8. Travel Trails

It was an angry face. The cheeks were red, and there were two long teeth, curving down to each side. The eyes bulged out, but they did not move. They were looking straight at me. He was saying something, but I did not understand. I told him, I cannot hear clearly. He walked towards me, still talking as he pointed a long finger towards me. He pushed me with his sharp nail and brought his face near me.

Balu was tapping on my shoulder and I opened my eyes to see him standing with a cup in his hand.

“Sir, I brought you tea”, he said.

“You were tired and slept off sitting in the chair, I decided not to disturb you. It is almost five now”, he added.

“Thank you Balu, I was having a bad dream”, I thanked him for waking me up from my dreamy encounter with the unknown face. I took the cup from his hand, kept it on the small side table and got up. Sun was beginning to set between the faraway hills and the fog started coming down. There was a chill in the air, as I took my camera and bags inside and kept them on the bed.

I lit a cigarette, walked back to the veranda and took a sip of the hot tea. The cardamom-scented tea pushed the sleepiness out of me and brought relief from the cold outside. I walked down to the edge of the clearing and stood on the big rock overlooking the forest and valley below, and remembered the conversation I had.

“Harsh, you have two weeks’ time to collect the material and finish the article”, Jayanth had told me. “The last two articles you brought were crap! I cannot give you any more chances like this. Get me something good in two weeks, or you can look for other places”, he continued. Jayanth had been a mentor for me, and much more than a boss.

I learnt a lot from him, while I assisted him with his assignments. How to get the perfect shots, how to pace myself while writing an article, how to keep the readers’ attention, all these and much more. He also considered me as a younger brother more than as a colleague or subordinate.

As the editor of a travel magazine, he had to ensure that his magazine had enough content to sell by itself. My recent articles were based on my journeys to the interiors of Madhya Pradesh and the forests there. The editorial board did not like them much to publish but still agreed to Jayanth’s insistence. He faced a lot of flak for that and decided to be tougher on me from then on.

Being a travel writer is not always the easiest of jobs. One has to think through the minds of the sedate travellers and the crazy travellers. You have to look for places to stay, the amenities available, connectivity and accessibility of places you travel to. India, being a large country offered so much variety for the traveller as well as for the writer. But you have to go in search of the unknown, the untapped. This was the challenge that pushed me from routine journalism to travel journalism.

With the new challenge thrown at me by Jayanth, I decided to go back to my roots in Kerala. My dad’s younger brother had suggested this place, remembering the place from the time he worked in the public works department. He also gave the contact number of the forest lodge, which he thought would be a good place to start. The travel turned out to be the difficult part, with Perurpuram being six hours from the nearest airport. The rain and the broken roads ensured that the place is not easy for travellers to reach. A few good shots along the way definitely gave a good opening.