One day my PM asked the team to go to Vaishno Devi. As a new guy in my team I say yes enthusiastically without knowing that the time when we are going there is a period of monsoon. I knew the trip is going to be adventurous but never knew it will end up being extravagantly adventurous.
We reached Delhi Station at around 7:00 and the train was expected at 8:30 (IST). I hope you all know the meaning of IST - Indian Standard Time. The train was a special train started for Vaishno Devi only but Lalu didn’t want people to reach there in time so it came at 9:30 (LST – Lalu Standard Time).
The train seemed ok but the AC was set for foreigners I suppose. It was too cool inside n usually I prefer upper birth so I went up straight away. After mid night I started realizing that it’s harmful, especially for my joints (I am getting older u know). It was tough for me to get up in the morning though I rose at 9:30.
We went to katra from jammu which was quite pleasant, took rest for a while and decided to start with our trip at around 12:30 but clouds came from no where n it started raining. It rained for about 2 hours n the sky was clear so we decided to put on our gears as we planned to go to shivkhodi the other day.
The journey of about 26 kms started with a strong determination that everyone will walk by the whole journey and no one’s going to ride a horse to reach till the end. But after few kms, our team’s little baby Mallika started feeling some pain in her stomach n was not ready to move a single step further. Everyone was really tense bout what to do now? Soon she started vomiting and that was a value addition in our tension. We then try all sorts of cameos to get her out of troubles n finally there was some ray of hope as she said let’s go. She walked for a while but again she got tired, it was around 4 o’clock n loads of dehydration so that was quite obvious.
After a while the other half of the team decided to move on while Mallika was resting but it wouldn’t be ok to keep her there all alone like that so I stayed with her with a thought that she’ll take up a horse once she gets real tired n I’ll be able to catch up with the other team but Mallika didn’t want to ride on a horse, don’t know what was going through her mind (Still don’t know). I was losing my hope as she was getting slower n slower with time but I had to stay with her as a team effort so I stick to her. We were reaching towards the target slowly but not steadily n after a while I was sure to meet the other team only when we reach back to the Hotel. As I was not aware of the way, I got confused but kept on going. Mallika seemed like gathering all her courage to make it to the top. She was going well now; probably it was due to the sunset and a cool pleasant atmosphere that started building at around 6 o’clock.
It was more then 3 hours past after we started our journey but we just cleared 5 kms. We still had 8 immense kms to go. It seemed a behemoth task with our current status. But all of a sudden, Mallika gathered all her courage n was looking all set to finish it up. We were going good n rather then going round through road; we were going through stairs, which was saving hell lot of hour time. But I think almighty had decided to put all sorts of troubles on our way n it started raining heavily. We didn’t have any other option to keep on moving so we kept on walking until it started raining heavily, we had to take shelter at one of the army person’s place for about 20 minutes or so but rain was not to stop so we decided to move on. We were going at quite a good pace but due to heavy rain, there were nobody around us.
I was not aware of the road so as anticipated we got over a wrong track. After a while we realized that it stopped raining but no one except people riding on horse were using that way. The reason: it was longer route then the original one. Huh…………..We were all tired n wet n after it stopped raining, the wind started blowing hard; really hard; as we were at around 700 ft height from the ground level. It was kind of scary as there was jungle all around n no one else around. I kept on shouting “Jai Mata di” but there wasn’t anybody to join me. We were physically really tired but we got mentally tired when we got to know that we now have to walk 3-4 kms more as we choose a wrong path.
But all that was not enough, we were wet n due to heavy wind we started getting dry n so do our clothes n shoes. All of a sudden I realized that sponge inside my shoes is totally ruined and was moving inside my shoes so I was not feeling comfortable at all but had to keep on moving as we were running out of time. With all that pain, we realized that we reached on top n now have to go down to the temple. We watched people coming from down to the temple while we were going down to the temple. Ha ha ha.
All that apart, we really had nice ‘DARSHAN’ n reached the hotel even earlier then the other team. Hats off to Mallika for all the efforts she had put in after the breakdown she had earlier.
“ZOR SE BOLO, JAI MATA DI”
No comments:
Post a Comment