Living like a cave man...

It was one of those typical, last minute planned trek I just came back from...this time, in the middle of a semester examination!! But who cares, and what else do you do when you have 19 days to go till your next paper arrives? You obviously pack your sack, and head to nature...In this case, Naneyghat was the chosen venue.

NaneyGhat is a historically important venue, for several reasons- firstly, the caves were home to one of the oldest families in Maharashtra, the Sattavans. Secondly, the pass marks the border between the Konkan region, and the country. A lot of history exists even today on the walls of the cave, carved out in the Brahmi script. We didn’t know it obviously, but it was fascinating to watch an entire history carved out on walls. Ok, now I don’t fancy getting into the detailed history of these caves…I’ll rather splurge into our own little adventures…To begin with,

The first thing I did, when I reached grant road station at 5.15am (yeah…I can’t believe it yet, reaching at 5.15???), was to search for my ultimate source of ridicule and humor- “doggesh”. For those of you who are not yet aware of him, let me introduce…”doggesh” is this astronomically huge dog, who probably has a cow everyday for breakfast, is easily 89 kilograms, and is unbelievably lazy. But scary. Think about it – a dog who’s like 1 meter wide, and 2 meters long, isn’t a sight you get to see everyday. Ok. Maybe not 2 meters. But who cares? He’s one heck of a big dog. And he’s funny. Me and my friends have till date, tried many expansion theories to explain him, but to nothing fits in. The cow theory seems to be the best so far, so we stick to it.

Nonetheless, “doggesh” was nowhere to be seen, so we just hopped in the next train, to make our way towards Dadar station. The rest of the journey was usual, all the six of us- Ankit, Biren, Mihir, Chiru, Lokesh and myself- taking each other’s cases, big time. And we discovered that Biren hadn’t got the 2 kgs of boiled potatoes, we had planned to cook.

After getting down at Kalyan station, we thought of an alternative for the vegetable- and 10minutes later, Mihir and Chirag turned up with 2 kgs of Bhindi, instead of potatoes. What a way to go!!!

With this done, we boarded an extremely rattled, tainted red colored State Transport bus, heading towards Malshej Ghat. Now one must understand this, that when you are traveling in these red ST blokes, your life is at the supreme mercy of the driver. Completely. There’s no second thought to this fact. Surprisingly, this one was not all that bad, except that Biren got an unexpected token of affection- a young toddler sitting next to him, wetted his pants.

Apparently, Mihir had been told that the place to get off the bus was marked by a milestone which read, “Kalyan-60kms”. After around an hour, the ST driver told us to get out. We did as we were told to, and sure enough, there was a milestone right out there. We went to the other side, and voila!! Kalyan-57 kms. Fantastic way to begin the trek- 3kms short of the actual base!!

After walking the NH-22 highway for about half an hour, we saw a big slab of rock, whitewashed, which had a big black arrow on it, and read- “Naneyghat”. Wonderful. Finally, we were on the right track now. It was a matter of around 4 hours, till we reached the Naneyghat pass. Only to find ourselves surrounded by a hoard of monkeys…our stupid little ancestors (all right, all right…they are not all that stupid, relax). But they were demanding, sure enough. And we turned their demands down swiftly. These monkeys have totally evolved- they thrive more on Lays, Kurkure and Parle-G , than bananas, oranges and nuts.

The cave, unfortunately, was in one big mess- plastic plates strewn everywhere, wrappers and cigarettes lying on the floor. Typically reminds you of being in an Indian tourist location. I wonder when our common Indian man will wake up. It’s one thing for which I hate our careless citizens. (Not the country, mind you).

