On Saturday we woke up to a cloudy morning. It had been raining pretty much all last night. I had to get up mid-night to make sure that there were not any equipment that was getting wet. The tents are on a concrete base, so that’s good in a way. I had got most of the stuff onto some of the chair’s I lifted off from near the campfire, so everything was dry. I just had to move Kavitha’s cot a little to make sure that the drip from the lone hole in the tent’s canopy did not drip on to the bed. We slept really well that night, listen to the sound of rain on the tent. This is what we woke up to, a lovely foggy sunrise. (Read Day 1, before this if you missed it.)
Slowly the camp was coming alive with the other people getting around with sun coming up. Most of the other people in the camp were planning to leave and there would be just 4 people in the entire campus. Which worked great for us, it only meant that the camp would be silent for most of the day.
I started up the motorcycle to make sure it would start after the big downpour. It started up with the first kick, no problems. Big relief given that it was not under cover. After starting it up, we got ready and went and met up with the other bikers in their end of the property. We joined them for breakfast. It turned out that they had a good night of fun too. They said that at about 01.00 a.m. the dogs had all gathered near their end of the camp barking as they had sensed something beyond the fence.
Once breakfast was done, we did not have much of a plan for the rest of the day. The other bikers were getting ready to leave and I went and hung around with them for a while. One of the RDs had a little problem, but it was not something very serious. They finally packed up and left, in a cloud of smoke. Miss them 2-strokes. Missed mentioning, but there was a CBR 250 also in that group, which would have been my “sport touring” bike of choice if I were riding alone on good roads most of the time.
We did not have much of a plan for the rest of the day. It involved lazing around mostly, interspersed with reading for Kavitha and catching up with some writing for me. Glad I took the little net-book along for this ride. Got a few things started up. Post lunch I caught a nap having decided to go on a forest walk at some point in the afternoon. With elephant dung not more than 100 meters from the fence, it would not be intelligent to go by ourselves. We worked/ lazed our way to early evening when I moved the charpoi to a spot under the sky with no obstructions. Fantastic to see nothing but the sky and the clouds making patterns as they rushed across. I could have watched that thing all the way to sunset if the jungle walk did not happen. The picture below is shot with a 10 mm wide angle, but that still looks so narrow!
If you’ve been reading this while its a good time to give an overview of the Wild Valley campsite. What you see in the pan shot below is the area with the tents. The left half of the picture has the tents in a circle around the camp fire. The little gazebo (from day 1’s write up) is in the middle. And, the rest of the property which is just a wide open space to the left. Given the time of the year everything looks pretty green, but I’m sure the summer heat in these parts will burn out quite a bit of the landscape. The toilets, baths and other tents are not visible from here. They are beyond the hedge-line at the left half of the photo.
We went on a nice short forest walk, thanks to the other couple at the campsite, who went and chased down Somaiah. I did not take the camera along, but Kavitha shot a short video (on her phone) to give you an idea of the surroundings. Plenty of elephant dung as expected and luckily no unseen surprises through the walk. But, a walk like this just makes you alert and feel alive. Here’s a minute out of a much longer video to give you an idea of how it was not more than 400 meters from the location.
Later that evening, after tea, we were treated to a great sunset with a lot of shades of pink. It was a nice set up for the night later.
At night we spent a long time around the camp fire when we heard deep roars. I moved towards the edge of the fencing with a powerful flashlight and that’s when I realised that the sound was not coming from one direction but two spots of the forest. This went on for about 45 minutes and the sound faded. The four of us decided to ask Daniel about the noises from the forest, the next morning, since it seemed a little strange. We later crashed out for the night with heightened senses.
Where is Wild Valley Farm?
[mapsmarker marker=”16″]
One thought on “Wild Valley on 2013 Deepavali weekend (2 of 3)”