Belgium: Lost In The Jungle- II (The Twist)

The guy with the compass was still trying to light up his sutta and I had a feeling that he never intended to smoke it. Distance perception of the girl with the map was worse than ever and both of them had to be replaced from the lead. I took over the map and Naveen bhai started looking into the compass.

I am not sure which one is worse… to be in the lead of a lost group or to watch the back of the group in a pitch black forest. When you are at the back, there is a subtle feeling that someone is out there watching you. Your really want to look back to check, but its too scary to turn around. And trust me this can be addictive.
But when you are in the front, you don’t know what’s coming next until its there within 1 mtr of you. You get a surprise every now and then but honestly, you don’t like surprises.

“Lets stop here for a while”, someone said. May be a break can do some good to a bunch of dead tired nomads.
“Stand still, I am gonna take a pic”. Oh god, is this a picnic? We are lost for god’s sake. LOST.

FLASH
Aaarrrrghhh!!!!
“Shit, whom are you standing with? Rather what?” I turned around. Gosh.

I have no idea what it was. Looked like some dead squirrel or something, hanging from a pole. But who would have done this? “Lets take a closer look, get the torch”. Crap, we now have a FBI agent investigating X-files. “Why on earth do you want to look at something like that?”

Yaaeeeeekks!!!
“It’s the Iron Cross”. What? Oh wow… it really is the shinning iron cross with Jesus crucified across it. The first land mark. It wasn’t any dead animal or anything… it was Jesus. We are back on track. Yeeeppeee!! A wave of enthusiasm hit us. Now we just needed to follow the map properly and we will be there in no time!

We walked for the next half an hour.

“Another 500 mtr and we will be there”. Boy it had been a long night. A rather interesting one (now that we were back on track… it seemed much more interesting). “Ok guys lets do a final head count before we reach.” Ya ya as if we dont know where we are. I can see all 10 of us. Cut the crap.
“One, two, three… … … nine, ten”.
“Eleven”

Eleven? Weren’t we supposed to be ten?
I looked back… most of the guys were stupefied, blank expressions on their faces. “Who was it?”
“Don’t kid… it has already been too much of trouble tonight.”
“C’mon?”

“Dat was me.”
All of us turned in the direction of the voice… to our right. And there was this guy, lying on the ground smoking a cigar with a torn jeans and jacket, sporting what could only be called a relic of a cowboy hat.
“Where in da lord’s name have ya guys been? Have been looking for ya all over da damn place.”

Yeah of course, he was looking for us in the bushes on the roadside, half sleeping. “Who are you?”

“’Am Crap.”
What?
“Dun Crap, now c’mon ya nasty bunch… les go back. We gotta lotta stuff to do tomorrow.”

Belgium: Lost in the Jungle- I

“OK, I will watch the back”.
God where did that come from? I never knew this audacious me! Plus for god’s sake it’s the forest, pitch black and alarmingly quiet. Though we were told that there are no wild animals or any sort of danger in here, but my weak heart doesn’t care for logic.

Anyway, now that we have to find our way back through this stupid jungle to the final meeting point and all we have is a map, compass and some torches, I thought I will lead the group to victory. (From the back??)

So… here we were, in the jungle walking in files of 2 (finally Ist yr NCC came in handy), trying to find our way back through the paths, which seemed like it was hexed to restrain us from walking upright. But who cares… someone back there said it’s just a matter of an hour or two. So that’s good…. I can go and get some sleep.

The first hour passes. “I think we should have seen the Iron Cross (first land mark) half an hour ago”, said the girl with the map. “What??” said the entire group in unison. We could have walked over a kilometer in the last 30 min and that would mean that either we missed the giant of a cross, which was very unlikely, or we were off course. “Lemme check”, I said. Frankly, I never trusted the navigators. How could you, when the guy with the compass was more concerned about lightning his sutta than he was about direction and the girl checking the map thought she had walked half a mile every 10 min.

“Forget it. We are on course. We have the river on our right… that shows we are going in the right direction.”

“But dude… we were supposed to go downstream while we are going up. The river is flowing in the wrong direction! Or we are going in the opposite.”

My heart began to sink. We are lost. LOST. No shit… how can we be lost? We have the map, which has all the routes and turns. What if we had missed one?

“Ok lets go back and retrace our path till we find something familiar.” For the next hour or so, we were walking blind, looking for any sort of signs or traces. And with every min that passed we were getting tired and that made it increasingly difficult to estimate the distance traveled.