After a little bit of tidying around the cave, we settled down to cook our long awaited Bhindi ki sabji. Man, what an experience!! Truly enlightening. Now I truly understand how easy life is, when you have a wonderful mother at home who cooks sumptuous lunch and dinner for you. But even our experiment was successful- the sabji was an instant hit amongst all of us, and we devoured it like a pack of hungry wolves. After the amazing lunch, we proceeded towards exploring the plateau of Naneyghat. This was one unbelievably disappointing moment- we climbed up the pass of rocky stairs, to find a huge green bus on the top of the plateau! We were like, “What the F*$%#*? “ And we thought we had achieved something big in life, by trekking up this pass. With a heavy heart, we proceeded to the peak of the mountain. This activity flushed down our earlier disappointment, because the top of the peak was – simply beautiful! Straight ahead of us, the faint layers of the Sahyadris could be seen, with the red sun sinking down upon us. Towards our left, rose the great fort of Jivadani, standing like a giant, smiling at us. Towards our back, was another peak, with the full moon slowly crawling up the horizon. And the wind was blowing strongly in our face, at the high altitude. We were all (except Biren) sitting right at the edge of the mountain, looking straight down the valley, while Biren was loosing his mind at the sight. He completely freaked out, and it was fun to freak him out more, by edging towards the valley. Sweat drops literally crept down his forehead, and that was a signal for us to stop, before he got a heart attack or something similarly nasty happened. The camera was at full usage, click after click. Soon, we started our way back towards the cave, which was now to be our home for the long night that lay ahead of us. Full of surprises and fear.

Dinner was another experience, but it was much easier this time. We had mastered the art of igniting fires by now, so it was not a big deal. The meal was followed by a round of Cadbury and assorted fruits, after which all of us started splurging our innermost secrets and desires…man, it was hilarious! I am definitely not going to indulge in the details, because some things are best left as secrets..!

Well, with all things done, it was finally time for us to tuck in to bed. We put all our baggage in one corner of the cave, and surrounded ourselves with it. Now, I was sleeping on the outer side, and Chirag was sleeping right next to me. Things looked all right, and after a while, our eyelids slowly started drooping, and before we knew it, we were fast asleep.

At around 12.00 am, I started feeling uncomfortably hot in my sleeping bag, so I opened the zip, and lay awake, staring outside the cave. Suddenly, I heard something like footsteps, and someone stepping on a plastic bag. It was a clear, full moon night. I turned towards the entrance, and looked out. There was another cave on the face of the mountain opposite to ours, completely flooded in moonlight. Clear as a crystal, I could see everything. But the source of the noise was nowhere to be. I felt a little bit freaky, as we had been discussing ghost stories, just before going to sleep. I now started regretting that action, as my mind was wandering into the unknowns. Somehow, I was just forcing my self to sleep, when I realized that even Chirag was awake. Instantly I told him about my experience, and he asserted with the noises. Even he had heard them, and had awakened as a result. Now things were getting miserable for me, since I wasn’t dreaming, for sure. There was something out here, not more than 10 feet away from us, and god knows, was looking at us at that very moment. I found it very hard to sleep, but somehow forced my self… If I can’t see anything, there was no point in thinking about it.

However, it seems it was destined for us, to unfold this mystery tonight, because as soon as I switched off the torch, I realized that the sounds were now more prominent. They were clearly audible. Things started getting really bad, I just couldn’t sleep now. I kept rolling in my sleeping bag, but I couldn’t face the entrance any longer. Fear. It was really weird for me. And even Chirag was waking up every now and then.

Finally, curiosity just got the better edge over my fears, and at 3am, I decided that I would dig to the bottom of this mystery. The noises were distinctly audible now; we were definitely not the only ones in the cave. Someone else was there, lurking in the corner, and disturbing us mentally with the plastic noises. I woke up Chirag, and together we switched on our torches, and started scanning the cave. At first, we saw nothing. In one corner, we saw a couple of plastic bags. It was our garbage, kept there, and it was to be dumped out tomorrow morning. However, a small movement caught my eye. I saw something move near the plastic bag. This was too much for me. I compromised the comforts of the sleeping bag, got out with a big rock in my hand, and walked up towards the corner, my torch focused on the bags. And then I saw it – the reason for my baseless terror, was watching out of his tiny little grey eyes at me. A harmless rat, feasting on our garbage, had been just discovered as my mysterious little ghost. I chuckled at the scene, and terrorized the small thing out of the cave. Not that it worked permanently. The wretched little creature came back in 10 minutes, but now I knew what it was. Finally, it was time for some peaceful dreams.

The next day was smooth enough, and we decided to get down from the other side, via the road. After walking for around 2kms, we reached a village, where we met this hilarious man, who strongly believed that meeting new people was the next best thing to nothing. He forced us to give our contact names, which we happily gave as Rajat, Rajni, Raj, Rajesh, Ratan and Rakesh – Biren seems to be saturated with the alphabet “R”!!! And finally, the long awaited bus came, marking the end of yet another wonderful trek – or caveman experience, shall we put?