‘Survive in the Jungle’ tour - Part II - Murphy's Law

The morning was beautiful. We could feel the cool mountain breeze rush into our room as soon as the window opened. I burrowed myself deeper in my blanket. The other boys were nestled tightly in their beds.

Our place at the Jaina village

Rising up finally, we opened the door to see what awaited us right outside. Light drizzle. WHAT! DRIZZLE! What was the possibility of it getting worse?! “It’ll stop in a moment, let’s pack our stuff, we should move early if we have to do all treks we planned.” Pankaj felt comfortably at home while saying this. No surprises there…it was his home! Jaina was his village, and we were standing at the doorstep of his home waiting for the drizzle to stop. It didn’t!

We were all packed up but we were not leaving as yet. We had to assess ourselves for any fresh joint bleeds and wait for the drizzle to stop. Everyone seemed fit, so after a long time waiting for the clouds to show mercy, we decided to start out anyway. We had parked our car by the main road which was at a distance from the village. The trail from the village to the road was steep and deserved men with good lungs. We were building our stamina and our hamstrings in the middle of the highest mountains of the world while the rain gods were making our path even more challenging by lubricating it!

Vaibhav and Pankaj

Once we were on the main road, we found that our car wasn’t in the mood to fire up. The indicators had been blinking all night somehow, draining out the battery completely. All that I was thinking about was the Murphy’s Law. Everything that could go wrong was going wrong. Just then a utility vehicle whizzed past us. We waved to it but the driver did not stop.

Hours later a minivan came up to help us. Thanks to some street smart engineering, we were able to use its battery to fire up our engine. Around the same time we received news that the road ahead had caved in and slid off the cliff. A utility vehicle was suspected to be missing. We had been stranded on the road for the whole day…there had been just one vehicle that had whizzed past us. Perhaps our car’s refusal to start wasn’t that unlucky.

Continue to ‘Survive in the Jungle’ tour - Part III

Read ‘Survive in the Jungle’ tour - Part I