Lost in the mountain

The days we've spent here at Bull's Retreat have been pretty smashing, safety kayaking in the morning for the raft and chilling out in the afternoon. I've been appreciating this every day as at some unknown point two of us will be sucked back to the office in Delhi. This day came last Friday when we were told that two will be leaving on Monday. Therefore today we decided to go on a hike. Being surrounded by wildlife and vast forests the adventurer in me was keen to go and get lost in them, turns out in reality this isn't so fun.

Me, Nathan and JP set off around half 9 eager to get a look at the temple we were told awaited us at the top. The journey up the mountain was through a thick forest on not a well trodden path (probably because we took the wrong one), we were met by enormous spider webs with the biggest spiders hanging in them. The person at the front had the job of clearing a path, I have to admit initially me and Nathan were being wet wipes about it, wincing when we almost walked into one and got a face full of spider. But by the end JP was practically taking down the webs with his face (although I'm not sure if this was on purpose). Insects were a rather large part of our journey up, further into the forest I heard Nathan let out a cry of pain as he ran towards me and JP hitting something off his body. Initially I thought he was just over reacting, so gave little sympathy saying it was probably just a mosquito bite. Hearing this I'm sure whatever creature it was decided it was time for me to get a taste and stung me in the same spot it had Nathan. I of course reacted exactly like Nathan had as it stung like a bitch. We then made a swift exit of that area.

Nathan bravely taking on the spiders

This picture doesn't do those monsters justice

We followed the path to a farm where we were met by a gorgeous dog, this was not like the street dogs we are used to. I enjoyed petting his well groomed fur, an upgrade from the flea bitten rugged coats I am used to petting from the road dogs. His owner was a lovely old man who took us into his garden which had 3 beds in it and a small brick hut next to them. He offered us fruit and then showed us the way to get down to the road as he didn't seem to understand the word temple so we gave up searching for it.

Found some Water buffalo

By now it was 1pm so we began our descent down the mountain, our path crossed an old river bed so we followed it down which led to some large waterfalls. These were too big to climb down so we traversed across the mountain, where we found ourselves on a non existent path leading to sheer drops. We turned back to renegotiate the waterfalls, there was some consideration of using vines to descent the waterfall, Bear Grylls style, however we decided against it. Before we began the journey up the dry stream we'd followed down, we all had a cute (and sweaty) group hug, and with some classics from Leona Lewis and Adele covered by moi, we made the long slug back up the mountain. After A LOT of going the wrong way, we finally found the right way and made it to the road by 4pm. 4 vehicles went by before we managed to get a lift, not too shabby for my first hitch hike.

Nathan following the dried up river

For what was meant to be a 4 hour hike, we made a real pigs ear out of it, but we had a type 2 fun adventure nonetheless.