Beyond the Shola

The other side of the shola

It was the holiday of a lifetime. Flying home to India and spending a full week in the Nilgiris, the blue hills surrounding Ooty. It was at a summer cottage of an old friend and not a fancy hotel. He had warned me that it had not been used for a while. He told me stories of black panthers in trees and monkeys snatching away children, of mauled bodies and wild bears. Of crossing sholas and finding pristine water in the middle of it. Of beautiful peaks that oversee the hills. And finding bliss on the other side of the sholas. One particular story stayed with me.

They were kids then and had lit a small campfire outside their summer home. After an evening of songs and jokes, they went to sleep on the veranda of the home a few meters from the dying embers of the campfire. A few hours later, those who were still drifting off to sleep in their sleeping bags heard the rustling of leaves and saw a wild bear stomping out the remnants of the fire. This was still the 1980s without the benefit of the internet and it was an experience in education. The next morning as they excitedly packed up their belongings to go back to the city in their old badaga van, they could not stop talking of the bear and the fire. Their excitement was silenced on seeing the mutilated body of a human on the way back out of the forest.

As I wondered what lay ahead, we made our way from the airport in Coimbatore up the hills into the Nilgiris. The small van was silent in anticipation. It was just the four of us. All friends from college and I had suggested this trip to the wild. The roads were not too bad. Or at least not as bad as my friend had described them to me. He had described kachcha roads but these were blacktopped. As we took the last turn the small house came into view and the last 100 meters was just a cobbled road of mud and stones. The house was dilapidated and an old uninterested man greeted us. There was hardly a roof and he had a small kerosene stove that he said he would lend us for the two nights. This was more than the roughing it, than we had bargained for. But it was meant to be like this.

We gathered hay, as there was still light and somewhere in the tall wooded eucalyptus trees, we could hear the distant rumble of water. As we explored further gathering grass and leaves we saw a small stream with crystal clear water. We filled our bottles and a large bucket of water and made our way back to the home. We were all pretty proud and excited at the prospect of spending the night in the wild and a trek the next day. We were all armed with cell phones, GPS and battery packs. We only had to take care of our food and water and we would have experienced something on our own, for the first time in our lives. We lit a fire and made put a kettle on to make tea. Simultaneously, we cut vegetables to make khichdi, which was our plan for dinner. As the four of us drank our tea and watched the simmering pot of hot water, rice and vegetables, we realised how much life has changed. It is hard to describe, though easy to imagine. Hard to live the life, though easy to envision.

After a dinner of khichdi, where we all doubted if the rice was fully cooked but no one dared question it, we made plans for the next morning. We would trek to a peak, with our backpacks. The challenge was to cross a dense “shola”, which can best be described as a thick wooded forest that is a narrow strip down a hill. It is dense mainly because there would typically be a stream in the middle. The challenge was because even in the late morning sun, the shola would be covered in darkness and moisture with all kinds of wildlife from birds, to monkeys, snakes and a possibility of a black panther or two. My friend had described finding bliss, peace, tranquility and a sense of achievement on the other side of the shola.

After a restless night of sleeping under the stars, waiting for a bear to show up to stomp out the fire and sleeping out in the open, we must have drifted off to sleep sometime after midnight. The next morning, we started on our trek after a hot cup of tea. Armed with biscuits and sandwiches that we had brought along with us and some more morning tea in flasks, we started out. Our old bodies seemed to creak after a night of sleeping in the open, in sleeping bags. After the first two kilometers, the creaks disappeared but the hills seemed to become steeper. We reached a point from where we could see the peak we were heading to and the shola we had to cross. We quickly made our way to a point just before the shola and took a break for some tea and breakfast. It must have been just before 10 and though our legs were hurting, we didn’t really feel exhausted. The fresh smell of pine and eucalyptus seemed to invigorate us.

After a half hour breakfast break, we continued as we approached the shola. As we entered the shola, our pace slowed, our senses peaked and we felt that not everything was right. To anyone used to India traffic, with all kinds of traffic approaching from all directions, this was not supposed to be this hard. We were less than 10 meters into the shola and the darkness was all pervading. We didn’t know which direction to look nor which direction to head to. The chirping of birds seemed to become sharper. The sense of an unknown danger heightened.

Suddenly out of nowhere a beam of light shot through. Someone had the presence of mind to turn on the flashlight on the phone. The rest of us reacted instinctively and pulled out our phones. We all turned on our flashlights and we realised that the four of us had already drifted apart slightly. We were supposed to be together through this. We tried to regroup but the constant need to turn the flashlight in different directions to see what was behind us, to the left of us, to the right of us and ahead of us, leaving us confused and slightly dazed.

Among the dizzying flashlights I lost my sense of direction and found myself at the edge of the shola with my heart racing. I had made it successfully to the other side, and turned back to see where the others were and realised I had lost them. Astonishingly I also realised I was at the same place where we started and I had not reached the other side. I took a few steps into the sun, calming my racing thoughts. I sat down to wait for my friends. I tried to call them but my phone couldn’t get a cell phone signal. After an hour of waiting, I walked back to the house where we spent the night. A slight summer drizzle had begun.

It was getting late enough to be worried. I once again stepped into the balcony and looked down. Except for a drenched street dog that was lying down miserably near the gate, there was not a soul to be seen anywhere. Rain water had puddled under the lamp post. A breeze ruffled the mango tree in the courtyard and a few twigs fell down and broke. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Did I hear a soft knock at the door? I turned back....

Now I knew I was surely hallucinating. There was no one and I was hearing things. I crept into the van to be surrounded by things I was familiar with. I still had no phone signal and I was wondering if it was time to drive into town to seek help. I don’t know when I fell asleep. My clothes were damp and I was shivering, when I saw faces peering against the window. I opened my eyes and saw my friends laughing in the setting sun almost mocking me. I opened the door and realised the drizzle had stopped. I asked them what happened and they told me their story of how they got lost in the shola. And when they came out, they realised it had taken over two hours to get out of the shola. I asked them how they got back and they told me they never made it to the other side. They too had come out where they entered and lay there waiting for me. They had made tea, had biscuits, enjoyed the rain and walked back to find me sleeping in the van.

We do not know about what the other side of the shola brought but we found our vulnerabilities on this side. The fear of the unknown and an understanding of ourselves. Probably that is what lay on the other side too.