Villagers surrounded the Naxals and then...

The alarm struck by 5:30 and as usual, annoyingly I ran my hands around to silence my time piece… the pest was snoozed and I turned around rubbing my eyes and covering myself to enjoy my sleep, when something caught my eyes… hey, Isn’t that my third leg… (circles with same center different radius… flash back)

Check list for the trek was checked and re checked to confirm that I have not missed anything… Backpack was stuffed to hold enough fluid supplies for the two days and it mounted up to 15 kilos once packing was through… Cursing the driver of the three-wheeler transportation we reached Secunderabad railway station half an hour prior to the expected meeting time…

A list of twenty-two high spirited youngsters and one middle aged, hey I will come back to him later… spread across two compartments; we occupied the seats randomly as inclusion of a new berth had changed our seating arrangements… List pasted on the compartment was ruled out for confirmation as train was already on its run; so it was decided that we wait for the TT to show up…

Not waiting for anyone, shamelessly I climbed to the top berth of my compartment and started preparing myself for sleep, many vowed that they won’t let me sleep peacefully… I was laughing inside… once my shutter are closed, only next morning could wake me up… but circumstances didn’t give me the liberty to sleep at ease as train was supposed to reach Tadikalapudi by morning 4:30…

Day 1

Train was on time… just to mention how it would be at 4:30AM, it was slightly drizzling and clouds added to the darkness… Time to talk about the middle aged high spirited person which I mentioned initially… our Big boss, grey shades here and there… lean… a man in his early forties… but with the energy of his twenties … let me stick with the name Big boss which suited him well…

Big boss appeared with his head light placed rite over his forehead with a white baggage on his right hand… being in charge of the food committee I could blindly guess that it would be IDLIS for our breakfast… Idli boy (again my naming convention) transferred his load to Big Boss to distribute the breakfast before the trek starts… all other food materials were shared and we waited for light to come up to show us the way… In mean time Asst of our Big boss started displaying stunts on the railway track… the stunt was to walk on the rail without losing balance… As in circus many followed the Asst and displayed their skills, so did I… why to keep away from the show…

Light brought with it the time to move on and we loaded ourselves with our slightly loaded baggage’s … Two more characters in frame, let me call him the Pathfinder … and the Coordi (as the name conveys he was the coordinator of the trek)…

Pathfinder was back with his thoughts and the route we needed to trace as per the plan… Coordi and Pathfinder took the lead; we followed as obedient disciples and our big boss tailing us with his Asst…

We were supposed to cross a number of fields before reaching the foot of the hill where the actual trek was to kick off which could be rounded off to 2-3 kilometers… It was raining continuously for the previous days which made the fields like a soft bed and one foot on the mud would either dig us deep in or to at least make us slip and taste the mud… As a front-runner our Financer demonstrated with a fall in his style, followed by Jungle boy and Aadi… With my first fall I decided to get a stick for support, for in the slippery fields this was mandatory and could even help in the ascent…

We reached a plain land before the ascent, where we divided ourselves in to two teams with the understanding that we would meet in the plains for breakfast. One headed by our Big boss and the other by Asst and Path finder… I followed the latter as we were to explore something out of our plan… Along came Financer, Jungle boy, Idli boy, Coordi and another character with a French beard… let me call him the Manager… and the thinnest guy in our team with a heavy load on his back and a sweet smile, Smiley… Fatty, he had nice cam with him and was pretty interested in photography… followed by the Gud guy, the most helpful person in team and the Mr. Cool… why Mr. Cool??? Never bothered about anything, with a small backpack and a piece of cloth below his cap… enjoying nature and in his own world of thoughts…

We started with a small hill covered mostly by bushes. I looked around to find a stick for support, the one that I was talking about in the beginning of the trek. Search came to a halt soon, as I could find a pretty nice piece of stick which was one forth short of my height… one side slightly thinner than the other… Less than an hour or so we completed our warm up climb and ended up in a plain where the peak 1680 was in our vicinity… We passed voices in air to get in touch with the team headed by the Big boss… we were happy for getting lost before the real trek started and rested for a while… in the mean time Asst and Path finder were breaking their heads to track the actual route…

