If there was ever a metaphor for one’s spiritual journey, then this was it.The journey until Lonavala was humdrum enough to be pointless. Lonavala, as we sped past it, was distressing with its crowd, ugly buildings, and litter. Bushi dam at the outskirts of Lonavala was submerged in a sea of humanity. It was more remarkable to encounter a sea of humanity on top of the hills, scampering up the two once-scenic waterfalls.
We were caught in a silly near-stationary traffic jam there caused by pedestrians, shops, unregulated parking and a mountain of litter for almost 45 minutes. As we sat fretting, fuming and ravening (it was way past our lunch time), we thought of God for the first time.
Miraculously we got past what seemed like “samsara” and the road rose steadily uphill, winding its way through green slopes. Crowd thinned, although we saw another knot of people at Lion point, doing very strange things such as riding a camel!
Immediately past Lion point—silence.
The woods around us thickened and a dense cloud descended to kiss our window panes, reducing visibility to less than a foot. It was a weird experience driving through a cloud when it was depositing heavy rain on us. It looked like we were truly approaching heaven, or at least that river that separates this word from the other.
“Turn left at Cloud 9,” the helpful directions from our friendly resort exhorted us. We looked at the cloud outside our window and wondered whether we should take the instruction literally. Luckily, the sign board announcing the resort’s name emerged from the cloud cover just in time.
We turned left and were on a lonely, broken up private road. Our driver’s anxiety radiated palpably, when all out directions would say was to “look for two white stones.”A Daphne du Maurier landscape was unraveling around us, with a giant banyan tree, an abandoned motor bike, and serious potholes emerging from the cloud, like rabbits out of a magician’s hat. “Where are we going?” the driver asked fearfully.
“Whooo!” I wailed, in keeping with the mood.
“You sound like a dog,” P disdained.
The white stones turned out to be ramshackle posts for an entrance, made up of a pile of higgledy-piggledy white washed stones. We bravely turned our car in between this and really, couldn’t make out where we were. The driver tentatively drove on the muddy path that snaked ahead of us and came to a small clearing near a picturesque little lake where another car was parked.
So this was heaven. It sure was jaw-droppingly beautiful. The lake and its environs (as far as we could see amidst the rolling cloud) were nestled in what looked like a plateau overhung by very tall, very green hills. But there was nobody around.
The driver by now had decided that we two had completely lost our marbles and have come to a place where we will be killed and buried and nobody would know the better of it.
Then a human form emerged, with a grin and a “Welcome! Come into the reception.”
“Reception” was a thatched roof structure. A couple of boys carried our meager belongings and led us down a cobble-stone path, showing us such noteworthy landmarks like the “dining area” (another thatched roof structure).
Our domicile was built 30ft above the ground on metal pillars. The way up was via a spiral staircase. The room was spacious, with glass walls on three sides and a wooden deck that peeped into the clouds at eye level, tree filled wet valley below, and hill tops at a distance.
“Are we the only guests here?” P wondered during lunch. We actually wondered at dinner also. And even next morning breakfast, because we hardly saw anyone other than the staff. It could also be because we were embarrassingly early for every meal and were made to wait for at least 15 – 20 minutes each time.
That afternoon we explored the grounds of our resort. It was very wet for it rained incessantly and very green. I’ve read that some tribe in some part of Africa has about 50+ words for shades of green. All those shades were on display there—dark green leaves of the tree, fluorescent green of the moss, middle tone green of the creepers, sunny green of the grass underfoot, muddy green of the lake, and mysterious green of the hills framed by waterfalls and windmills.
The eco mantle sat strangely on our shoulders after the day sank into dusk. There was no TV in the room and almost non-existent data network. We contemplated the sound of rain, the cacophony of frogs and toads (a veritable symphony at night), insects of all denominations that came attracted to the lights, and a large (and judgmental, according to P) lizard in the bathroom. We fought over P’s tablet for reading rights. We slept a little.Night got chilly. Rain continued. It felt singularly wonderful to be suspended in space, as it were, above the jungle.
Dawn was spectacular. Light diffused through the rain clouds and lit up our room from all sides. Then as we watched, the rain clouds cleared, leaving behind wispy trails and a spectacularly fresh valley behind.
We stepped out for a walk. We waded through shallow streams, squelched through muddy grass, past a tank with a humungous frog and up a slippery narrow trail, chasing wild flowers. Morning light was doing magic to the landscape.
“Careful! careful!” P cautioned as we stepped on stones and proceeded further up.
“Walk with confidence P!” I lectured, leading the way. “This is not a place to be timid!”
Bada-thump!
It was the sound of me slipping and falling, right on cue after that lofty statement, in a most slapstick manner. I also collected enough mud on my person to cause soil erosion in those parts. Luckily, other than being winded and extremely chagrined, I was unharmed.
But it put a lid on our adventurous spirit and we made it back to the dining area, near the lake. The friendly staff offered to serve our tea by the lake. We made ourselves comfortable on a wet bench and drank in our environs. We took a million pictures of the moving clouds casting different shadows on the hills.
The rest of the day passed in desultory exploration. We encountered a mighty cricket (who we were sure spoke in French—“Oui, mademoiselle!”), scores of translucent snails, a small orange spider which caught a shiny fly in its web and ate it quickly and dramatically, tadpoles and baby crabs in a small pool, and birds that whistled and whistled. The latter flitted through the thick undergrowth of the woods, a tantalizing wing here and a splash of beak there, but we never could see the whole bird.
P kept up a whistle-counter whistle match with the annoying bird almost for half an hour next morning. They went “Chu-chee-chu! Chu-chee!” incessantly, but nothing came of that endeavor. But we were visited by half a dozen toads from the nearby trees. One even obligingly caught an insect and ate it while we watched. A hairy caterpillar crawled past purposefully. Bright bugs posed for us from tree leaves.
Perhaps my fall the previous day had made me fearless, but I dragged P to look for the waterfall we kept hearing all day. The trail took us on a good 20 minutes hike down slippery, roughhewn steps, across the stream (which made the water fall down hill), through a brilliantly green grassy knoll, and down a slope. It was not much of a water fall, but boy, what a sight it was! You have to be from a city like Mumbai to experience the exact sense of wonder (laced with fear), at being completely alone and surrounded by nature in its full glory.
There was a bench under a corrugated shelter to watch the water fall. But we just couldn’t sit down—we wanted to see everything, imprint all of it in our minds. We went further downstream, stepping over boulders. We were briefly caught in a heavy downpour and got thoroughly wet.
We got back to our room, muddy, wet and accomplished. We called up people to tell them what an epic adventure we had. I might have talked about God again.It poured non-stop after that, through the night and the next morning. But by now, we had learned to let go of our city anxieties and let nature take us by the hand. Perhaps that’s was the point.
We left the resort the next morning, leaving behind this little Shangri-la of the Sahyadris with heavy hearts. It was surprising how quickly the urban landscape took over. I even picked up a burger from McDonalds, not 15 kms from the place!
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