I shouldn't be alive

Below is an excerpt of the conversation i had with my friend about the trek i had recently gone with my project mates. It was one heck of a trek. We trekked on stones, we trekked through the jungle, we trekked under the sun, got soaked in rain, we trekked all day, we trekked all night with fate playing a spoilsport. It definitely was one of the most memorable days of my life. Although, it probably wont be the most cherished.

ABHISHEK: Dude, what the hell, So busy huh!
ME: Dude,...Am on leave today...
ABHISHEK: u have college today?
i mean u have work today!!?
janmashtami right?
no raje?
ME: It was yesterday- raje
Went for a trek,.
Came back today at 6:30 in the morning
ABHISHEK: oh ya, how was the trek?
ME: Hmmm,..We got warned by a carnivore,..
ABHISHEK: ya!!!
as in!?
ME: Were chased by elephants
ABHISHEK: FISH
really!!!?
sexy dude
ME: Stayed there till 3 in the morning
Without water
ABHISHEK: oooooooooooh my god.. why so!!! too ultimate man
must have been the trek of ur lifetime
man u r makin me jealous
ME: Police, ATS, all naxalite units had come
ABHISHEK: too sexy man
man o man...
wat the
ME: Our DC head and other senior management people came from Mangalore
ABHISHEK: wat didnt happen?
WTF - What terrible fate
ME: I lost the way back man :(
ABHISHEK: hehehe,.. how come..! coz of that DC came to escort u!?
ME: Will rename it ultimate after some time,..DC as in not district commissioner, our Nethra-DC head. Now i am deep shit man,.I vouched for the trek,..
No man,..Thank god we had network,..Or else we would've been dead man,.
ABHISHEK: why wat happened exactly?
ME: Ok,..Let me brief u about it
ABHISHEK: ok
ME: U know Kodekallu and Baleikallu right?? I sent u the mail
*i had!!
ABHISHEK: ya ya
kodekallu is where u were supposed to go na
ME: Ya..We were supposed to reach Kodekallu by 12.
But it was already 2 when we reached that place,..
ABHISHEK: oh
ME: But then the problem was that we could'nt get down to the road from that place..
We needed to go to BaleiKallu to get down.
ABHISHEK: why so!?
ME: So we thought we'll climb how much ever we can till 3:30 n then come back
Well,..I mean it is very treacherous man..We only cant,..There were women who were trekking for the first time,..
ABHISHEK: ok ok
ME: So 3:30 we come down,..
The forest officials had bundled few stones as checkpoints for trekkers to find the way..
We religiously followed that
ABHISHEK: ok
ME: We finally reached a forest patch from where we had to trek down into a village
But by then the clouds had come down,..Dense clouds,..we couldn't see anything beyond 5 mtrs,..
But still we braved it and continued
ABHISHEK: fish
ME: We got a narrow stream downwards,..Thought it would be sensible to go down that
That was what even the bundled stones hinted us
We encountered really weird stuffs over there,..Big mosquitoes & Leeches..Thorny thread branches, as if it grew only to trap us down,..
We saw a human skull too :o
But still we went on..
After walking for close to half an hour, we came to a stop.
ABHISHEK: hehehe
and wat was the time then
ME: It was not possible to trek down any further,..We reached the mouth of a small waterfall
It was prob 5 then.
Then we did the only sensible thing.
Trek back to kodekallu
And find the way we came up.
We reached Kodekallu by 6.
ABHISHEK: crap
u were the organizer na.. did anyone say anything to u!?
ME: Then we tried to figure out the place we trekked up.
ABHISHEK: as in, few ppl who take tension were they pissed?
ME: If i were in their place, i would've been pissed at me. But they took it well.
That time they were more worried abt leaving the place.
In a way the fact that we were 28 worked in my favor,.
I mean, we all knew we weren't alone
Coming back,
ABHISHEK: hehe ya..
ME: We trekked down for about half an hour.
We could see what appeared to be a man-made path.
As in there was a trail of fallen dry grass leaves
So we assumed we trekked up the same route and continued.
ABHISHEK: ok
ME: But we came to a standstill as there was a forest path and it was too dark to get in
ABHISHEK: u were comin back from kodekal right.. u didnt take the same path in which u came up?
