‘The Muthathi Night Camp’

7 enthusiasts, 1 car, 1 bike, 3 tents, 6 sleeping bags and one eventful night. This isn’t a plot for the next Ramsay brother’s movie; it’s a real life experience just out of Kamal Mehta’s ‘The Muthathi Night Camp’.

The 7 unpredictable’s Shalini-the F1 Racer, Arif – the Fanatic, Dada – the Communicator, Mohanty – the Guitarist, Suresha – the Cynic, Basab – the Songster and me – the Poor Narrator.

February the 9^th 2007 – Symbiosis G

6.00 PM: Dada gets up after the long days work if there was any …’Lets go somewhere out folks. This week’s too boring’. Hmmm all 5 heads nodding in agreement. But where? a dim voice creeps in from somewhere. That’s a million dollar question!! Let’s call Neeraj, someone suggests, Neeraj Malve from Bangalore Mountaineering Club.

7.00 PM, Symbiosis 002: This isn’t a regular teleconference. The foundation is being laid for the adventurous night ahead.

Hey Neeraj can u suggest some place for a days trip, Night camp sort off.. let me tell you here though Dada initiated he would himself had walked out iff he didn’t get to sleep in the wild with the animals. So from a day’s trip it becomes a ‘Night Camp’. Common we must be crazy, arrangements for a night camp in just 12 hrs?? Hey don’t worry Neeraj’s there.. just show the enthu he’ll give u everything and at the lowest in Bangalore. That sounds great. Communicator and the Cynic rushed to get the tents and sleeping bags from BMC. All details in, all set.

February the 10^th 2007 – BTM Water Tank

4 PM: Though I always believed we should have started earlier but because of some miscommunication between the Communicator and the F1 Racer that lead to a communication gap between all we found ourselves in a lot of communication problems later.

Finally we start, from 5 earlier to 7 now… Arif – the Fanatic a regular ingredient so had to be here, Basab – the Songster a lil scared and a lil amused of whats gonna happen but still in because he could not put down our so convincing and so enforced proposal. 5 in the red Ferrari, 2 on the black Ducati and the journey begun.

Cruising along the Malaysian Grand Prix track, the Kanakpura Road, if someone saw a road with bigger and better potholes let me know ill change my nomination for the ‘Worlds Most Amazing Engineering Wonders’.

With the F1 racer in full swing speeding Ferrari at an enthralling speed of 20 kmph, we could not have made earlier covering a distance of 125 km in just 4 hours. We did send the bike faster to get the arrangements and yes with our Kannada trump card ‘the Cynic’ but I should tell you we don’t use him just anywhere.

Should mention the drive through the dense Bheemeshwari jungle was just amazing, the road, the headlights and the music this is what I could feel and see and yes the potholes in the last 20km surprisingly vanished that gave us a dreadful feeling …. We aren’t in other world right ?? Rehman bhai’s other world?? The world of the……..

Fanatic and Cynic now in the village trying their best to find the Forest Office. They even asked the forest guard ...’Where’s the Forest Office?’ but he just dint seem to be aware of it but our Fanatic is too smart I tell you and he did get it.

But are we hearing correctly??... No camping allowed here tonight there are some special people with special permission from the specials and they might get disturbed. What ?? Means all plans in vain ? No camping ? No bonfire? No sleeping in between the animals? This isn’t done and moreover we don’t have a place to sleep. Aliens amongst the villagers with only one person knowing there language and that also we dint wanted to use…remember our trump card how can we open all cards so early?… where would we go now??

While we 6 are cursing our luck and the brave decision to come all the way unprepared, our communicator had some different plans... Hey what is he doing between those villagers and why is he standing with that fellow like a best ever friend with hands across shoulders; and here comes the ray of hope… Mr. Hospitality. This Bengali dude is too good man that’s why we call him the communicator. He’s got everything set and that too at a lower price than the forest people. Mr. Hospitality takes all the responsibility of our night camp, dinner, safety … hmmm that sounds cool.

