A bus ride in the Western Ghats

Rain in the Western Ghats

By Bala Menon

By the time we reached Kasara, a light drizzle had started. We were afraid this would happen and when the sky darkened and the thunder sounded as if somebody was dynamiting the ghats, a devilish thrill began crawling up our necks.

Hissing Stoves

It was seven in the morning and in that massive wood and asbestos shed, looking a little like a mountaineering base camp, some ten burly Sikh truck-drivers sat eating plates of yogurt and steaming potato mash. Five huge kerosene stove hissed powerfully, driving away the cold. The rain drummed on the roof. We drank our coffee and set off by our bus to Panchavati. A Sikh shouted, “Take care. A hill might fall on you.” Our driver hurled some choice abuses - the language of the country’ highways.

Composite picture: From Pixabay

The bus climbed at about 10 km per hour and in the blinding rain, we could see at least six trucks smashed against the mountainside and abandoned along the route.  Rocks lay strewn all over. Above us, some heads of cattle were up the slippery-looking boulders like seasoned rock-climbers. There was not a human being in sight. We felt as if the wind would pluck us from the road any moment and hurl us into the valley. The headlights were ineffective.

 

Ethereal Light

At the highest point, very near the Bhatsai, the rain suddenly disappeared. The light was ethereal with a gold-and-greenish tinge. Down below, we could see big black clouds assaulting smaller peaks. It looked like a sharp pencil sketch. Far away, a bigger hill stood like a lonely sentinel, its ears cocked to the echos rumbling on the plain.

Now a zig and a zag and we were out in the rain again for two hours until the bus slid down to Igatpuri on the other side of the ghats. Then the clouds chased us all the way to Nasik.

Massive Statue

It was also raining in the brown hills of Trimbakeshwar, 28 km from Nasik, where the Godavari bursts into this world and pitter-patters provocatively into Panchavati. 

Panchavati, where the waters of the Godavari are trapped in concrete tanks called Ram Kunds, where priests are thicker that flies at a sweetmeat shop and where half-naked pilgrims abound, was bright and colourful - with a massive red statue of Hanuman benignly supervising the ritual bathing and immersions. 

This article was published earlier as a 'middle' in the Op-Ed pages of the Times of India, Mumbai, in the late 1970s.