ME: Ya...No one could recall man...There was heavy heavy heavy cloud cover
Visibility was hardly 5 mts
We could hear few vehicles moving..So felt it was ideal to take that route
ABHISHEK: oh ok ok
ME: But the forest really put us off,.
ABHISHEK: it didnt rain?
ME: It was too dark and we didnt have any torch with us
It did...But luckily not very heavily
Few of us tried to enter the place and found it almost impossible to get down.
By then it was pitch dark...It was almost 7:30
We decided there was no point in continuing further.
Luckily we could find network over there..All service providers including reliance
ABHISHEK: oh
u were close to the main road i guess
ME: I called our driver and asked him to call few villagers
The driver was a very nice fellow.
ABHISHEK: oh ok ok
ME: Poor guy skipped his dinner and was totally on call, cheering us up all along and helping the villagers find us.
We waited for a good 3 and a half hours before help could arrive at us.
Meanwhile our PM who was with us BTW had called HR and arranged for the police.
But as Mr.Murphy had suggested "Anything that can go wrong, will"
ABHISHEK: fish
why did he have to arrange for police and all
ppl were dead scared is it?
ME: The SP had to come all the way from M'lore as his words wont be taken that seriously here in Belthangady
N to our bad luck, the villagers who came for help didnt have enough torches with them and the ones they did didn
*didn't have enough battery in it
So they go back to the village to get the torch..N SP starts from Mangalore with his squad from mangalore, a 3 hour journey to here
ABHISHEK: My god...
why did u have to call SP and all man
ME: It was 9O'clock when all this happen.
Dude we needed help man,..N we didnt call him, it was all done by Infosys.
I'll explain,..Wait
ABHISHEK: were u smiling then or were u tensed?
ME: Slowly ppl started loosing hope,..Questions like how much time will they take kept hitting my ears every 2 min,..
Dude,...I was the most tensed man,..I had put 28 ppl's life at risk
I had no right to do that,.. :(
I could hear few crying.
but slowly after a while,..The feeling ameliorated..
Slowly few PJs started popping up,..We had some back up food n fruits that we shared..
ABHISHEK: ok ok
damn man
too much
ME: By 10:30 we get a call from the villagers saying that they have reached kodekallu and they would be joining us in 15 min,..We were required to shout and flout the lights,..
ME: It took them another 30 min to reach us
ABHISHEK: no better place if u ask me
ME: So we meet them at around 11PM..N they come bombarding with the questions,..Apparently the dry grass route which we had assumed was man-made was actually made by the elephants
ABHISHEK: oooh!!!
ME: But luckily, i had great experience in PESIT about absorbing chides,..So i took it in good spirit and followed their path
ABHISHEK: absorbing chides!!
in simple English it would mean?
ME: scoldings
Its a simple GRE word
So we 28 of us and 5 of them marched into the jungle patch,..This time we had enough torch lights, We formed a line, and as i was incumbent to take up the responsibility of the group, i was the last in the line
ABHISHEK: hehe ok
ME: 10 min into the forest. I started hearing few grunts..
ABHISHEK: oh
ME: At first i thought i was hallucinating
ABHISHEK: police were walkn along or just the villagers?
ME: But then the guy in front of me also could hear it,..
Police were still aloof at this point,..They had no idea about our whereabout
ABHISHEK: oh
ME: We just stood there and called one of our villagers who btw had a AK-47 with him,..He just warded it off saying it is just a wild dog.
But we knew for sure it didnt sound anything like a dog,..He was probably trying not to freak us out
ABHISHEK: oh ok ok.. too much man
ME: We then put it across the back of our mind
ABHISHEK: u saw on of the 1411 tigers
*one
ME: hehe,..It must be even less now,..N no it didnt sound like a tiger either,..I guess it was a hyna or a leopard
ABHISHEK: oh
ME: We marched on,..
Half an hour into the jungle patch, we suddenly heard the villager panicking..
He comes running all the way from the front of the line towards us and tells us to run back,..
There was a huge herd of wild elephants on our path
ABHISHEK: hahahahahaha
SEXY
wat was ak47 for then?
ME: Whatever dude,..U can max kill 2-3 of them,..They were apparently a herd of 14-20 elephants
ABHISHEK: shit
ME: We then walked back the same route. this time i was the again the leading the grp..
