It starts every Saturday evening, doing some basic shopping looking for healthy food to cook for the hike next morning. Of course, it is to get the praises for having put a lot of effort into the preparation for the journey. The joy is in the giving! And when everyone huddles around a flat rock on the stream to enjoy the food, this brings a sense of closure to the hike. The time spent cooking is always very rewarding and it is this reward that excites me each time to search for more and more exciting trails and foods to cook.
Going into the jungle is something that has always intrigued my fitness. Will I able to conquer nature and survive the pressures of the trail. I know that it can get very hostile and very painful very quickly. Above all I am very superstitious and humbled by the jungle. I have been searching for the reasons why I love going into the jungle. Since school days it has been an excitement to enter the jungle and learn how to live in there. It seems very barbaric at first but what it is doing to me now is remarkable. The jungle is starting to serve a purpose that is fulfilling my desire of becoming more human.
Hearing sounds make me listen deeper into the jungle. The faint sounds stretch the hearing and pressures the brain to make sense of it. It is searching for a pattern that is familiar and until it is found the foot keeps moving forward. With every step it becomes clearer, the sound gets louder and the sense of hearing becomes more acute. The jungle is slowly bring us back to how we are built as a human. Our senses are getting more acute and we start hearing, smelling and seeing things that we otherwise would have missed in the day. The sense organs begin to work as a well trained team to capture the sound, sight and smells. The eyes stretch from 10 ft to 100 ft and then few miles ahead and all in a blink, searching for the source of the sound. While walking we loose sense of the aches and pains and keep walking till be find the sound. Alas it is a stream, no river, no waterfall. Yes.
To discover the human that I am, to push the limits of the senses and realize that it was always there before me and that I never had lost it in the first place. It feels good to have done this hike, because I feel that my life has been stretched by a few more days and I would life to see a few more healthier days to come. Till the next hike here are some photos. Enjoy.
