How Much...

The dark obese man, with the loose shirt hanging on his drooping shoulders, the first button opened, and the second one missing, with long stripes of brown and green amidst fading white (?) went about his job perfunctorily, taking my huge bag of rice, pulling it onto the billing machine. As it croaked out a grunt acknowledging him of the account it was summing, he put it inside a larger plastic bag and reached out for my large cover of Maggi. This man could pass off as one of those villains who, despite their huge collection of muscular tissues, fail to develop the kinetic energy when in a dual with the frail heroes of the Kannada filmdom. But, then, a man worth of the filmdom back home, was tying up plastic covers, and pulling things onto the billing machine, which sported out the intelligent numbers clearly declaring that the Judgement day was not far.
The aroma of Patel’s Groceries, Minneapolis, popularly known as the ‘Indian Store’ resembling the corner grocery shop in Girinagar, Bangalore, had made me more comfortable, than I ever was in the Cub Foods, the American chain of food supermarkets.
And I prided myself to be an adventurer, comfortable with new experiences.
Was I homesick already?

“Great camping spot. No availability of food, water, or medicine supplies. Totally amidst the nature,” my friend had declared with the excitement of khaki clad host of the Animal Planet, about a trekking trail that he had discovered in some magazine.
I stared at him as Basanti staring at Gabbar, when asked to dance on those broken glass pieces.
Fortunately, there was no another lunatic who would scream “Wow, LET’S GO!!! (Naach Basanti, naach)”. I succeeded in convincing the jungle boy to a milder trek in the BR Hills, on the western part of Karnataka, India (the milder trek did consist of walking through a protected forest, where there was no ‘protection’ for humans from our four legged friends. “No man eaters in South India” my friend quotes National Geographic, but ones eaten did not carry their cell phones into the tigers’ tummies, I guess). Did I turn up an opportunity to be adventurous?

Hey, before you start assuming that the greatest trek that we ever made would be the complete jogging track of Lalbagh, I would like to quote the two treks to Kumaraparvatha (rated as the toughest trek in Karnataka), the Tadiandamol (well, it certainly is not the toughest, but is pretty much hyped, so thot I will garner some celebrity endorsement), and the scary night at Bisle forest view point. We had survived the acute shortage of water in Kodachadri hills, and had survived the ruthless Kerala sun in the barren, and tough trek at Chembra, Waaynad. I had always thought that I had qualified as an adventurer.



Then came the amazing offer from my trekking guru. Three and a half days of climbing up and down, twelve hills surrounding the Horanaadu temple. It sounded amazing to listen, like the thousands who spend time in front of the Discovery channel, watching places with awe, places that they would never dare to visit. It was a great experience to pen a invitation mail to all my friends, and contacts, with exotic words ripped out of Dictionary.com (now, who would know the meaning of the word ‘peregrine’, especially, if you haven’t been through the wordlist for CAT).
The few days of discussions of the trek that followed were as exciting as can be, with all the topics of pay hike, cricket, and cool babes stashed away.
Then a vicious friend suggested a cool vacation in the sun-burnished beaches of Goa.
The trek collapsed!!!
After all, Goa is what ‘dil chahta hain’.

“One small step for Vatsa, one huge leap for software engineers of Bangalore,” announced my friend Vatsa, when we stepped onto the railway track, of the famed railway track trek between Sakleshpur, and Yedukumeri. Yes, it was nothing less than awesome with more than 57 bridges, and 30 tunnels in a span of 18 kms, in one day, amidst the bountiful greenery of the evergreen Western Ghats. The abandoned railway track (abandoned for the past 18 years) had the tunnels in ruins, with bats ruling the darkness of the damp, long tunnels, and the infinitely long bridges like the google mailbox (the more you cover, the more you get to cover). That night, the thrilling campfire experience amidst the habitat of the wild, was an experience burningly stamped on my memory for life. I would also remember the crave among the trekkers to be as middle in the crowd as possible, while queuing for sleeping places in the dilapidated structure (which was once a railway station), on the assumption that the wild cats would prefer to pull the ones at the last rather than the effort to prefer the ones in the middle. I had not ventured into the rat race, because of the extra gyan of having read books of hunters’ stories, where the ones in the middle were picked because of their smaller sizes. Hence, I was quite confident that only the tigers of Australia would prefer me (if there were any). My friends of smaller sizes had slept peacefully.
After reading this, they might not, anymore!!!
And yes, every cell in the body was crying out in pain, due to the trek.
The next morning, we had decided to abandon the further trek to Kukke Subramanya. Most of the enthusiasts had backed out, which had saved me from being the odd man out. A few enthusiasts were disappointed.
But, they were altruistic enough to oblige the others.
The cross country path that we took turned out to be more exciting than the railway track trek, with rivers to cross, deceiving paths, and truck rides. But then, when we had abandoned the trek, had the adventurer in us backed out? Was the adventurer there at all?

Would I be ready to attempt the unreasonable in my quest for adventure? Or would I be content enough to be reading exciting books, and penning vignettes on the same?
Was I an adventurer? Or a couch adventurer?

My questions were sprinkled with twinkling answers when my friend, a hard core trekker from the womb of the Western Ghats, a dexterous trek lead, and the official fireman (in charge of starting up camp fires, ……and ……er……not the one arrested for the forest fire in Coorg last year) mentioned in one of the treks to the Kumaraparvatha, about a strenuous trek in Kundadri about which we had cribbed, “ We are accustomed to a level of comfort. Maybe that trek could have been better with a bit more of comfort than we got.”
Though he did not mention it directly, there it was. The ‘limit’ of adventure in all of us.
Maybe all adventurers have a limit, and the ones with the higher limits travel to the ends of the earth. The ones with the lower limits, take pleasure in stealing a glance at that female on the two wheeler getting a ticket for barging into a ‘one-way’.
I believe that all of us are adventurers in between this range. Just ‘how much’?

teju