Travel Tales : Mystifying Matheran

There is a lore of the forest folks, that when people makes life messy, it’s nature that sort things out; when you begin to crumble piece by piece, it’s nature that holds you together.

And Matheran is the place where nature awaits for you to embrace, to heal. To tell you that there is more to life than you have ever wondered. To make you realize that the climbing is always full of struggling and falling, but when you mount the peak, the scene from above is celestial blissful.

Fortunately, I got a two-day-break and the first thought that struck me to go to somewhere away from humans. No, I am not introvert anymore. I used to be one. In the past two months I admired the Aravali Ranges from the peak of Gurushikhar. Drenched my legs in Arabian water, squishing the black sand of the hauntingly beautiful Dumas Beach, and heard the whispers of history in the ruins of Champaner.

It seems that I was running away from something, trying to escape from the claws that had dug deeper into me, pulling me back with such a brute force that every time I tried to rise, I needed more courage.

I was aware of the solution.

I needed a disconnection.

From the people. From the past. From the present. From the future. From everything.

The Green Archway

Tagging along with Dishant Shah, who is blessed with an innocent smile and a heart as kind as the nature itself, we descended at the parking from the hired cab. The ascend till the parked area from the station was serpentine, winding around the hill. A small white pillar, crowned with four lions, withered with weather and time, welcomed us. No vehicles are allowed in the hill station. With bags slung over shoulders, we paused at the municipal ticket counter. I eyed at the significant difference in the rates for children and adults. Like many moments in life, this was one of the moments where I wished I was a child again. No, the rates aren’t high at all, but you really miss all those liberties that you enjoy when you were a kid. Entry tickets were bought; we entered the cobblestone-path that led us to a train-less station.  Walking along the railway track, canopied by the network of branches and leaves, the red-soil-path was dappled with light and shadows. Over the one side were the boulders, covered in thick moss, out of which little white flowers were nodding at us. Over the other side was the valley. Lush green, deep, breathtaking.  The railway track brought us to the market area. A handful number of hotels and cottages, a small market area, enough restaurants to satisfy the hunger and beyond that was the beckoning forest. “This place seems so…” I said, finding no sign of vehicles. Only horses tethered to poles.

“…detached from the world, right?” Dishant asked.

I nodded.

Just an advice. If you find a thin film of moist over the tap of your bathroom, avoid bathing! When the cold torrent of water touches the skin, even the bones starts shuddering.

And then began our real journey.

The first point in the list was Khandala point, a nearby destination. Rough steps ushered us to the location. Iron railings, painted in green secured the cliff. As we were stepping down, my eyes caught the distant peaks, grey and foggy they were, and with every step the nearby mountains revealed themselves, darker, greener, more solid. My hands gripped the cold iron and I felt a tug in my stomach. As far as I could see, the green mountains were rolling over the land like a frozen emerald sea. Thin silver streams were threading across the rocky slopes. Clouds that looked dense from the foot of the mountain were like a thin veil of mist when watched from the peak. Our perspective gets changed when we watch things from above.

At Alexander Point, somewhere deep a dog barked, from another direction another answered. A heron kept watch on us when we left Rambaug. A carload of monkeys crossed our road. The last of them with a red face growled at us before disappearing in the forest. I looked at my left and found an abandoned house. It did give me chills, but as I already told, some places are hauntingly beautiful. 

The Abandoned Mystery

At Little Chowk Point, the vast lake/dam, I still need to check what it is, mesmerized me. Sometimes, we need to allow nature to expand our vision. Fortunately, there was a tea-shop that replenished our depleting stamina. Ravindra, the shopkeeper served us tea along with stories of travelers. “Few days ago,” he said as I sipped the hot liquid, “a lightning bolt burned a tree nearby.”

I gave Dishant a look of amazement.

Ravindra and his stall of tales

“Foreigners,” he began another tale, “used to come here. I have Euros, Dollars, Pounds.”

I nodded with a smile. The glass was still half filled.

“This is the best place,” he continued. “I came here around 9 years ago and then never left it. Most of my family stays in Mumbai, but I stay here. I find peace here.”

Biding goodbye to him, we resumed to our path. At One Tree Point, I had this nagging feeling of being followed. I turned around, there was no one. Only the ancient trees. And then something tugged at my jeans. A small puppy squeaked at me, its tail whipping in excitement. It followed us till end of another set of stone steps. We crossed the ridge, climbed a roughly a couple of feet, leaped over the boulders, and finally reached the most stunning view of the place.

On a rock at the edge of the cliff, I sat. Beside me, Dishant squatted.

“Do you see that?” I pointed at the glittering rocky surface of the mountain. “Do you know what it is?”

“The rock is saturated,” Dishant said. “They are leaking water.”

“Think of it in this way,” the writer inside me was wide awake now, “people visit this place for peace, to heal. What if these mountains absorbs all our pain, our miseries, our tensions, and there comes a limit to it where they cannot bear more, and they cry. What if these water is actually weeping of the mountain.”

The puppy again squealed as it found us back on the steps.  Crossing the Charollete Land and the points that were lined with the road, we finally managed to reach Echo Point. We did shout, and the voice bounced back with amplification. Sometimes we need to listen to ourselves, but in worries and stress we somewhere fails to hear our own voice.

As the sun was about to set, we turned out feet toward the Sunset point. Matheran is not filled with big miracle, but if you have a good observation, then you’ll find the most magical moments in little things. A hollow in the tree caught our attention. It was half filled with red mud, and inside a three-leafed plant sprouted out. I looked at it and wondered, this is how hope works. It is found in the most unlikely places.

The Sprouting Hope

The sky began to turn dark. With the last point on the map covered, we traced our steps back to the market area. I shot out my hand and stopped Dishant. “Did you hear that?”

“What?”

“Listen.”

A guttural voice rasped somewhere near us. The night and the forest had shrouded everything. And then there was a roar.

Say it is our foolishness or tag it as our courage, we followed the source of the voice and found a rusted pressure pump in terrible condition. It again roared, the pipes with it thundered, water spilled out from its nozzle, and we both laughed.

As I dumped myself on the bed, I asked Dishant. “So how much did we walk today?”

“22 kms.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

The fact somehow started pain my toes and I dozed peacefully.

My sleep broke before the breaking of the dawn and I stirred in the bed, recollecting the memories. We decided to leave the place with one last view that had mesmerized us the past day. At Khandala Point, we rested ourselves on the rock that jutted out from the main slope. A man with white turban, blue-shirt rose his head from the long grass that covered the valley.

He greeted us with a smile. The gap between his teeth were as wide as the valley itself.

We reciprocated with the same.

"From that cliff," he said, raising his sickle, "three people died a long time ago."

Suddenly, his smile didn't feel warm. Considering it as a warning from the universe itself, I and Dishant took the path we had came from, leaving the man with the sickle behind. He murmured a folk song and resumed harvesting the wild herbs.

At Mumbai, we both parted our ways from De-Bella Coffee House, planning our next trip.