I moved to Dehradun about a week ago. I now work at a beautiful wellness retreat. Life in the hills is different. I had only heard about it so far. Today I got to experience it first hand.
My boss was going to check out a hiking trail with someone from the Front Office team, for guests. He asked me to tag along. Thought it would be fun. For some reason, my understanding of a trail was quite different to what it actually was. So I happily tagged along, blissfully ignorant to what lay ahead.
Well, to start of with, I've been a city girl for too long. I didn't even wear the right shoes. Not that I landed up in heels or something, they just weren't proper trekking shoes. Anyway, by the time we got there, I needed to use the rest room. The mini trek to the little structure they called a bathroom was enough for me. Lasted about 10 minutes and was experience enough for a day.
When the real trail began, did I realize that it wasn't going to be easy. It was complete wilderness all around. Wild bears and leopards had been spotted on the same trail a few days prior. We were with a guide, an expert on birds. For the first half an hour or so, I trudged along, enjoying the flora and fauna, the view and the fact that I was out on a new adventure.
To reiterate, I'm a complete city girl. My idea of a workout was roaming around in a mall. The maximum I've run, is to catch a movie. My idea of a vacation is lying on a beach in Goa. Hiking, trekking, being out on a wilderness trail has never been my thing. It's not that I don't appreciate nature. I really do. I've just never lived close enough to the hills to understand these activities.
So here I was, in the middle of a reserved forest, unsure of where we were, what we were doing there and where we were headed. I started to pant, my legs got shaky, I started to stumble, and I started to realize that I was nearing my breaking point. And guess what, we had barely made it half way. After a short strip of a really steep climb, during which I had nearly given up, we reached the first hill top. This was the end of the leopard trail and we reached a landing from where the view was absolutely breathtaking. Snow clad mountains in the distance, hills covered in pine trees, remote villages scattered all across those hills, fresh air to breathe, and that satisfaction for having made it to the top (before the fear started to creep in that I had the same distance to cover on the way back!)
On such days, I feel that people like me, millions of people like me are too disconnected from nature. And its our loss. This little hike made me fall in love with the beauty of the hills all over again.
Throughout the trail, we saw different varieties of trees. The guide mentioned two types of pine - blue pine and cheer pine (cheer being a hindi word here) and all I could dream of was Chris Pine! I realized I was hiking with true nature lovers when they stopped to analyze animal poop and realized it belonged to a leopard and was relatively fresh (eww). The frost on plants and rocks here and there, the thorn bushes that poked around, the bright red berries on a few trees, the dried flowers and leaves, the solid rocks and the lose pebbles, well, it was quite an experience.
On the hill top, we stopped for a quick and rejuvenating selfie session. The walk on the way down was far easier, shorter but not less adventurous. We ran into a group 12-13 locals, who were carrying wood, bottles of water, food and alcohol. They were looking for a clear landing within the reserve to have a little picnic. The 3 men I was with stopped them and informed them that this was a restricted reserve and this kind of activity wasn't allowed here. The locals obviously were in a mood to party and didn't want to hear no for an answer. These wonderful nature lovers on the other hand refused to budge. For a couple of minutes, I was scared. They were typical local goon variety. I thought that had this been in my dear Haryana, we probably would not have made it out alive for telling them off and informing the authorities about it. I was the only girl standing there in the middle of the forest with all these men, no network, no way to protect us and the argument continued. That little incident was probably still playing on my mind long after we passed them and I ended up slipping on a sharp slope. Landing on my ass, I laughed to myself and thought I was expecting too much if I had thought I was going to make it out of here in one piece.
We later had lunch with the lady who runs this reserved forest and wilderness trails. Her passion for the animals there and her drive to protect the natural state of that area was commendable. That brought us to an end of the eventful day. My over strained legs hurt while I write this. But its going to be a while before I forget this adventure. The first one of 2015. The first one at Dehradun.
(And like my boss said, I earned my lunch today. Well obviously, 2 and a half hours later and after burning thousands of calories, I deserved to treat myself to a cheese burst!)
P.S. - Can you see the snow clad mountain peaks in the picture?
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