Under the bejewelled sky,sleeping with the stars

This trek had all the ingredients for making it an exciting event, 1200 feet of overall rappelling over 5 different patches, breathtaking waterfalls atleast for laymen like us who have not seen the Niagara falls and all, the affable winter season that we all look forward to, two nights in the wilderness and some great friends to enjoy it all along with. Now all we needed were some master chefs to carve it all out for us; from Camp Fire India, an avid trekking and adventure group.

I am talking about the 1200 feet Malshej waterfall rappelling that I went to on 27th November 09 with some of my colleagues.

You won’t get the perspective of the height, so to give you one consider it alongside the towering Eiffel tower, which just stands at 1070 feet and it would take more than 190 of me each standing 6 feet 3 inches high on top of each other; even more if we stand on the shoulders rather than the head .

After an uneventful journey from Mumbai we reached the base camp, a village school veranda at 3 am in the morning. I barely was managing to sleep on the hard surface, the thorough city bred that I am, that they woke us all up with whistles so shrill that I felt in no time would the villagers including me would rain down upon them for disturbing the sleep. But nothing of that sort happened, instead as though our bulging backpacks were not enough , we were each burdened with a helmet, two sets of gloves and a harness.All of us were then herded towards the mountains looming in the distance through a vast grassland and quite literally so with the harness buckles making soft tinkling sound just like the bell attached around a cow neck.  But one look at the early morning beauty and I  forgot all about my so called maladies.

We finally reached the valley top from where the rappel was to begin. There were five levels we had to rappel over two days to reach the valley at the bottom.The first day, there were two patches of 300 and 350 feet. There were a couple of monkeys around who had come to watch their brethren, seemingly foolhardy to be attempting this. They even managed to strike claim to our breakfast but not before we all had our fill.

We all managed to rappel down quite easily. Most of us were quite unlucky managing only the infinitesimal amounts of cuts and bruises but the few lucky ones got to enjoy a bruised back and a bleeding forehead.

Night descended on the mid valley shelf as smooth and swift as  an eagle zeroing on its prey and with it came the most amazing parade seen in some time coming. Celestial beauties came out in thousands in their best dresses, though nothing compared to the showstopper of the show, the dazzling lady moon who treated us all  to an amazing appearance over the valley  ridge. The waterfall transformed itself into countless pearls hurling down with a roar. A silver misty pearly spray kept raining down on us whenever a gust of wind managed to sneak in. There were no words to describe this and any few that managed to stand were drowned in the roar of the waterfall and the flowing silvery strands. As rightly said, ”A picture speaks a thousand words”, but the one in front of us represented a novel worthy of bookers prize.

 

The next days we all woke up to a chilly morning, with sunlight glistening on the higher ridges of the valley. The chill seemed to be running away from the warmth of the sun and cramming itself in the valley with us. It was in this chill that we realised the warmth shown by the instructors over the two days. Helping each one of us so calmly, standing at the ravine edge with no ropes or hooks to hold them. Just looking at their composure instilled confidence in us.

It was these guys and the ropes that just drained our fear away. Once we were hooked we felt like superheroes, felt that nothing can harm us now and we all crawled down the walls like spiders mocking Fear right in its face.

Santosh, Deepatai, Sundanshu, Poorti….. , the safety equipments .. these were the stars whom we all slept along with in the night.

 

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