ABHISHEK: hehehe
shit man
were they followin u?
ME: We were just 0.5 kms from the road,..So we thought we'd just take a deviation somewhere and come down at the adjacent route,..And as fate would prove it again we got lost..We reached a dead end
There was a huge rock on the path,..N unfortunately even we got divided among ourselves..So we 10 of us were with one group and the other 18 were left behind with another villager
2 villagers were on the constant look out for the get away places
ABHISHEK: sexy sexy adventure man
ME: Wait it gets worse
ABHISHEK: SEXY i swear
ME: The villager who was escorting us then tells us to wait at this place,..He would get back to us once he finds a way out
Before we could oblige, he was gone
Luckily he had left a torch with us n thanks to my basic Nokia handset it was 2
We just flaunted the torch to just catch a glimpse of the surrounding,..From front it looked majestic,..It was a swamp,.With a huge rock from which the water was trickling down..But as i turned the torch to our back side
* we got horrified,,..It was a Den
ABHISHEK: ooh!!
ME: Only me and another project mate spotted it and we slyly concluded not to share this info with the others...
We waited there nearly for 10 min,.
We were sweating,..We even feared that the villagers would be making a hunch against us..
"Prob it was a trap to send us here"
"prob we were kidnapped"
"Prob they were naxalites"
But before we could run totally wild with the imaginations, the villager came back,...Along with the 18 other project mates
We were on track again
But again as we proceed a little further, we got stuck,..They could not figure out the way further..
ABHISHEK: hehe cool
ME: Then they decide that we shall go back to kodekallu and then to their vikkage
*village
ABHISHEK: oh
ME: We had no energy left with us to object to any of their ideas,,..We just followed like a herd of bufffaloes
But again, as we were moving we heard someone shout STOP
Then we could hear few panicky voices having an altercation.
Everyone hoped it weren't elephants again
Few feared we were cornered by it from both the sides,..The elephant dung in every 5 ft was making the matter worse
But our concern was put to rest when the same voice said PROCEED. POLICE is here.
ABHISHEK: oh
ME: The whole team was relieved..Everyone started cheering and clapping..Suddenly no one seemed to care about elephants and the time
ABHISHEK: too much.. police managed to search for u
ME: The Police then took us in the same way where we were stopped by the elephants,..Luckily for us, it had gone grazing for the greener pastures
Ya man,..We were asked for our GPS location n all. Full high five
We thankfully reached the road in another half an hour.
ABHISHEK: oh cool
ME: It was 3Am in the morning when we reached..
ABHISHEK: man o man
reached mlore or reached the road?
ME: Much to our surprise, all Anti-Naxalites squads in here were called, SP from M'lore had come..
Infy DC head, MFG unit head and few other top managers had come all the way from M'lore,..
at 3 we reached the road,..Came to m'lore at 6:30
ABHISHEK: man.. why did all they come!!
ME: I dont knw what will happen now man,...My PM was all fine till today,..
ABHISHEK: it became such a big issue is it?
will ur PM be scolded
?
ME: But i dont know what his reaction is gonna be tom,.. :(
I dont think so man,..All are happy we are safe..
ABHISHEK: u think he's angry.. in the bus wat was happening..
no one spoke anything?
ME: It was unfortunate man,..We followed the correct path,..Just because of the mist it was tough
No man,..It seems okay now. As i said we just wanted to go home safely..Even if they did scold me, i wouldn't be surprised.
ABHISHEK: hehehe.. ya;..
ME: The entire DC knows abt this man,.I'll be getting a terrible name man,.
N i let others down,..That is the worst part
ABHISHEK: damn man
but how would u know man
u cant really help
it must be taken as an awesome experience..
but ya few ppl may not
ME: It will be....Few ppl have already posted abt it in facebook,..
ABHISHEK: oh
still man
awesome if u ask me
too sexy
ME: Ya man,..The place i tell u,..If it were us friends, We would've loved it,...Really loved it,..The forest patch,.The mountain, kodekallu,..I mean, it is an amazing place man,...Just too good to be true
ABHISHEK: ya.................

We possibly wouldn't have made it without the able support by our driver Vijayanna, the villagers and the Infosys management who were constantly in contact with us and guided us away from the forest. I am deeply indebted to them.