Monday, August 28, 2006

Trip to Patal Pani: A Day in My Life

This post starts the first series of posts in my blog "A Day in My Life". These postings will be about some interesting days in my life, some in the distant past and some in the not so distant past.

First, about Patal Pani. It is a waterfall located about 36 kms from the city of Indore. Water falls from a height of 150 feet into a kund (trench) whose depth is still unknown. It is believed that the bottom of this trench reaches patal, hence the name Patal Pani.

Now for my trip to Patal Pani. The day 27th August, 2006, a Sunday. The trip was arranged by the Cultural Committee (or CulCom as its known). Around 50 of us started off from our campus in four vehicles (am not sure whether to call them buses or vans, so let them be called vehicles only). We left at around noon and the plan was to have lunch at the spot itself. After taking the wrong route a couple of times, finally managed to reach the destination in around 2 hours.

On reaching the spot the initial reaction was actually disappointment. All I could see was two tiny streams joining together and falling down. Had I come all the way to see this, wasting an entire Sunday? As I came closer the reaction changed from that of disappointment to awe. The sight was simply breathtaking. Water falling from such a height and creating a mist.

Then we proceded to go to the base of the waterfall. To reach there first we had to find a way down. The climb down the rocky face was pretty difficult specially for people like us who did not get much chance for any outdoor activity as such. But we managed to safely find our way down to the base of the falls. It was done at times on all fours as we only had the rocky side of the the cliff on one side and the valley on the other.The view from the base was, well, awesome. The water falling from such a great height right in front of us. Its spray being carried towards us by the wind. All this made for one fascinating sight. After some time it started to rain. Now, this was a problem as we had to climb up the cliff which was going to be more diffcult as the path would have become more slippery. But fortunately for us the rain stopped. So, we decided to go back up. The climb up was even more interesting than the downward trip. Firstly, we had to retrace our paths quite a few times as we kept taking the wrong path. Then one of my friends claimed to have seen a snake in a hole between the rocks. But fortunately, the snake if it was there, decided to stay inside its hole and not disturb us. Finally we made our way to the top without any more alarms.

Around 5 in the evening, we started our journey back to the campus. The return journey was filled with all of us sharing our experiences with each other. Returned to the campus quite exhausted. But it had been quite an enjoyable trip.

The Patal Pani trip had been quite an adventure. It was nice to get out of the monotony of the daily life at campus (to be discussed in some other post). It was a great experience where you get to be one with nature. Overall quite a pleasant trip and am looking forward to more such trips in the future.

Till next time..........

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

nice write-up, dude. wish you more such trips!