31 July: Gala – Budhi Track - Part 2 - Mishap on the way from Lakhanpur to Malpa

By this time, the sun was burning fiercely overhead. I’d taken off all those layers of sweater and raincoat and wore a thin cotton jacket over my t-shirt to protect my arms from the blasting heat. Later that night, I discovered angry red blisters on whatever patches of my hands were exposed.

At least I was no longer carrying my backpack. Thankfully, the third remaining pony owner agreed to tie our sacks onto his pony since no one was sitting on the pony anyway. The next patch of the track was risky enough without having to deal with the added weight of the backpack.

We were walking in loose groups of 3-4 people. Sushrut and I were the first to reach a rickety old wooden bridge on a U-turn, over a milky white, foaming waterfall. I paused to get my snap clicked over the bridge with no railings, made up of a few planks of wood nailed over a few logs of wood. I could see the water crashing a few feet under my shoes, through a few holes in the wood. I gritted my teeth and posed.

By then Sachin, Aditya and Pallavi had reached us. Aditya too wanted a few snaps so the 4 of us stood on the bridge and bared our teeth while he clicked. Disaster! No, the bridge didn’t crash, Aditya did. Right before our eyes, he missed his footing and went over the side of the narrow path. I heard a scream not realizing it had come from me. Aditya’s wife Pallavi was rooted to the spot.

In the next instant we raced back to where he had fallen. The water roiled sickeningly close. Just then, we heard his voice, “Don’t panic, I’m ok”. He had fallen into a few tall shrubs that grew by the side of the river. They broke his fall and he landed on the rocks by the water instead of in the water. He had fallen about 15 - 20 feet below the path.

Aditya climbed up a little over the rocks, Sachin flattened himself on the ground, Sushrut grabbed his ankles, and Aditya was pulled up to the path again. He had scraped his arms, legs and back, acquired an impressive egg on the back of his head and a few bruises. But he was lucky to be alive. He didn’t seem to have any serious injuries, but it was only thru pure, sheer luck.

Aditya’s fall shook us all up. We told the rest of the team as they came up, so everybody’d learn to be more careful and less breezy. But we kept it from my uncle and aunt, since they were anyway not running around boisterously and we didn’t want to scare them. Of course, it had nothing to do with the fact that we knew uncle would tan our hides if he found out how careless we’d been.