Dung, Tea, Drenching: Memories Of A Monsoon Trek

It was raining, as it should be, when the train arrived at Lonavala.

It is one of the joys of Mum/Bom/bai/bay that just an hour out of the city, things change a lot, especially if you take the overnight train that takes you to the hill stations of the Ghats. I was all of 20, and it was monsoon time.

“Don’t be silly. You DON’T take an umbrella or rainbow for a monsoon trek!,” said Sneh Lata, the ever smiling trek organiser. So it was, with just some packed puris and potatoes as part of my contributory deal.

Five minutes from the 5 a.m. pitch-dark Lonavala station, winding down a mountain trail, or was it an hour, I heard the waterfalls. The slurp was a chillingly meditative exercise, and there we were, a group of trek types. Somebody made catcalls to the birds, and actually started a conversation. The birds talked back. There was no sun.

Where did we have breakfast? I don’t recall…Must have been at the waterfall where we bathed. The cascade was one of those impromptu monsoon things, pouring down the rock. Probably had no name.

And then we trekked on beyond the winding, windy, and most important, cloudy trail. Bombay was forgotten. There is something to be said about a tropical trek in the rainy season. Warm and wet, chilly and comforting by turns.

Then it rained, of course. I don’t recall where it did. Or how many times it did. I believe it was in the afternoon, after we stopped for lunch. We trekked to a place where a patch of grass overlooked a tribal fort at a place called Rajmachi..some flavours of the times of Shivaji hung in the air, but the rest of it was eternal, timeless. I probably will feel 20 again if I get there.

And on to a village, where we sat in the mud verandah, near the cows which were financed by the local bank, which if I recall had a branch in that corner of the mountains. Only seven hours of walking…and we were in some other age.

We sipped tea, made with the real milk from the real cows whose sights and smells hung in the air.

Dung, monsoon, tea, milk!

The wetness in the clothes, the breeze, the sky, the laughter, the friends, and above all the curious air of youth….wonder what made it all so special.

We must have had the packed lunch. We must have devoured it. In the mountains, food greets you well, but does not hang over your system. We walked on.

And then it poured. And poured. And poured.

Downhill we walked, drenched to the bones, holding each other’s hands as we made sure we did not slip on the muddy slants which we had consciously bargained for. One couple, dynamic as trekker couples can be, was in the lead. There was a mother with a daughter in the throes of a strange pre-teen mood, and I could feel the child knocking at the doors of adulthood, with a strange mix of irritation and celebration in her demeanour. The boys around were laughing, the rain having brought out the spontaneous best in most of us.
Where was this taking us?
 More walk downhill and then we reached a village. Actually a place where a rickety bus stood near a tea shop. We had hot-hot pakoras, and found another trek group on the bus that would take us in about 30 minutes to Karjat, a remote post outside Bombay but linked to the city’s lifeline trains.

The kids in the other group were clapping and singing in Marathi..All I recall was “Mullo no bayko…” They clapped. They laughed. We had wet earth and pakoras in our system. We were tired and happy. Happy more than tired. The body must have ached but I don’t recollect that.

At Karjat, in the station, the train looked as unreal as the tribal fort did a few hours earlier.

We, the people, seemed the only real things.

Or, were we ?