Wayanad! We owe you

The two green coloured Willys 4X4 rattled down the trail in Muthanga wildlife sanctuary. The twelve of us were bouncing in them in all directions. It was a wake-up call for our dozing eyes after a tiring game that Maggi made we play almost the whole night, while we travelled from Bangalore to Wayanad. Yes, we were on the way to Wayanad, the land of I don’t know what but for us simply a get-away with our buddies from the Introduction leaders program. Jerry, Bhavana, Archana, Revathi, Maggi, Rashmi, Ganesh, Prashanth, Sudha, Khussaal, Vivek and I were on an escape.

The optimistic but exhaustive forty minutes trail-drive into the sanctuary that bordered Bandipur and Wayanad with no animal sighting warmed us up for the next two days of action. The sanctuary had given us no more than a cold weather experience of Wayanad summer, however the ILs of Oct batch were unaffected by the breakdown. We reached Sulthan Bathery in Wayanad, where we had a quick breakfast and reached Crescent Residency (CR) and already ready for a new game. CR is a decent retreat with cottage accommodation each cottage named after names of jewelry stones. I would have loved to name it “Necklace” instead of “Crescent”.

All of us settled in three luxurious cottages. The light dust deposit on the furniture and gush of whistling air in the toilet faucet indicated that the cottages were unused in recent times. Hardly mattered for us! All of us battled our turn to fresh-up and literally ran into the covered swimming pool amidst the valleys of Western Ghats. That’s when the reality struck to the boys’ gang. Half the ladies were in no mood for the pool experience. The boys had tired themselves in their swimming gear playing funny games in the pool, while the ladies paraded fully dressed-up. The optimistic boys were in no mood to dissect the situation. The pool games continued while myself, Prashant, Archana & Reva drifted to the swing area for more deeper talks. The swings were tied in varied heights to test the aptitude of the guests to use them. Maggi, Khussal and later the whole gang joined the party by the emus.

Post lunch, the herd decided not to kill time moving ourselves all over Wayanad, but to stay back in CR or nearby and spend quality time with each other. This was one of the wisest decisions made by the gang, probably in the whole of their IL life. It drastically reduced the integrity conversations time for all twelve being somewhere at a certain time!

A short stroll for spices shopping and the desperate photography sessions with the spices was only a start to the glamour virus to bloom. Sooner, all were in focus and on candid frames. We had no idea at that point that, this trip would impact our FB profiles this hugely!

Orchids at CR

The evening went past with non-stop PJ sessions and dumb-C in CR. The bon-fire was guarded by two obedient CR boys while Rashmi and Ganesh enchanted the gang narrating their love-story. That was a picture-perfect chill evening with friends. Reminded me of a typical setting of an intro scene of a Ramsay movie!

The next morning was that of trek to Chembra. I was excited as it was my event. I was responsible for the thinnest to the thickest to get back to CR on their legs after the trek. CR packed for us fruit salad, bread and butter that morning.

At the wake of sun, we were all in the TT pacing thru Kalpetta towards Chembra amidst the tea plantations. The forest check-post issued the permit for the dozen to hike-up the Chembra till the heart-shaped lake and back. The permit also entitled a forest guide. We reached the foot-hill of Chembra and started the hike up. Prashant declared a breakdown with his knee post his recent injury and chose to quit the trek after a short stint of walk down the trail. That was indeed his wise decision, given his knee condition and the uncertainty of the geography up the 2-hour trek.

Morning in Chambra

 

Chembra had gotten ready herself to welcome the glitterati of Bangalore. The ladies led the wolf pack trekkers while I swept at the end. We pushed through the thick typical sholas of Western Ghats. Dark forest ambience, dense-humid air, soft soil, chirping of crickets- and that’s a typical shola of Western Ghats. The alternating sholas and the grassy bald mountain was a feast for us. Sooner the feast turned into a struggle as the gang started to puff and gasp by mid-way. At the end of about 2.25hours of possibility generation and action resulted in the gang reaching the heart-shaped lake of Chembra. That was our summit. We were ecstatic at our accomplishment. Khussaal declared that he got the confidence to climb the Himalayas next now having clinched Chembra! The crowd forgot that it even struggled to climb the mountain for 2+ hours. The achievement of the summit put them into immediate action of documenting the same, the photographs! The gang posed in varied possible combinations while the digital-cams experienced its peak performance. The gang wanted to shout-out to the world that “they” did it, again after May 9^th!

The lake on Chembra

 We then slid down the mountain with lesser effort compared to that of the ascent in less than 1.5 hours. At the foot-hill, we warmed-down ourselves with some stretching exercises before we headed to CR. Walnut cakes in Kalpetta did add a flavour to our fresh summit success. We then rushed to CR and emptied our cottages, ready to check-out. We were all ready to head back to Bangalore, but we were not ready to end the trip. The journey had just begun.

A juice of special relatedness had gelled within us in the past forty hours of our lives. We were no more simply a pack of ILs who had together completed a rigorous six and half month training. At that moment and beyond, we were friends forever, friends for life.

the gang:)

 Wayanad, we owe it to you.