Following Mr. Hospitality’s footsteps we reach the river bank … no no we are not camping here we gotta cross this river … crazy right?? Some say its adventure, but tell me crossing Cauvery at 9.30 pm in a coracle, without lights, without life jackets, without a swimmer and someone said the river had crocodiles… now this is what?? Adventure??

F1 Racer, Fanatic, Guitarist and Me crossed the river in the first shift and here we are now stranded on the other side of Cauvery in the jungle of Bheemeshwari away from the village making a video I’m still waiting for the prints people say you get to see more faces than actually were at such places, don’t know if someone is carrying one??

Communicator, Songster and the Cynic arrive in the second shift with the remaining luggage.

Though it seemed more scary than adventurous but was just unbelievable, far from the city’s chaos, a naturalists’ experience.

We get to the place for camping and start pitching the tents. It was another struggle trust me with some special physicists comments… Hey the ‘Angle of Curvature’ is not proper decrease it by a few degrees and the tent would adjust.. But how about folding the stick, that would increase the angle agree but the tent just might fit. Engineers should not camp together.. believe me. Finally after all the special comments and the hot scientific discussions we did manage to fix the tents though not absolutely professionally. The campfire is up by now and done by our host of the day Mr. Hospitality.

Here come the guidelines... Remember ‘Kaal’ movie... the rules of the jungle?? Luckily we had only three.

First, do not swim in the water, crocodiles will take you along; someone tell him we don’t know swimming. But we aren’t supposed to get near the water too.

Rule no two, don’t let the campfire go dead else the animals specially the elephants will take you along with the tents.

Rule no three; sleep in rotation one person should be awake at any point of time. Now did you understand our 6 sleeping bags funda?? But who has come here for sleeping man.

Then comes the majestic dinner special courtesy Mr. Hospitality. Chicken soo good in midst of a jungle could not imagine getting better in The Leela, with dal, rice and the roti’s .. felt like heaven .

As the moon rays split through the lovely woods, we 7 near the bonfire with Guitarist and the Songster singing in the wild. The most amazing experience of my life. Though we all turned singers later with some dying efforts by the guitarist to get in sync with us. Here we remember all the oldies the evergreen soothing tracks down the memory lane… and yes a special tribute to Himesh Reshamia’s ‘Aashiq Banaya Aapne’ .. We did wanted to burn him with the song in the fire but were in such a good mood for that.

One by one all down it’s just me and the guitarist … singing till 3 with cautious eyes around looking for the animals and the other world guests. Its time to wake The Fanatic.. and go to bed and once he got up I don’t think anyone slept.. though I did manage to steal a nap.

February the 11^th 2007 – Cauvery River Bank, Muthathi

Its five in the morning pack the tents fast.. you don’t want forest office people to trace you after they declining the permission right??

Well we packed everything, the sun has just rose and look around.. this is where we were all night… man it is soo lovely soo scenic soo splendid … we were spellbound for minutes.

The trip doesn’t end here we had a wild time hunting for crocodiles...got to see a glimpse of one. The stone crests in the Cauvery are just perfect for crocodile habitats and that’s where we spent a lot of time … couldn’t really see one from close, reasons being getting late there… crocodiles get into the water once the sun is up… and also because we were such a silent bunch of people.

We also planned for a trek though it was dropped; we feared it to be useless as no animals would dare come out in such heat, Feb isn’t the right time for trekking there we believe.

We spent our afternoon splashing and bathing in the Cauvery a natural spa and healer.

Needless to mention the fresh n tasty breakfast and lunch, courtesy again Mr. Hospitality.

Life doesn’t give many opportunities like this to experience nature from so close. We would have loved to stay there forever but who would write the buggy code otherwise.

We headed back to Bangalore at around 1 pm, the F1 Racer got some hiccups with the Ferrari now but we did manage easily; After all we had become strong by now though still finding the difference between being adventurous and being crazy.

And Yes…Did I forget to mention we haven’t yet used our trump card… smart we are … no??