Days in the Wild : 33

Days in the Wild : 33

Today we completed 33 days living at our secluded abode in the jungle : Bear Valley Camp

There are so many friends, family and contacts who follow our travails closely, and connect with us often wishing that they could trade places and enjoy this solitude.

So we thought of sharing an additional glimpse of the life on the other side, the wild side of India. Read on.

While life is peaceful and full of adventure there are also downsides of living in an extremely remote area.

At present we don't have stable electricity for the last 4 days. It comes once in a while (30-40mins) or with extremely poor voltage (130-150V).

Needless to say in our days of WFH and E-Schooling power, electricity and internet form the backbone of urban survival and connect.

While we do have all sorts of back-up (solar inverters, diesel generators) yesterday evening we found ourselves without any form of power available for us.

All the systems were exhausted, this time of the year this region gets Summer Storms which cause havoc with the power grids and cables and turnaround time is not that great with limited staff and harsh environment (41-42° degrees Celsius minimum)

We were literally staring at the dark and wondering how are we possibly going to sleep tonight with no fans working. (Forget AC)

Incidentally the forest cools down quickly and sunset onwards it is actually quite pleasant.

So we thought of doing something different and letting the children experience something no longer possible in cities and most places.

Sleeping under the stars.

With a consistent breeze blowing we setup the Khatiyas on the porch in front of the tent and set about with Star Gazing.

I remember this clearly from my own experience as a kid while visiting our village back in the 80s.

Experiences such as these remain embedded in our brains as fresh as today.

Many might think the first thing that somes to mind - what about safety?

Well inspite of living inside a forest, we have learnt and understood that animals prefer to stay away from human habitation and since we don't have any livestock there is no need for any Leopard to visit us. Other than this we have Tomy who was born in the jungle and is aware of all sights and sounds and makes us aware of any movement which we may have missed.

The kids were thrilled to bits and it was awesome to see the excitement of a night out in the wild under the open sky! Talking about the sky, of course we took some pics of the night sky, will share them, check out the pics - that's how the forest is in the dark!

All in all it will be a night to remember!