WATERFALL RAPPELLING IN PRABALGARH

I am back from one of the most awesome experiences of my life. I had been for a waterfall rappelling trek to Prabalgarh, in Maharashtra, near Panvel. 19th September, 2009, was the annual monsoon ball in the US Club. Piyush, Mohit, and two more of their submarine course mates took me with them and, boy, did we have a great time or what?! We had a blast in case you didn’t get the message. Alcohol floated like water down a ravine, and the air had a surreal feel with all the pretty damsels in their equally pretty clothes floating around. Well, to be frank all were not very pretty, but the few of them that were quite made up for the rest of them, while the rest tried their best by wearing some eye popping gorgeous dresses. Too many drinks and quite a few refusals had made me bold enough and I made up my mind to dance till I dropped. We danced till the stars had shifted their positions more than once and by the time it was about to end I was completely wasted and desperately wanted some food. I still don’t know who I have to thank for getting me safely back home.
It was 0730 in the morning and an insistent noise near my ear woke me up and I found out that it was my cell phone ringing angrily. It was Prateek on the other side and he was quite shocked to hear my groggy voice. I was instantly awake and went into damage control mode. Three years at the academy teaches you to fib glibly and I did that. I told him that I was late for some reason and I was in VT station waiting for a train. Prateek took this bit of news quite amiably and told me to catch up with them at Bel…… station. I poured in mouth wash, dropped in to my clothes, took my bag and rushed to wake up Piyush. Now to wake up a guy who has had more than his share of alcohol the last night and tell him to take you on an errand is not the safest thing to try early on a Sunday morning. I was desperate and I tried it. Well, what do you know? It worked and a very grumpy Piyush took me to the taxi stand. From there it was a race against time and at 0900 I was in Bel…, a good one hour late.
For the first time I met the guys who were to be my mates for the rest of the day. Luckily, there were four boys to five girls and this is the sort of situation I really wanna be in. . There were Anand, Narayan, Harshit, Shriya, Shraddha, Akanksha, Archana and Priyanka. All of us young and bursting to get going. However, hammers and tongs were at work in my head and firecrackers in my stomach. Last night’s debauchery had come back to haunt me. These guys quite amiably greeted me and then swore to make me pay for making them wait for the extra one hour. Even as the bus got going Prateek greeted me quite cheerfully and Radhika, as usual was her demure self. Our yellow mini bus chugged along at a nice pace and within an hour we were at a small village in the middle of the jungle slightly away from the highway. Here Majid and Pritam, our instructors and guides for the day, met us. We kept our luggage and stuff in a sweet little hamlet and changed into trekking gear. The trek up the mountain was fairly easy and I was left to bring up the rear end, having had some prior experience of trekking. Shraddha was the real challenge. She was a cute, bubbly youngster, still in school, class ninth to be precise, and on her first trek. They say you need to get your feet on the ground, well in her case it was literally a trying affair. She had a fair amount of problem while climbing, but she bravely struggled on. Archana and Akanksha were the brave hearts and they carried the majority of the load. Narayan and Anand were the resident comedians. Their capers kept us in peals of laughter all the way up and down. Thanks to those guys this trip was far more enjoyable than the last one.
By the time we had climbed almost to the top, we got our first glimpse of the cliff from which we would be rappelling down. To say in didn’t give me the jitters would be lying, so, I shall lie. It was easy climbing till the top of the Buddhist caves. Now that phase of our trip began for which we had come all this way -- the rappelling. Prateek shared a lot of information with us and told us how to go about it; the various knots used how he had gone about his training and all. Harshit went first, and he went pretty fast. Shreya went next and she was quiet all the way down. Then, went her baby sister, Shraddha. She took it quite well, as a matter of fact because she was quite nervous of heights. Next, Narayan followed. Then came Archana, and to be frank she provided us with a lot of comic relief. She was terribly afraid of heights and it took Majid a good 45 minutes of shouting, coaxing, cajoling and all other techniques in his repertoire to finally get her down the cliff. She kept trying to climb up and her plaintive bleat “Please don’t push me, I will go on my own” was heard for a long time. Even when she was going down, you could hear her screams echoing around the mountains. Next Anand went down and then it was my turn. I was pretty afraid and did slip once but, to my credit, it was because of wrong instructions and not due to my fear. However, once I had crossed the overhang and I was rotating in space I felt ecstasy like I had never felt before. The waterfall was gushing into my face, the wind was ringing in my ears and I was rotating in space! Can you even imagine that feeling? I felt like hanging there forever and never come down. I kept looking up to feel the water splashing on my face, and kept shouting like mad.
The biggest shock awaited me when I had rappelled down. Archana was missing. She had gone for round two!!! Anyways, she wasn’t able to make it till the top as she lost her way and came back to the bottom. Kudos to her courage I say! We bathed in the waterfall and took snaps that I know will burn Facebook. Then we shared our lunch boxes and finally started the trek to the bottom. This time the trek was so breathtaking that I kept getting lost in the scenery. Seriously, man, the view was straight out of a YRF film. There was a gnarled tree in the middle of a green field that Archana pointed out to me that looked it had stepped out of fairy tale. There were brooks running down the mountain and through the lush green field. There was music in the air, the sound of the brooks, the birds and the wind rustling and caressing the leaves. I felt like I was walking through a dream. We even found an emu farm in the middle of nowhere. I was so lost in the scenery that I didn’t realise when we had reached out little village. After having steaming cups of tea and having changed we started back for Mumbai, ready for a couple of weeks more of drudgery.