Saturday, April 18, 2015

Sulpaneshwar Wildlife Sanctuary, Gujarat

Sulpaneshwar Wildlife Sanctuary, Gujarat
(11th to 13th April 2015)

Taking advantage of the long weekend coming soon, I decided to join the 3 days summer camp organized by YHAI. I asked Chaitali, one of my friends from Jodhpur, who showed interest and agreed to join. As Sweta, my roomie also offered to come along at last moment, we decided to go by train, as she doesn’t feel comfortable bin a bus. We tried to book tatkal at last moment, and as we didn’t get AC tickets, we had to go for sleeper class tickets. As I had travelled by sleeper on two occasions, I thought it would be kind of cool. But all my assumptions went wrong, when we boarded the train, Avadh Express. Oh ghosh! It was no less than Mumbai Local; People in huge numbers, piling up like luaggages, as it later became difficult to identify people and their luggage. Someone was busy putting his luggage on our seat at which Sweta got angry and shouted at him, and I was just dumbstruck. She was like,”Yahan chillana padta hai, aise khade khade apni seat bhi nhi milti hai!” Wonder what! After lot of struggle we both climbed to our sleeper seats and just lied down, trying to sleep. But the noises of the crowd, shouting, chatting and arguing with each other, gave a disturbed sleep to us. It was another kind of experience though. Hmm India- the wonderland!
Thus after some troublesome journey, we alighted at Ankleshwar, and took to waiting room, waiting for Chaitali, whose train was late than the scheduled time and reached Ankleshwar at 8:30 am.
The moment she arrived, we started walking towards Bus depot, which was at a walking distance from Railway station and after waiting for another 5-10 minutes we boarded the bus to Rajpipla which was another 65 kms from there.
 
(Sitlamata Temple, Rajpipla; the fun begins)

We reported to YHAI camp leader at Sitlamata Mandir, Rajpipla, from where the yhai jeeps took us to our destination; Sulpanehswar wildlife sanctuary at satpura-vindya ranges. All three of us, from the name and from its description and location on Map, expected Sulpaneshwar wildlife sanctuary to be a forest area, full of flora, fona with lush green jungle on some hill, thinking it would be an escape from the heat of Mumbai. But on the contrary, though it was hilly and huge in area, it was not at all lush green. At this season of the summer, it was almost barren, with few trees of Mango and bamboos with some beautiful flowers. I just realized then that it was God’s way of showing us the other aspects of life. As I have this craving for greenery, especially lush green, I always avoid going to barren and desert areas. And for long I have been turning off one of my friends’ invitation to visit Ladakh for the fear of encountering desert only. My trip to Sulpaneshwar was a wakeup call. ‘May be I need to visit deserts as well” I just felt. And from now onwards, I won’t resist any opportunity to visit any place of the world just for some psychological fear; that’s my learning and resolution from this trip.
Leaving apart the feelings thing, we had complete fun, taking part in all the activities. Just go through the pictures:
 
(I just thought that I won’t fit into that space due to my small height, but bravo I did and did it well!)

(The shortest route from on tree to another is a ‘Burma Bridge’)

(Let’s do some boating and play with the fresh waves)
Picture perfect)

(Junaraj, the Tribal village at its purest form)

(Let’s rappel down; hip hip hurray) Vertical Limits!

(That’s river crossing)
(kuchh rest toh banta hai guys; with a power nap)

(The evenings at the campsite, were blessings)

The overall experience amidst of super hitting sun and hard wind in the evening was super cool. We had fun and enjoyed these three days like anything. The return journey by Shatabdi Express from vadodara to Mumbai was also different, as it again was my first ever experience by a chair car. So, with so many firsts, this was an A-Awesome trip! J
 
(Tada Gujarat; would love to see you again)



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