This was quite a weekend. If all weekends were like this life would be fine, bearable even. On Sunday, I went for the mother of daywalks, through Asola wildlife sanctuary. With Linus. L navigates by googlemaps, and he navigates. Me, I find out about the route, see if it works for me and go alone. I did not find much information on the Net and presumed that L didn't rely on googlemaps alone. So, net net, we were stamping through barely-there tracks, cutting through REALLY thorny branches, with innumerable scratches and thorns in our shoes. I expected - and found that L did too - it to be a 2/3-hour walk at most. I took 600 ml of water, accordingly and munchies. In the event, it turned out to be a daylong thing, with me wondering constantly whether we would be able to get out while there was light. I was thirsty and hadn't pottied, which together I find quite incapacitating. Anyway, it wasn't all that bad, because we walked almost constantly, our longest break must have been 15 minutes long, and though at moments I felt very tired, it didn't come to the point where I did not care, or thought I couldn't go anymore. Must have been close, though. L has done this often at home in Sweden, and he was fairly confident throughout that we would come out at the west. He knew which was west, for one. We found much to chatter on about, and he was a really nice companion, I have no idea how. I can't point out particular aspects of him which make it easy to get along with him, or things which I might have in common with him. Maybe he was just polite. Turned out, we had walked about 7 km, though it felt like 10. The objective was to reach one Bhardwaj Lake, marked on googlemaps, which we didn't - we skirted around it unknowingly - but we did pass one huge lake towards the beginning, before we entered Asola - probably the CITM lake 1- and saw 2 big, but very shallow, drying-up lakes and one biggish, full lake before we left. We started our walk from the opposite of a college on Pali Road, down a track that began with an open garbage dump. About 10 minutes' walking took us to the first CITM lake. Surajkund is close by, apparently. We met people who were coming back, some of whom were appreciative, some condescending, one who joyously called us lovebirds. But once past the first lake, we didn't encounter a soul, except a goat herder in the beginning, and construction workers at the end, near the place which is supposed to be a 'shelter' for monkeys who are picked up from across the city to be dumped here.
Our only companions were cows, and L said we could rely on them, but they might not be in a hurry to go west and get out, like us, right? We found them at 3 points on our way: once, when the path we were on abruptly ended where the land seemed to have sunk a couple of feet and there were cows on the other end. I politely declined the offer to go down on our bums and climb up the other end, though in retrospect, it was as easy as some of the harder stuff we did. The other point was where we were picking our way through rocks and thorny branches, and there was a cow who wanted to pass. We looked at each other for a bit. It waited and then went along, through the thorns as if they were light leaves. I now know cows are thick-skinned. The third was when we were walking through even denser bush and suddenly there were cows leaping alarmedly out of L's way. They were not reassured at all by what he had to say, viz., what's the matter, cow, etc.
The tracks, such as they were, were barely broad enough for a person to pass through, and you had to remove thorny branches out of the way. I acquired a stick - a thorny branch with no thorns at one end, where I held it - to get the branches out of my way, but L used his hands pretty much. By the end of the walk, his hands were completely scarred and very red. For a plump person, he is quite fit and agile. Parts of the way were rocky. We climbed up and down the rocks. There was a spot, towards the end of the way, a shady clearing (and we had almost no shade throughout, which made one very thirsty) with cool, black stones at one end. We just rested our bodies along it. The stones were heavenly. I couldn't have yearned for anything else at that moment. But that was about 10 minutes, and soon I was back to saying which animal I would like to be at that moment (at various points along the route, I had wanted to be a cow, a dog, a monkey and a bird, depending on the terrain and how hot and thirsty I felt). Around this part, there were the remains of an old wall. Perhaps this used to be the earlier border of the sanctuary?
We found several feathers along the way, or rather L did, and I picked them up. I would like to get them identified. We also saw a nilgai, an eagle which I couldn't identify, babblers, I think, and birds which I found later were Oriental Magpie Robins. We heard peacocks too.
L brought cinnamon buns which he had baked. I ate one of that, and my biscuits. No, they weren't cinnamon buns. Something else, but same mix of spices.
The last kilometre or so was on an earth road for vehicles. That's when we started feeling the aches and pains. We came out at Bhatti gaon. They have put up a continuous, huge, green plastic wall to demarcate the sanctuary from the village. It is quite a monstrosity, but people have made holes along the bottom of it. There are also gates. We met several pigs at this end, and man, were they scared when they saw us creeping along through the trees. One adult squealed and ran for its life #stupid peeg. The piglets with their dirty feet merely took us in with beady eyes. And then there was a black dog with a collar, who was very territorial. He wouldn't stop barking because we were there, although we were being quite fleet-footed. He meant business, alright. His mouth looked scary, shattered, like someone had bashed it in at some point.
I was quite glad to be out of this typical Jat village. We had dosas at Naivaidyam in Hauz Khas village and I rapidly called it a day, because I was feeling very odd by then, what with the no water, no sleep and no potty. I would like to go back again.
Long narratives make me fed up.
P.S. I liked Skyfall. It's quite grand, Judi Dench's extreme dodderiness and Ralph Fiennes's constant pottyface notwithstanding. I wonder what it is with Daniel Craig. He is quite charmless, has ears that stick out: he definitely fits the prototype of the East European goon far better. Yet one likes him. Maybe it's the suits, maybe the humane thing gets to people. Skyfall the droughty estate is beautiful.
