I am not one
of those who look for a company to pass the time; instead I enjoy solitude and
always try to make most of it, and when it comes to join a huge group on some
leisure trip my mind goes on a toil to decide ‘to go or not to go’, so did it
happen when a group of 20 decided to go for a weekender trip to a hill station
in Kerala called Wayanad, around 220km from our accommodation at Coimbatore. I
had numerous reasons to say ‘no’ to the trip; I’m not very fond of the group, I
didn’t know about the place, it’s a hill station so I could get sick, I had
other plans for weekend; but somehow I decided to join in, and now I think it
was the best weekend I could have had.
The trip was
planned in a very haphazard manner, ‘coz till the very last hour we didn’t know
the total number of people, the tour plan that we would take up and the budget,
yet we managed to leave the hostel at 2400hrs of the Friday night(with final
head count of 16 and a budget of 2500 per head). The take off was good as the
bus was a luxury deluxe with a flatron TV screen and surround sound home
theatre facility (the only trouble was that the backs of the seat were still
covered with plastics that made us li’l uncomfortable).
The next
thing I remember was of saturday morning; when our bus stopped somewhere and we
got down to see something that I had never seen before. It was a treat to eyes and soul; we were on
the face of a hill, and it seemed we were viewing the world from above the
clouds. The greens were trying to peep from beneath the whites of clouds, and
the browns of the rocks were steering through to make themselves visible. This
was the very moment I said to myself ‘good that u came Ajita !’.
The caravan
moved ahead and we reached a point from where we had to be divided in two groups
to reach till our resort in jeeps, and I was mesmerized by this 3km jeep trek
too; the untouched nature that rests in peace in the lap of these hills shared
their joy with me. The tea plantations, the coffee bushes, the cardmom herbs,
the beautiful forest flowers all seemed to welcome me with the best of the
faces, thus we reached our resort, and to my amazement the resort too was
perhaps a replica of the heavens (if something like that could exist). The
natural stream water pool, the cute wooden cottages embedded into the hillocks,
the lush green sheet that covered almost everything, now even us, and the fresh
cool breeze freed me of all my inhibitions about the things to follow. Our
cottage was at the highest point of the resort, and the resort was called ‘Rain
Country Resort’. Wayanad is one the rainiest places of the country (yes on the
lines of Cherapunji, so was told by our guide Anik, though we didn’t see any of
it in the two days we spent there).
The day was
flanked by two spectacular trips, one to Banasura dam, that is Asia’s second
largest earthen damn, and two to the View Point. At Banasura dam when most
decided to go for boating few of us chose to trek down the rocky dam till the
water, and what an experience it was. I
had never seen such a clear water body before, though I have visited to lakes
around Delhi, to Hardwar and such places but the serene beauty of this dam was a
never before experience (I know mom would have never let me go down the way I
did, but in her instruction she had asked to not to boat only and I didn’t ;)
). The clear cold water, the comfortably
warm sun, the beautiful protective hills and I; I felt inexplicably in sync
with the nature. Some similar feelings engrossed me at the sheet View Point
too; we were on a cliff that’s end ran down straight till as low as it could.
There was a forest river encrusted in between the greens of the view, and for
the icing were clouds floating on the greens and silver of the forest and the
river. I could spend rest of my life sitting there and praising the beauty.
Thus the
day’s outing concluded, with the movie 3 Idiots in the bus, and we were back to
the replica of the Heavens, our resort. This Rain Country Resort looked
amazingly pretty at night as well, the small ball lamps on the pathways dimly
lighting the place looked like shining pearls encrusted at intervals that made
the surroundings glow with theirs. For me the night concluded with a traditional
Malayali Chicken and Fish preparation in dinner (as for others the night was
flanked with a bonfire dance party for which I was too sleepy to attend, like
few others too).
The next
morning showed another face of the resort; as I stepped out of the cottage I
could see and feel that I was standing in a cloud, and so was the cottage, the trees
around and everything else that I could see.
We chose this time to go on a trek inside the resort to reach to the
highest hill top, the trek was freshening for sure, but the final treat was
outlandish. The top showed us the phenomenon of the three states, Tamil Nadu,
Kerala, Karnataka, embracing each other in the witness of the skies, and now
even us. Truly has been said for this place “God’s own country”.
After
witnessing the glory of nature we checked out of the Rain Country Resort to
marvel the man’s intelligence, we were heading towards the Edakal Caves that
date back to 1400 B.C. . This cave was built due to a volcanic eruption that
made a rock fall over two (‘Eda’ means 2 and ‘Kal’ means rock in the regional
language), to give home to men who found it so. The encryptions and drawings
carved on the rocks reminded me of my history classes when we were taught about
the early stone-age man (wish we were given practical classes then to make us
love the subject). I salute man for being so unbelievably intelligent (I wonder
if we could be so fit in those stone ages).
Thus was my
trip to Wayanad, refreshing, delightful and enlightening; a trip to experience
nature’s miraculous creativity that man can never imitate; and a trip that made
me realize that I could enjoy with myself in the big groups too.
