Tyro Sketches: 2016

Walking towards my destination from my night station at Mugu Jungle (Photo by: Vivek Singh)

I would wake up at 6:30 in the morning, most of which would be from a tent in a grassy area nearby a hotel. Even if there were huts and houses nearby, I preferred tents because they were in fact very comfortable (and were without bed bugs of course). We had a mattress, an inflatable pillow and a very thick sleeping bag to get us by the night warmly, and anyways, running around in the jungle all day would make me very tired so at the end of the day, wherever it may be, I would fall asleep in a heartbeat.

Preference would always be given to tents, because they were more comfortable.

The first job for the day would be to scout for locations to defecate. I don’t know about other colleagues and seniors, but this was one of the most awful things I had to go through. There were times when I had to cling on to nearby shrubs in very uncomfortable slopes to get about my business because plain land in that area was near impossible to find, and even if you did find one, there would be settlements nearby so plain areas were out of the question.

After every other daily routine, we would sit for breakfast at around 8:30 am. Breakfast would be the usual simi ko daal and bhat. On a good day (which would be rare), you had vegetables like spinach and cabbage, nothing besides. But I would munch down every single bit of grain I could find because hunger was a real problem as we wouldn’t have anything substantial to eat for the whole day.

We would leave for work at 8:30 am. We would stumble around bushes and trees and thorns all day, trying to find the best location for the road to pass through. Skids off fallen pine leaves, stings from thorny nettles and stumbles down slopes were a part of the job, and we got used to it with time. Every night after work, we used to showcase newly formed scars of the day with pride, considering it a gift from Mother Nature. There were times when frustration would get the better of us and we had to be stronger mentally than physically. Internet was a fairytale and phone connections were also very limited, which forced us to live our lives in the physical confines of the place, without the slightest thoughts about my home, family and friends.

Dangerous slopes where skids and injuries were imminent!! (Picture by: Tika Maden)

Lunch break would be around 2:00 pm. Our arduous toil for hours would stir our hunger which would turn us into beasts, and the chiura-bhujiya we had with us would be eaten savagely within minutes. We would continue work until almost 6:00 pm and return back to our little huts. We still would have lots of work to do before we could have some time for ourselves. First, we had to compile data, save it in our laptops, come up with a map and check for discrepancies. Then we needed to start the generator and charge every electrical equipment we had with us (and we had a bucket load, like walkie-talkies, cameras, laptops, mobile phones and survey equipment). By this time when all this would be completed, it would already have been about 8:00 pm and I would be drenched in sweat and exhausted to my bone. But to me, this would be the best time of the night. There were four young engineers like myself in our team, and it was nighttime when we used to discuss about our events of the day. We would always split up into different groups during work and each of us would be in a separate parts of the wilderness, and in the evening we would converge to one place and discuss what kind of new things and experiences we encountered that day. It was also this time when we would all tell each other how every hardship we were going through is all worth it and how we would do it again without a moment’s hesitation if given the chance. That would be our point of mutual encouragement and self-rejuvenation, which helped us drag on for yet another day. We would have dinner at around 8:30 to 9:00 pm, nothing different from what we had in the morning, and go back to our tents to re-charge ourselves for the same routine the next day (of course there would be different experiences on different days but whatever the event might be, they would not spare us from hard work).

The Phone-Stone: The only place around the area where we would get a telephone reception

I obviously dug in deep to my days in the Mugu jungle as I write this little script in my comparatively posh little room under a blanket sipping hot coffee. The flashbacks I have generates just enough adrenaline to make me shiver. But the thought of going back to Hmla and Mugu into those conditions do not frighten me anymore, as it once did long ago. I would welcome the opportunity again, and develop myself as I have in the past.

“We get these lives for free. I didn't do anything to get this life, and no matter what the hardships are, it is free and, in a way, it's an extraordinary bargain”, said one Junot Diaz, and it took me almost 24 years of my life and the mighty mountains of west Nepal to realize how spot on he was with his statement.

See also: Up to the peak, The Chankheli Mountain (An article by Vivek Singh)