"The huge cobra comes out at the appointed time, drinks the milk and then goes behind those rocks. It does not harm anyone". We instinctively moved a step back, though there was no signs of a cobra, for that matter of any snake whatsoever.
Our guide was an old man, more than sixty years of age. His body was that of a farm laborer. Not a single piece of fat anywhere, muscles tightly wound due to physical exertion, dark and extremely fit. As it happens in Kerala, the sixty plus years old man was called 'Baby' and he was describing to us about a local tribal festival.
"People gather here during the festival time. Tribal folks, from all around here and also far off, gather at this place. In the night there will lot of drinking and dancing. Drums will reverberate and music will be heard. This happens during a full moon day. This whole area will be full of people." Baby swept his across the hillside, now completely uninhabited. We had trekked here from our resort and were at a 'temple' built by stacking stones on top of each other. "Behind those stones lies the long black cobra, which will appear during the festival without fail" The temple was the high point of a small hill. The area was completely deserted and except for us there was no one to seen anywhere in the vicinity and there was no signs of any civilization.
"Now we will go through the grass and then we will go to the forest. We will then trek back through a tea estate". Babu mapped the trek path for us. The serious trek started after the snake temple. We went through grass which hid us completely and scratched our hands, through bushes with thorns which pricked us and through shrubs with insects which bit us once in a while. Gayathri and Harini then got the realization that watching Nature in Discovery channel was a better option. Baby turned around and told us, "If we are silent, we may sight a porcupine here. They are generally sighted at this place." But it was not be. Harini kept going, "When will we get out of this place", "How much more time will the trek take", "I am getting scratched", "Insects or biting me", on a continuous basis. We crossed that area and Baby looked at Harini, smiled and told, "If we were silent for just five minutes, we could have seen the porcupines."
We arrived at a clearing. There was a very small hut there and Baby told us, "This is the house of one of the tribal, who lives here with his family." We were stunned when we looked at the hut. The first thing which caught the eye was that the hut had no door at all!! It had a tiled roof and mud floor. A couple of dogs were lazing outside the hut. A feeble vegetable garden surrounded the hut. "There is no door. Everything is open. How do they sleep here? Don't they feel cold? Aren't they afraid of wild animals?". Those were questions which Gayathri asked rapidly. The hut was in the middle of the very definition of jungle, no other sign of any life nearby. You can easily imagine how that place would be during night, especially on a new moon night or on a cold night. But then, these are people who have made peace with the environment and know how to mingle with the elements. Unlike us, who need to condition the air we breathe.
We moved ahead and the ground was sloping down. We were descending the hill and were coming close to the river which was running down in the valley. As I was about to sit at one place, Baby cautioned me. "Don't sit there. Can you see the mud path here? That mean the wild boar comes this way. In case he comes running you will be in his way." Not liking the prospect I moved further down and rested on a rock which had no such paths anywhere nearby. Now we could see the river flow. Baby started peering into the trees on the other bank. "I heard elephants were sighted on the other bank." Now we were not very keen on meeting the elephant in close quarters. I love elephants, in fact adore them, but I am not sure this fact has been communicated to them. We kept looking but the elephants were elsewhere doing whatever they do during that time of the day.
Now we started climbing up and Gayathri was very upset by all the climbing, scratching and biting. "Why do you insist on these treks when we are not keen." She was fully irritated now. As usual promising her that the end was very near, we continued the climb. We soon reached a waterfall. The sight of the waterfall and the prospect of sitting on the rocks with your legs in the water made everyone happy and all irritation and tiredness vanished. The kids sat by the running stream. Baby told us, "idhu kaataruvi yaanu.(Forest waterfall). No one has name it and very few people know about it." You can see what he told was true because there were no Pepsi/Coke bottles, or Frooti tetrapacks or Lays covers strewn around. It was as pristine as it can be.
Baby then pointed to an insect which was yellow in color and looked like a well fed caterpillar and asked us, "Do you want to hold it in your hands?" Before we could say "Nooo", Baby had already scooped the insect and it is then the magic happened. Upon the touch of Baby's fingers, the insect rolled itself into a ball and the outer coating was as thick as wood. Now in Baby's hands was a wooden ball, the insect had vanished. What marvels nature has in store for us.
After spending some time refreshing ourselves in the stream, the cool water driving away our tiredness, we continued our climb. Suddenly Baby stopped us and pointed to a space in between two big trees. For a minute I couldn't make out anything. Then I saw the web the spider has spun. The web was large and built across two trees. In the middle sat the huge spider, larger than any spider I have seen till now. It had red and black stripes. We were later to see another huge one with yellow and black stripes. Baby explained, "These spiders are poisonous. The bite of some spiders is painful. The bite of some spiders make you itch for almost a year. In some cases the itching stops after two or three days but exactly one year later the itch reappears for two or three days." Something like an itching anniversary!!! We now started walking more carefully watching both our steps as well as our heads. Scratching yourself for one full year is not a great prospect.
We then reached the tea plantation and well laid out paths. There was lot of joy all around seeing the tea plantation. I told Gayathri, "We are all tea plantation walkers, not trekkers." After walking through the tea plantation for a couple of kilometers we were back in the resort. In the whole trek we had not sighted a single animal and we realized that it didn't matter. For walking through the forest is an experience by itself and I enjoyed it thoroughly.
