Trip to Butoli - (Part 4) Tea at panditji's house

With our souls replenished, we started with full vigour, marching on towards Butoli. This leg of the trek was all uphill, and the entire area was covered with dense trees. There were no phone signals, and no other person to be seen anywhere. The thought of getting lost and not being able to contact anybody outside was dreadful. But the intimacy with the purest of nature kept us going. Before the start of the trek, Dinu also mentioned about the possibility of wild animals in this forest. Other than langoors, we didnt really encounter much of wild life, though. On one occasion, we came face to face with a herd of buffaloes who were probably coming back from their lunch trip. Both them and us stood still on either ends of the trail for a long while, confused and scared not knowing what's going to happen next. In my mind, I was seeing them running towards us with their horns aimed directly at us. In that case there was no way for us to escape because on one side was the hill and on the other valley. But the buffaloes turned out to be more intelligent than us. They discovered a side trail behind the trees, walked up there and waited for us to pass. We bowed to them, took a sigh a relief, and moved on. All the hard walk up made us really thirsty and we ended up drinking a lot of water. I started worrying about the shortage of water, but gods were with us that day. Just when we thought this trail was never going to end, all of a sudden, we descended on a flat area, out into the open. This point gave out a spectacular view of the valley and the villages on the mountain on the other side of the valley. Clearly, Butoli wasn't far, now.

The village across the valley - the first glimpse of civilization after out hard trek uphill brought warmth in our eyes

Just a little later, we also met a herder, who confirmed that the village around the corner was indeed Butoli. We had made it. We were not at the roof of the world, of course, and yet we felt at the top. Bhadraj of course was totally out of the question at that point. In fact, just the thought of going back by the same trail, another encouter with buffaloes and hopping in the river sent shivers down our spines. What if it became dark while we were still in the river. For a second, I thought it would be nice to just spend the night at Butoli and proceed to Bhadraj the next morning. In fact, the Butoli resident was a nice host and offered several times, a resting place for the night. However, Dinu got suscipious and we decided to start descending. Luckily, we were told about a couple of alternate trails to go back down. One of them, that we settled for, was to take a river all the way down. This river of course was different. There were no boulders and there was no water. We thought anything other than going back through where we came from would be a good route at this point.

Butoli village. We were more than happy to make it this far and miss Bhadraj

Before we did that, though, we got to spend some time at Butoli. It was a very small village with just a handful of people. We met Babu, there, who was painting the house of one panditji who lived somewhere in the city and came to the village on Diwali. The residents were mainly farmers and herders. In every family, according to Babu, most kids were given education and then were sent to the city for a job, but one kid stayed behind to carry on the legacy of the family, take care of the fields, pet animals, etc. Babu was that kid for his family. Again he was very polite and nice to talk to. He brought out chairs and had his wife prepare tea for us. It was a bit odd to accept tea from a stranger like that, but the fact was we were so tired, we were in no position to say no to a hot cup of tea. Having rested well and savored the tea in a nice steel cup, we started our descent back to Doonga and from there on to Belonwala. (To Be Contd.)

Chilling and discussing life with Babu at Butoli.