Winding Ways

 Post #3 of my Narmada adventure saga back in 1999 For those unfamiliar with near-absolute darkness, the human eye is an astonishing device.  At threshold sensitivity, the pupil can detect the presence of about 100-150 photons of blue-green light in an open space.  Less than 10 photons are enough in a closed 10’x10’ room; when our daughter was small, I used to treat her to “acclimatization magic” at bedtime.  She would close her eyes before I turned out the lights, and then she would open them and squeal with delight as her pupils dilated to detect the few photons that defined my outline.   Twilight was already turning to night as I walked down the single, sturdy, richly forested road that served to connect the highway with Amarkantak.  After the surfeit of sights and sounds in the train for a full day and the roar and whine of the truck engine thereafter, the solitude and serenity felt like a benediction. Yet, the absolute isolation was disconcerting. ...

The easiest way to get from Mumbai to Amarkantak back in 1999 was to take a flight to Jabalpur and then a taxi for the balance of the journey.  But that would have been quite an abrupt transition – from a cushy urban existence to roughing it out completely alone in an unknown, somewhat uncharted and quite possibly inhospitable forest.  Plus, there was the Arun factor – we had planned to commence our trip from Indore, wander a bit through India’s massive central state of Madhya Pradesh, and then reach Amarkantak to start the Narmada trek.  I thought quite a bit about it.  It seemed logical to start at Indore, where Arun’s sister Vinita lived. I dropped off my urban trappings and suitcase at her place, retaining only the bare minimum that I needed for the journey.   My plan was to travel to Amarkantak the way most of India’s population travels – by passenger trains that stopped every quarter of an hour.  There happened to be a direct train from Indore to Pend...

October last year was 25 years since the most transformative trip of my life, a solo trek of nearly 200 km from Amarkantak to Mandla in East-Central India. I made this journey of discovery partly because I love nature and missed being immersed in it.  Decades of city living had made me feel a disconnect with my childhood roots, with their deeply embedded memories of villages, rivers and forests.  Because, as a scientist, I was curious about the rich natural resources of the region and their possibilities.  I also travelled because I had read not only about the abject poverty in some parts of that region, but also about the unique existence that the tribals there led. Because narratives of miracles, paranormal phenomena and surrealistic experiences associated with the upper Narmada valley fascinated me.  But perhaps most because a dear friend and I had talked of this trip twice – once when we read about Amarkantak in our school Hindi text book, and then the last time ...