15-Aug-2002

Thursday

In Coimbatore, we walked to Ashok’s home from the bus stop. Coimbatore seemed to be a combination of a village and a city judging by the different styles of houses. Ashok was a black belt champion and had conducted Karate classes there, and I saw one of his students. It was great to see all his medals and awards. We met his parents and sister. There was a nice view of the surrounding mountains from his house terrace. After washing my face, etc I did some excercises on his terrace and then slept very soundly for half an hour. That half an hour sleep was extremely refreshing, and then we all had our bath and ate some idlis and puttus.

We then took a car and reached Ooty around 1430. Atlast I was in Ooty after hearing about it for so long. It was an absolutely picturesque place, full of mountains and tea gardens, and I took a lot of snaps from the car itself since we didn’t stop on the way. We had lunch at a hotel there. Then we took a bus to Machinagudi, the descent from the top offered a fantastic view of the clouds blowing through the mountains. We then took a jeep from Machinagudi to Teppekaadu, our final destination.

It was 1830, and it was here that we actually started entering the dense jungle. On the way we spotted two peahens, and he stopped the jeep. I was very scared when jainy instantly jumped out and ran towards the peahens with his camera... we said come on... this is a forest... you better not go out like that, and finally after a lot of coaxing he came back inside. Further down, we saw a couple of Gaur, a kind of buffalo, and finally arrived at Theppekadu, where there was an elephant feeding station. We walked from there to our lodge. The sky had started to darken, and on the way, we saw a giant tusker on the left just standing there and further down, another one on the right, next to the river. We were told that this one had gone mad i.e. was in “mast” and was extremely dangerous, and this definitely did not comfort me in any way. I was full of worries... what if it charges at us now, and was hoping that it did not see us, and was thankful when we had passed out of its sight.

We entered the room Ashok’s dad had reserved, it was a nice cottage, just in front of the river. That was the good news. The bad news was that the bathroom was right at the back. The cottage was surrounded by an external compound wall completely grilled up to the roof, but there was still space among those grills for a snake to easily crawl through. And the bolt of the back door of the compound was broken; a simple push would suffice to open the door. I remembered Jim Corbett’s stories, where leopards pushed through doors and rested in some dark corner of the house to take shelter from the rain outside, only to be discovered by a horrified resident which happened to be the last discovery that he ever made. We unpacked our bags, and whenever I wanted to go to the bathroom, I asked someone to come with me, and first flashed my torch around each corner and thoroughly examined the path before venturing around it.

At 20:00 we had dinner, 20 chapathis with some chicken while Bakshi and me had veg curry. We were joined by a man who claimed to be Ashoks Dad’s close friend, and offered to help in any way he could. He even offered to arrange for a night safari by jeep. Somehow I sensed something was amiss when Ashok didn’t mention that it was already arranged for. This man kept on talking and talking a whole lot, and finally when he went Ashok told us that his Dad had warned him about this guy who never does anything much except talk, when he isn’t drinking. We gave him a name... Hava. The jeep for the night ride was supposed to come at 2100, but since it didn’t turn up, we all started to sleep. He came at 2200, when Jainy and me were awake, and we woke up the others and went in it.

It was a bit scary driving through the dense jungle completely in darkness except for the jeep’s headlight. It was almost impossible to see anything, but the driver had extremely sharp skills and stopped suddenly and showed us a couple of elephants. It was a mother with her calf. He asked if we had taken a picture, and then to my horror, reversed the jeep to make it perpendicular to the road, and drove right up to a few feet away from the elephant, with the headlight beaming directly onto it. I watched as the elephant grazed slowly while staring distrustingly at us. Then it suddenly trumpeted making me jump out of my skin, and took a step forward. The local guy at the back said it’s telling us “enough, go” and the driver stepped on the accelerator moving the jeep in reverse, and sped away to safety. We then came across a lone tusker, an extremely dangerous animal. And to my horror the driver did the same thing again, stopping and turning the jeep to face the tusker directly. It was pin drop silence, and the tusker kept staring at us with increasing restlessness. Ashok said softly in a tone which sounded like he was chatting about the weather “its getting ready to charge”... and I struggled to make the words come out of my parched mouth... “then... why... are we still here” The driver asked me “did you take a photo” I said “yes yes... lets go” ...and we sped away again. Next we saw a female wild boar. We stopped right next to it, and it wasn’t even bothered. The male boars which have tusks are extremely dangerous and are one of the animals which don’t need much of a reason to attack. They just charge for the fun of it, like a power packed mini-bulldozer. He said he’d show us some hyenas but all we saw later were some deer and a couple of hares. The second hare we saw just froze when it saw us... staring into our headlights, its eyes bright red. The driver started driving towards it, and it started running away... the driver still followed it deviating from the road a bit and driving over some thick bushes until the hare disappeared into the jungle. Ashok sitting at the back of the jeep later told me that had gotten the shock of their lives when the bush that the jeep had gone over had sprung back once the jeep passed over it, and it looked like some animal was leaping up on them! On the way we saw a guy walking in the jungle all alone... armed with just a torch. We finally returned to sleep in the room at midnight.

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