Adventure with Elephants

We reached there at six in the morning. It was chilling there during that part of the day. I had put my jacket before I got down from the car.

Our cottage was surrounded by various flowers like Geraniums, Petunias and a variety of wild flowers. They were thinly fragrant but large in size. On the doorstep of our cottage, a wild rose grew just beside the shoe- rack.

Our cottage was nothing more than a watch- tower with a bathroom. And there were mosses and Lichen in the rooms and the bathroom was like a garden, fully grassy.

And we were not the only guests there. We had a few other guests who were, a gecko lizard, a spider and a slug.

We shared our bathroom with the slug and the spider and we shared our bed with the gecko was falling on it, now and then.

People say that it’s lucky when a lizard falls on you but I wanted to be spared of its blessings rather than being a friend of it.

Anyways, after we freshened up we went to a small restaurant run by the state government to have our lunch. The dining place was eight kilometers away from our cottage, which was in front of a river where the animals came to drink during summer when other streams or rivers inside the jungle become dry.
But now it was off – season and animals were not expected to come during this part of the year.

We drove through the forest at a speed of 30/kmph as we kept a close watch on the forest. When we had come only halfway our route was blocked by a herd of elephants. There were four to five elephants in the herd. There was very little distance between us and that herd of elephants.

But fortunately, though there were a couple of tuskers in the group, there wasn’t a young elephant. When elephants are with their young ones, they become more protective and in order to safeguard their young ones they attack tourists or any one nearby furiously.

The elephants were not interested in coming closer or attacking us, neither did we make any friendly overtures with them.

They crossed the road slowly and after they had crossed the road and were munching the leaves, we too made our way for we knew that the area was full of danger.

But at last, we reached there. We were given the menu card which had a strange combination of dishes. But we were quite hungry and ordered some rice and gourd curry which the tribal call as, ‘Thengpa’.

The waiter noted our order and told it to a person who nodded his head in agreement and went inside.
We waited for a couple of hours but strangely we did not get our meal.

At last, when we were about to leave, they served our meal to us in a Banana leaf. ‘’Enjoy your meal, sir’’, they told us after serving. We wondered, how in the world could any human enjoy such odd dishes. But though, we did not like it by looking we found it delectable when we had tasted it.

‘Even the simplest of meals seem like a king’s banquet when you are famished’.
We never really understood the true meaning of this proverb, but now we had well understood how true it was for we had never imagined that we would enjoy this meal so much.

It was evening, 5:30 pm when we had woken up. The last safari had got over by the time we reached the safari point. We were told that we should have come earlier and would better not stay out in the forest during night time.

We returned back, unhappy. We had spent a useless day in the jungle, as we didn’t go for the safari at all. But we couldn’t do now, except sitting idle.

At night, when we decided to dine, a guide told us that he would be accompanying us because during night, animals are bound to block the road. We drove through the forest which was now deserted and did not see any animals except a frightened hare who fled into the jungle in a hurry.

We reached the dining place. And this time before we ordered our food, we told him to make it faster than our previous order for we knew that our meal might be delayed again.

Then, the waiter nodded us and asked for the order. We thought carefully and ordered some gourd- curry but not with rice, with Roti or Chapatti as they call it. This time, we got our meal sooner than we had expected. But due to scarcity of resources each of us could have only one Chapatti and the curry was less too.

But we were helpless and had our so called dinner and were on our way back to our cottage.

But had we come only a couple of miles, the guide who was with us in the car shouted loudly, “Stop, Stop sir. Elephant ahead”. We didn’t realise that there was even a single elephant in front of us until we put our torchlights to find two elephants on the left side of the road and above the road there was an elevated slope. On the top of the slope, there was a strange black rock which was nothing but another elephant, a male one. By the time we were about to reverse our car we were surrounded by a herd of Indian Gaur, the Indian version of Bison at the back. The male elephant was not too pleased to see us and trumpeted loudly. Somehow, we managed to get out of the situation. It seems that we were completely luckless on that day. We went back to the dining place from where a few forest officials arranged a rescue- vehicle(a large truck) where we had got up while another man was supposed to drive our car behind the truck. I was sitting just beside the driver seat and was sure that we would perish. All of us were scared.

The driver drove till the spot where we had been blocked by elephants. The male elephant had come down and was blocking. Seeing us, he trumpeted so loudly that the windows of the truck shattered. The driver did not move the vehicle an inch and neither did the elephant seem interested to move. It was an intense situation. The driver put the car’s brakes and created loud sounds while the elephant trumpeted loudly on the other side, blowing dust. This intensity continued till the next one hour after which the elephant, along with the rest of the others moved in the forest. Our trip wasn’t useless after all and so ended our day amidst wilderness.

By Arush Dey

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