Namaste to everyone! Thank you all for a heartwarming welcome on my introductory post. I feel motivated enough to write more posts and share experiences of my travel that I have never shared with anyone before. As with regards to this post, I would like to share an incident that happened with me on a trek which completely changed me as a person.
It was January 2016, my first trek into the New Year. I was leading a group of 15 people on a 2 day hike to a fort called Harishchandragad around my home town. It lies in the Sahyadri mountain ranges of Maharashtra, India and it is one of the most spectacular places in India. The major attraction on this fort is an overhanging massive cliff which has a huge vertical drop of 2000 feet into the Malshej Ghat area called KonkanKada (Konkan facing cliff). It offers jaw dropping views. 26 letters cannot do justice in describing the beauty and grandness of the cliff. One must be there to experience it. The trek begins from a tribal village in Ahmednagar district called Pachnai. From here it is a simple 2 hours hike through forests, riverbeds, rocks, boulders and huge plateaus. We arrived at our camping place at 5pm, set up our tents and enjoyed the amazing sunset from KonkanKada. Later we had a gala time around campfire with music, games, laughs and delicious local food. As the night progressed, one by one everyone returned to their tents and retired for the night and so did I around 11pm. .
Half an hour past mid night, a very good local friend of mine named Bhaskar came and woke me up. He told me he is going for rabbit hunting deep into the forest and asked me if I wanted to tag along. The idea of hunting in the night excited me and I agreed immediately. As I got out of the tent, I realized how chilled the weather had gotten. I put on a thick jacket and I was all set for the adventure! Bhaskar knew the trails where the rabbits usually would walk on. It was quite deep inside a very dense forest. There was moonlight over our head but no light could penetrate through the thick forest above us. With our head torches on, 30 minutes into the trek, Bhaskar stopped at a place and told me this is where we will set a trap. I was so excited by the sound of it. I carefully studied every knot, every turn that he made while making the trap. The trap was ready in about 5 minutes. He tested the trigger once and all looked in order. We set a few more traps in the surrounding areas and now it was time to wait until we caught something. We found ourselves a place to sit near a big tree trunk a little away from the traps. We sat there quietly in the cold, eagerly waiting for sound of the trigger. Suddenly the trigger was set off and the trap made the sound how it was supposed to make. We were so happy, we got up to go there but we heard the trap break aggressively. Bhaskar told me a rabbit cannot break this trap and whatever was stuck in the trap seems very angry. We sat down behind the trunk trying to get a glimpse of what was stuck in the trap but we were unable to see it. The forest is mostly populated with wild pigs, deer’s, dogs and monkeys. We assumed it would be one of them and waited for it to safely go away. We suddenly heard the sound of the trap being dragged in dry leaves on the ground and it appeared as if the animal was walking right towards us. Our heartbeats got faster and we became very alert. We could see a black huge and long figure slowly walking towards us. It stopped 6 feet away from us. We saw the distinctive stripes on its neck and together in the moment we realized that this is actually a freaking Tiger. In that moment of realization, my heart started throbbing like crazy, I started sweating within seconds, it was staring with its green dead eyes right at us. It stood very still. I have never felt such fear in my life. I started shivering from top to bottom. I was feeling very dizzy. Bhaskar held my hand very tight and whispered me to not move even an inch or I’ll get us killed.
We were weaponless, all alone, in the middle of the night in front of a healthy Tiger. In my mind I had accepted that there is no way I am not getting out of this alive. I had all sorts of thoughts running through my mind at lightning speed. I just wanted to go back home for a minute and tell my mom and dad how much I loved them, tell my brother how proud I was of him. I just wanted one minute of borrowed time. The next moment a very unexpected thing happened. The Tiger slowly turned around and elegantly walked away into the darkness. I just sat there motionless unable to think, unable to move. Bhaskar shook me hard and got me out of the trance I was in. We needed to move quickly he said. I got up and started walking. I was tripping on every rock. I was just not there! I was mentally thrashed! Staring a Tiger in the eye does that to you.
I had always heard stories of how surrounding nature like birds, winds etc. goes quite when a Tiger is around. That night I felt that dead silence around us. It was as if the nature was bowing to its presence. The aura of the Tiger was beyond explanation and I am an extremely lucky human being to have seen such an incredible sight and lived to tell the story. I faced death and accepted it in a way. That changes you as a person. It surely puts many things in perspective and makes you value the most precious and delicate gift we have gotten called LIFE.
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