Within half an hour time the Big boss appeared in front as if from thin air with a plastic cover on his head to beat the drizzle… We decided to break our fast and placed ourselves on the ground with our idli packets… The real fun of the trek was about to start in the mean time… Asst, Coordi and Pathfinder on one side and Big boss and Fatty on the other started with their gut feeling about the route… each side pointing to an entirely different direction… Big boss displayed his diplomatic skills by challenging others to convince him with their plans… and in the end we all ended up following the Big boss… where he lead us to the remaining members of the team…

We were on the move in no time. With small halts in between either to catch our breath or to take a couple of snaps… we continued our ascent crossing small streams and enjoying the art of nature. As we progressed, the degree of ascent started building up from 30 to 40 and finally to 80degrees where I almost tasted my intestine, hopefully many of them would have got the opportunity… Three to four hours of ascent finally led us to a plain in the hilltop where we settled for lunch… Chapattis with pickles was an exquisite lunch for the day and with that we divided ourselves into groups for finding a place for the night camp… Big boss and myself took a route which led us further high up the hill where the visibility of the nearby hills was pretty clear… there I had my encounter with the Skull headed eight legger, that would be another story…

Travelling an hour or so we reached the night camp location as proposed by the planning team. Ropes were tied and tents pitched with long grass spread below the sheets giving us a cushion effect, if you ask me I would say it was quite an experience of a lifetime… Big boss along with a couple of others started lighting fire for our dinner… we all had our share and all went to their respective tents leaving Asst, Financer, Jungle boy, Coordi, Manager, Gud guy, Idli boy, Pathfinder and Myself… We decided to have our cut in front of bonfire…which we enjoyed and continued with singing and shouting at the top of our voices… Optimizing the bonfire was done by drying up our shoes and keeping us warm… which was followed by a cup of coffee…

My sleep was broke as the Jungle boy woke up shouting, when I enquired, his explanation was a frog tried to kiss him or so… adding his wildest of fantasies that he visualized a snake following the frog and leading itself to the tent… half an hour or so he woke me up again hearing some sound… I decided to myself… ‘Jungle boy next time you wake me up… you are out of the tent’.Fortunately for him nothing happened after that, Manager continued from where the Jungle boy stopped with his snoring, which reminded me of a rusted motor reaching all resonance and finding it hard to run throughout the night… God given gift stopped me from nothing and I had a peaceful sleep in my sleeping bag…

Day2

Early morning my sleep was broken when the Style King came out with his story of spotting a Wild Dog, which detained him from coming out the tent for controlling his body fluids… For our daily routine we took to the nature and as per schedule we were supposed to start soon after breakfast… Planning team came up with the news that they found a valley and a clear view of the horizon…

Should I call it heaven or not…well…I am not sure, but the view was so beautiful. I should say it was a feast for our eyes… I wished we could camp there for a while… I couldn’t find a better place to be with the nature … Soon we started our descent and this time we were as per the planned route and before lunch we touched the Narsapuram village. I knew that the fun was gonna end, but someone had a different plan for us…


We moved through the path where mud touched our knees, third leg was indeed a blessing for me at that point of time… the muddy path led us to a small pond which in turn led us to the villagers who mistook us for Naxalites… Few had discussions and clarifications with them, as I stood dumb struck not knowing the language and context of their debate... Manager joined me by pointing at Cooridi and Team for all the questionings being done to us. A wise guy took us or should I say saved us from the villagers and with a three-wheeler as our mode of transportation we reached the High way in another 30min…

We took a room close to the railway station and took time to freshen up… followed by dinner and way back home…

Alarm struck again, as a precautionary measure I used to set up multiple alarms… I open my eyes with a smile on my face, as if I was back from trek the same morning. As the Pathfinder used to say I could smell green, the spirit of the trek was still clinging on to me…