Trip to the hills

Foot hills of Himalayas - Dec. 2003

We were on a short holiday at the foothills of the Himalays.The night saw us driving through the winding road, from Dehradun to Rishikesh… the road was unlit with the forest on either side…as if waiting and watching….and suddenly we sighted …half hidden among the night shadows a mother elephant with two calves…on the edge of the road...
The forest guest house at Rishikesh, where we were lodged, stands on the banks of the Bhagirathi…amidst the chilling fog that hung in the night air…we could hear the roar of the river…as we took a post dinner walk along the guest house’s driveway. We were asked not to wander too far into the darkness, as stray leopards were known to prowl in that area at night. Next day we went rafting and kayaking on the glacial waters of Bhagirathi. Crystal blue freezing waters, flowing amid lush green peaks…meandering like a blue serpent - sometimes flowing calmly…sometimes gushing and roaring over rapids….rafting over the rapids was an onslaught on the senses…. We also took a dip in the freezing waters….with life jackets tied to our chests and skin suits underneath….I have never felt so cold in my life before….the lungs inside my chest seem to freeze and I could hardly breath…
Next day we went to Rajaji National Park. It is huge and has a diversity of landscapes. Our jeep was following a dried river bed…on the white sands along the river bed we sighted elephant foot prints…a group of chital would suddenly appear from nowhere..a bulky wild boar..his fur coarse and dirty…small tusks sprouting out of the sides of his mouth. He continued digging the earth unconcerned about our presence. At places the jungle was so dense that the sunlight could barely filter through…at places it opened into dry scrub…tussoks of giant grasses and weeds growing along dried river banks…a Gujjar settlement…. silence and stillness
everywhere..occasionally punctuated with the cry of a bird somewhere in the bushes…sunlight would penetrate in streaks through gaps left by fallen trees…old and ancient….as ancient as life….to die and melt back into the furnace of life and death. We wandered in the forest for two hours and then returned to civilization reluctantly.