“We battled fierce winds and saw
the sky filled with dazzling lights of dawn!!”
I was sleeping near the door
in a tent along with three other girls. The zip to close the door flap was
broken and we had fixed it up with safety pins. At around midnight, I woke up
due to the sounds of something beating down on the tents. For a few moments I
thought it was raining. The safety pins were bent. The door flap was flogging
me. There was some commotion outside. Sensing something wrong, I peeped out and
a strong gust of freezing wind blew in my face.
It was then I realized
that fierce winds were beating down on our tent. Another tent had blown away
and its unfortunate occupants were scrambling to catch it.
My own tent was
threatening to blow away any moment. I pulled the door flap, wrapped myself
tight in my sleeping bag and slept half on the flap to keep it from waving
wildly.
The intense chill and
strong, roaring wind made sure that I did not sleep after that. All four of us
inside the tent cuddled up as close as we could. But it didn’t help much. The
roaring wind was only getting stronger with each passing hour. All of us were
waiting desperately for the dawn… We thought that the winds would lessen their
intensity with the sunrise… But dawn was five hours away.
The wind was so strong
that a couple of guys coiled up in the sleeping bags outside had been displaced
by 10 feet from their original sleeping place in a matter of hours…
We were out in the open
at the mercy of nature. We had nowhere to go. All we could do was wait till the
sun reached to protect us… The wind continued to pound on our tent… The tent
was making every effort to stand its ground… The wind tore it in some places…
But it was still standing, partly with the support of its occupants. I
remembered the story of the “wind and the sun” I had heard in childhood… I was
hopeful that the warmth of the sun would dampen the force of the wind.
The night passed with a
growingly impatient wait for the dawn… As the first ray of light hit the skies,
most of us were up jumping around in our sleeping bags, because it was too cold
to get out of them. The wind, which was still blowing fiercely, made it difficult
for us to stand. We could scarcely keep our eyes open.
Getting out of the
sleeping bag seemed to be a herculean task. I was struggling to stop my teeth
from chattering and forcing my frozen hands to move. I succeeded… and so did
most of us…!
Our tent was still
standing though the wind had bruised and torn it in many places. All four of us
got out of it and pushed all our backpacks inside to support the tent in its
battle against the wind. Outside our fellow trekkers were jumping around in
their sleeping bags like cocoons. We were struggling to keep our hair, our clothes
and ourselves in place…
From atop the Kumara
Parvata, the sight of sunrise is as exhilarating and magical as the sunset. For
us, who were fighting with the wind all night, it was a highly anticipated
phenomenon. We wind which made every effort to push us down, didn’t deter us
from reaching the cliff from where we could see the all powerful sun! Clouds
were flying up along the cliff hitting us with droplets of water. We were at
the highest peak, and we could see the SeshaParvatha and the siddha Parvata
peeping out from a snowy blanket of clouds. The farther mountain peaks too
peeped out from a peaceful blanket of clouds gathered around them. It was a
sight to behold!
We were experiencing the
beauty and fury of nature at the same time!
The sky was soon filled
with dazzling golden and silver streaks as the sun rose on the horizon.
Sunset fills the sky with
shimmering pastel shades; sunrise fills it with shining metallic shades! A
beginning is truly beautiful and inspiring! More so, the beginning of a new
day! We sat there for sometime in meditative silence.
The beautiful dawn
We basked in the glory of sunrise!
(Photograph courtesy Anindya Das)
Over the past 24 hours,
we had experienced the power of the four elements of life- the earth, which had
sustained us; the fire, which brought us close together with its warmth; the
water, without which we would be parched by now and which we had struggled to
get; and the air, which was unleashing its fury in the form of wind…!
The onset of dawn reduced
the chill in the air… But it did nothing to kill the strong winds. We found a
clearing surrounded by bushes on all sides where we lit up a fire to warm up
and begin the preparation to leave the summit… As we got accustomed to the never
dying winds, we gathered our belongings and started on our way back struggling
to maintain our balance against the wind…
The wind was still
howling when we left.
The dawn at Kumara Parvata
(Photograph courtesy Charan Walke)
Sunrise at Kumara Parvata
(Photograph courtesy Charan Walke)
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