Mad among the mountains.....

Well......following the rather lucid reminiscence that my friend has put on in his latest post (click here to see his post)....suddenly I feel this
urge to follow suite........well I just cant help these sudden fancies that dawn upon me with more ludicrity
than whim........and I end up commiting something which definitely cannot be quoted in "Jerry's Book of Conducts"...
Well I dont really remember what time of year it was.......but it was in the first year of our college.....if that is of any
relevance to our 'adventure' that we did.....but I definitely feel the same stupid thrill that flew down our spine when
me,Bhandari,Nandy and another unfortunate inclusion in our....err....I dont know....group(maybe).....decided to return
from Singtham back to our college by a rather unconventional 'path'......and that paying all tributes to the government of
Sikkim is an overly endearing term.....followed quite out of compulsion due to lack of vocabulary........so if you havent seen
these individuals.... you may define Nandy as a bounty from the boss above....both in length and breadth...and back
then in first year....HUGE!! The other members of this adventure are rather non-descriptive sort having all the spirits of the
world as only guys from the plains suddenly plunged hard among the hills may have...except this aboriginous trait of human
that decided to tag along with us......as usual the precursor of this mad desparado was Bhandari......deciding to break free
from the manacles of normalcy that somehow seem to bog him down and we decided that come what may, its time for
a little hiking...and so we watched with no little apprehension at the narrow winding dirt track by the hill lost in woods
flanked by the ever so turbulent Teesta....and when we actually stepped into the track,it was nothing more than a dusty
shingly trail made more out of necessity by the wood gatheres and their domesticated animals....and we had to dodge a
ridiculous collection of piled up bio-mass shamelessly left by thousand generation of four legged creatures.........so it was over an hour that we trudged along what was still an acceptable edition of a track untill we came upon this point when the way
before us bifercated and both seem to disappear among the stupifying collection of foliage....and we had to stop........
Well perhaps you have been in the middle of an absolute black out somewhere unknown in whichever city you live at the death of the night......if yes then you can only fathom the silence....and nothing else.........the honks of the cabs all died
down in the thin air and all you can hear is your breath...in this case the lullably of the flowing Teesta......and the odd chirpings
of the full fraternity of birds that somehow seem to loose their mind simultaneously at this senseless encroachment upon their
privacy.....well we had to have an excuse to loose ourselves in this madmaze of silence....so we lit up a fag and just sat there
in that deliberate state of comatose untill reason came back and urged us to reconcile to the tickings of the clock.......and the difficult part came......we had to decide which path to take....and Bhandari as usual took the 'wrong' way around if there is anything right about the entire scenario...thanks to his sense of direction....or rather lack of it.....more like a dog with sprinkled pepper on his nose......and we came upon a slide in the bosom of the hill.....we look up and its a wall of trees bent with ages....we look down and its the water of the Teesta churning with her omnipresent rage...we clawed at whatever holding we found......repurcated back by odd varieties of prickly shrubs....our limbs ached...there was earth within our thumbnails and snail slow we went on untill I slipped....much like the movies...and here I was dangling by a thin yet powerful trunk of a tree.....unable to move as wind hit back with a cold fury....bits and pieces of earth rolled back and the adrenaline pumped with insane urgency of survival.....I was afraid...I was thrilled.....I was mad......it was then I saw one of the most beautiful sight in my life.......miles away in the undulating slopes of a distant hill there was a collection of hamlets......bordered by wild varieties of violet flowers....and rows and rows of maize fields and even farther away.......there stood.....with all the monotony of the world a worn out hanging bridge....connecting the hills with the otherside of the world....and here we are
four absolutely freaked out souls staring mindlessly at the single gateway to the same sane civilization that ultimately after yet another hour of wiggling......crawling....dragging and swearing managed to reach.....and after all these years...I can still feel the scars that developed in my hands and the same rush of neurons that had gone through my body........