Keep Walking

Dreamy lights…
I am sleeping outside the tent…beside a small tree….
Horizon lays in front of me….its undulating landscape….juxtaposition between the dark sky and even darker water…make it all part of the same panorama…
Everything is wrapped under the blanket of darkness…as long as I can see…I can see water…still…sometimes flashes of light…comes out of the shadow of clouds on eastern end of the sky…it must be raining somewhere…smell of rain soaked winds…gentle breeze…soothing….

I could see the lights….its coming from the Linganamakki damm…twinkling under the open sky…splashed with the dazzling brilliance of thousands of neatly cut diamonds….Open emptiness…vast…eerie silence engulfs me…

I lie awake…
This place is magical…

What day it has been…memorable to say the least….
We started early…from Sagara…a small hamlet in Western Ghats near Jog Falls…followed by countless uphill climbs…moving up and down in a vast landscape…
Enchanting…sometimes tiring...sometimes awkward terrain…sometimes narrow escape…sometimes breaking into an impromptu song….

Crossed low lands…marshy…grassland…dense forests…evergreen…dripping green….unknown birds sing…dangerously beautiful spiders lazily roam around their intricately woven web…

Sometimes it is scorching….hot…brightly sunny…no shades anywhere…sometimes clouds come up from no where…covers the deep blue sky…it becomes murkier…wind picks up…but it is now slightly cooler now…
Flashes…
It is pouring now…leaving everything wet…soggy…shoes…socks…bag…I kept walking…
Roads seem to be never ending….serpentine…moving up...down…

Another two hours of walk…
Tiring…it is very tiring…every muscle on body are aching now…profusely sweating…headache…water is scanty….to be shared between eight of us….
Probably I can not walk anymore…my body had given up…hypoglycemia setting in…dry…absolute dry…rain had stopped long back…greenery has vanished into barren land….

I stop walking…sullen face…sun burnt…
Another 3 KM…I tell myself…Sourav da smiles…Himangshu is as cheerful as ever…followed by Shainish…Gaja and Sharad following briskly…Vijay picks up pace slowly…I look for help…Sunil…singing…

“Come on”….another 3 KM…just 3 KM…
Need to catch the last bus to Sagara…
“Come on Hurry Up”…Ganapathy is screaming by now…



"How many roads must a man walk down.
Before you call him a man?..."

I slowly start walking…lets walk...together....