King Julian adored Mafia…! After all it was their
sheer cunningness and presence of mind that had helped him to convince the
people of his planet that ‘humans’ can help them find their spaceship and also
guard their King!
We finished the trek to Thumbe falls at around 6:30p.m and were back to our
base camp at Sharavati wildlife sanctuary by 7:30p.m. Getting back from the
trek we were partially wet due to the our “relaxing” dip in the waterfall and
majorly by our own sweat flowing generously all over the body!
Thankfully, the Sharavati wildlife sanctuary has a good arrangement of
hygienic washrooms complete with a good water supply. We freshened up in
torchlight and were soon settled on the many concrete seats that are built
there. A refreshing round of warm kashayam
(pepper milk) welcomed us. After an hour, we were served dinner consisting of curd
rice, puliogare, chapatis, cabbage vegetable and payasam.
We ate to our heart’s content and then sat around chatting with each other.
After the dinner, it was time to retire for the day. A caretaker accompanied us
with large tents.
Our camp
In pitch darkness lit only by moonlight, he led us through the forest into
a clearing on the banks of the Sharavati river backwaters. The dark forest was
where a Prachi heard an eerie “Hello” from the trees near her. Stunned she
halted in her tracks and cast a fearful glance from the direction of the sound.
Achalesh was hiding there, smiling smugly, happy on achieving his objective of
scaring Prachi!
Our tents were set up on the banks of the river. This area had been cleared
of all the vegetation. Only the stumps of trees were left in the ochre yellow
soil. The moonlight cast a magical blue all over the deserted landscape. The
calm, still water glistened at a distance. Our tents rustled gently in the
steady cool breeze. The camp fire was crackling sending up whiffs of smoke. We
settled around it and fed it with more fire wood.
A faraway view of our campfire!
Light photography!
Our very own photographers Karanth and Charan decided to take some light
motion photographs. The actors were Varun, Ankit and Ram. Clicking light motion
photographs is an art in itself. They needed many takes of the same scene till
they got the perfect photograph. Light motion photography also needs a support
cast who move the light source in the desired way to get a particular effect. So
there we were, Varun posed as if he was hitting Ram with a bolt of lightning
and Ram was falling off due to the impact. Ankit got his photo clicked with a
halo of light around his head just like “the enlightened one”. We got one for
the Gypsies with the letters painted in light! The others were sitting around
and enjoying the comedy that arose out of the frequent takes and retakes our
amateur actors had to give for that one perfect snap!
Varun and Ram posing in a light take!
This was followed by a few of us retiring into their tents for the day and
the rest of us settling down for a few rounds of Mafia. King Julian decided to
be the moderator. The highlight of the game was definitely the brilliantly sly way
in which Ashwin and Ankit, as Mafia, hoodwinked the rest to win the game hands
down! Then, we rested our tired selves in the shelter of our tents. We wanted
to be all geared up for the surprises that the next day held.
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