeps raining here at varying rates. There would be clouds forming on the peak right next to you, and you would be drenched in no time! Or suddenly there would be a lot of mist and cloud around you. All the buildings, walls, tree barks etc. turn green with algae in this season. As we reached about midway on the hill in front of us, the clouds which were quietly getting dense over the same peak came in action and there was a rain for good amount of time. Many small waterfalls started becoming bigger, so at once we stopped and started enjoying in those waterfalls. After considerable time, about and hour or so, after getting wet to the depth of our hearts, we decided to move on for Bushi dam at about 11 AM.
Now Kotnala, as he had promised, was our torchbearer, leading the way on 'shortcut' to the dam. After following him for a few minutes on the hilly terrain we realized that we were now far from rest of the crowd; still we could listen to the sound of people, waterfalls and vehicles. We kept on moving, high on confidence. We knew that the dam we are heading to is right after crossing this ridge, towards left. Also the 'engineer' in us observed that water was coming down towards us, so we were still on ascent (the slope was very gentle after the initial rise).
What should have been a small walk of about 30 minutes seemed to become longer. We had crossed two ridges (it seemed the ridges had their ends joined forming a chain), changed the direction, but still nothing like Bushi Lake and dam were seen. The 'engineer' could still notice that the water flowing downhill had changed direction with respect to ours, and the sounds of waterfall and people seemed to come from an angle now. But we kept on moving; it seemed we crossed a few more ridges; we were no more climbing up; and the 'engineer' kept on noticing the direction of flow of water slightly rotating from our path. In the meanwhile there were a number of spells of rains, but we didn't stop. I guess everybody in their minds were thinking if we were on the right way (which was to be shown by Kotnala).
After about two and a half hours, it would have been 1:30 then, we seemed to reach a large and very flat area (still a few hundred feet above the road level). The only creatures visible there, apart from us, were a few buffaloes. There were some jokes cracked; somebody suggested chase the buffaloes and they'll take us to some settlement. (Still nobody was ready to admit that we had lost our way). The common feeling which all of shared at that moment was hunger. Unfortunately we didn't had anything since morning, some of us didn't even had water. Now even the sounds of people shouting had faded off. Waterfalls could be heard, but their sounds couldn't be trusted as they (falls) come up at all small rocks and cliffs as soon as the rain god becomes happy.
We could see dense trees to our left since quite some time, and they were blocking our view to what we initially felt to be the (Bushi) lake side. There was some mist also from time to time. It started becoming serious when my clock showed 3:30, and we did agree that we were lost. We were still hoping that we'll climb down somewhere after crossing the dam, but nothing for sure. We now started evaluating the options, because we felt that moving like this might not take us anywhere till the natural light dies out. (The 'we' here and in the next few sentences represent me and Gaurav, as 'we' did this 'thinking' and 'analysis'). There were two - first, to retrace our path and go back to the point where we started, and the second, to find way through the woods, with the water towards the lake (we were still very sure that we knew our location with respect to lake).
These two options had their problems. For the first one, we had already spent four and half ours simply walking, so going back would mean equal amount of time, and just in case we take another wrong turn, it would be worse. The second option wasn't better either. We did know the slope, the destination of the streams which made us think on these lines; may be just in case all these one foot wide streams join together and fall in the lake from a great height! We decided to keep moving for another half an hour, and make an about turn if the second options doesn't seems good till then. We hadn't seen any other human being since last 4.5 hours!
We moved for some more time until the trees turned our way, and we could see a pathway between the woods to some green patch on the other side. We decided to move towards that. Suddenly I remembered of my cellphone - I don't what I could have done with it then - but it wasn't with me. I recalled that I had put it in somebody's bag when we were enjoying the fall. I found it, and looked at the screen and almost shouted with a little joy - we were in the network coverage, which made us believe that we were not far from some inhabited area. After moving ahead for another fifty metres or so I saw a microwave tower with a small building next to it. I told it to others, and when I next tried to see in the same direction, there was nothing! Dense mist and cloud had engulfed us; we could barely see twenty metres far. We gathered everybody by calling out, so that nobody moved away from the group. I was now wondering if I had actually seen a tower or it was some hallucination after being so tired (we left our hostel before 7 in morning and had slept late the previous night). But everybody confirmed of seeing the tower, and so now we started moving toward it's direction with a lot of hope.
After a few hundred metres we did reach close to the base of the tower. There was a small room where we could see a fluorescent lamp glowing, we were too happy with the sight. But now there was another problem. We could not reach the base of the tower because there were three layers of barbed wires with electric current running on one of them. This portion of the fence seemed to be the end of some complex, so we started moving along the fence which we felt would take us to the other side. The trees on the side of the fence were dense, but still found our way through them, making sure that we didn't go far from the fence. Now the people were enthusiastic again, and we moved fast taking big strides. We saw a few cadets and a flag at a distance from the fence. On looking carefully through the mist we could tell that the flag was that of Indian Air Force. We kept on moving, and we saw two people sitting and chatting in front of a room not very far from the fence. We called them, and luckily they heard us, they told us that we'll reach the road in a short time if we keep moving along the fence. Our eyes lit up! And we almost ran, and yes, we were on the road in five minutes!
We sighed our relief, but we still didn't know where we were. We saw a bike coming and we desperately tried to stop it, someone from us even went to the extent of standing in its way. We asked the person what was the place called, and he replied "Tiger Valley". None of us had heard this before, so our next obvious question to him was how far were we from Bushi dam, to which he said it was about 8 Km towards Lonavala. We couldn't believe our ears! Bushi dam was just 3 Km from the place where we took the 'shortcut', and now we have landed 8 Km ahead of it! But still we felt relieved now, at least now we knew which way to take.
Now the first obvious search was food, unfortunately there wasn't any. We roamed about there for some time, visited Tiger dam (so as to compensate for Bushi dam) and started moving back towards Lonavala. We found a very small shop after a very long walk, may be 10 or 11 Kms, selling hot vada-pavs. We wouldn't have had those ever, but on that occasion we feasted on them like anything, even the price couldn't bother us. We reached Loanavala station sometime after it got dark, reached back hostel at night, and fell on our beds as if we were not to get up for next few days!
