Following the Map

Luke waved his satellite phone in the air and the long retractable antenna caught the signal of a passing LEO satellite.

He asked for the maps of the area and also informed about their getting lost. The receiver promised to send the maps and also informed that their problem will be conveyed to their government who in turn will convey to the local area in charge, to follow up. With the maps in hand, they could progress towards getting out of their problem. Tomorrow at the same time he will connect with the camping group again.

They should be ready with the satellite phone. In 5 minutes the map was received and downloaded and everyone gathered to see the map to pinpoint their location.

The soon pinpointed their position. As per the map, it was very similar to the ones we could get on our mobiles if we wanted to get a satellite view.

They could see the view of the village towards their right about 5 km away. Apparently, from the river bed and valley they should have headed straight a little more say about 2 km then turned left. They had turned left at a wrong place. There was no need to retrace their steps; it would unnecessarily delay them by an hour or more.

Luke put his satellite phone away and asked, "Is anyone of you carrying a compass? We need to head north after a short walk."

"If no one has it, then I will see if there is a compass already available in the satellite phone itself."

Zia immediately started checking the outer pockets of her backpack and found the compass.

Luke realized that she would be carrying the compass. She had had a hunch that it would be required and so she had placed one in her backpack.

"Here it is," saying this she handed over her compass to Luke.

"As per the map, we are to walk about half a km and then turn to the right for heading north."

"Everyone follow me," saying this Luke took the lead and everyone followed behind.

But the 500 meters were also crossed and they went much further without turning right. It was much later that he realized about their mistake.

"Now what to do?" said Sunny. "It is already 3 pm. If we cannot reach the village in an hour we will need to pitch our tents and make camp. The night will fall real quick here," he added.

Sunny was right. How could they have gone ahead so much? They could not use GPS to follow the directions as the signal issue was there for mobiles in this remote area. The satellite phone was also not usable so much.

Anyway, just then Sunny saw a small cave on the side of the parrot grass hill before it merged into the normal one ahead. There was a small stream beside the cave.

"There is a cave on the left which we need to check out. There is a stream adjacent too on the cave on its left side towards the normal hill. Perhaps we can spend the night here?" he inquired.

"Danny, don't go there alone, I will accompany you," Luke shouted as he saw Sunny trying to go towards the cave. "Sherpa, we will be right back you look after the rest as we check out the cave."

Sunny and Luke went to see the cave. The entrance of the cave was small. A person could enter by bending a little. There was sand on the floor and no footprints were on the sand. It seemed that this was not a cave that housed any animal. Hence, it was safe. Luke flashed his mobile light around the inside of the cave.

They decided to check out the inside of the cave also. It was a nice clean cave. There was dried grass on the side of the cave. Apparently, it must have been deposited there in the past. Surprisingly, it had not become hard and easily broken after a lapse of o much time.

"Luke Sir, there is another cave inside, I just saw and then there is a narrow tunnel leading further into the hill from that cave."

"Sunny, please do check out the entrance to the tunnel from that cave we do not want any animals troubling us at night. Just see if there are any footprints of drag marks on the sand."

Luke meanwhile flashed his mobile torch towards the roof of the cave to ensure there were no bats. Actually, there were no bats as their droppings could not be seen on the floor of the cave.

Sunny came back and told Luke that there were no footprints or any sort of marks on the sand spread over the floor of the second cave.

Luke went to check to be doubly sure.

Yes, we can spend the night here. All we will need to do is just to take out our sleeping bags. We do not require to pitch our tents today. Then there is plenty of dry grass inside the cave and plenty of twigs outside to make a campfire. We can cover the entrance to the tunnel with our tent bags. He was thinking that this was a good plan. Tomorrow early they would retrace their steps and go to the dried river bed and find the right turning.

Both of them went back to the group and told them about the finding of the unused cave and about its safety.

The students, Zia and Sherpa followed Luke and Danny to the cave. They were happy to see the stream.

They took out some utensils and placed them at the entrance of the cave along with the foodstuffs. The boys brought out the dried grass from inside the cave and placed it on the left side of the cave along with the twigs they found scattered outside.

The scattered twigs outside and the dried grass inside had Zia wondering. It seems as if they were deliberately placed for their use. If that was so who could have placed these here and why? There was something about the tunnel. Zia felt that someone wanted them to be in this cave, but why? What was the mystery?

The tent bags were piled one on top of the other to close the narrow tunnel entrance.

The backpacks were fixed on inside of the cave at opposite sides. One side of the cave was for the boys and the other side was earmarked for the girls.

Further down the stream, Sherpa and Luke dug out a pit toilet for all to use. The WC was enclosed in one of the miraculous cloth extracted from Luke's magical backpack. Toilet paper was also found in the magical back pack of Luke. For those who did not want to use the toilet paper, part of the stream was diverted downwards towards the WC.

Anyone using the WC had to take someone along to help wash hands. Sherpa and Luke had kept a foldable bucket made of thick cloth-like material along with a foldable mug used by army people when moving through difficult terrain for washing hands. These things also came out of Luke's magical backpack.

Soon all work done, the rest of the boys got down to making the campfire and it was tea time. Water from the stream was boiled in a utensil and poured into disposable cups, tea bags; powder milk sachet packets as well as sugar sachet packets were passed around. A packet of biscuits were also passed around.

All the used cups were collected and kept aside. These would be buried in a hole along with any garbage of ready-made food packets. After a short while they would start making dinner.

Soon the dinner work was commenced and thereafter utensils washed at the stream using hot water from fire and cold normal water from the stream.

Everyone was tired, so they pushed off to their sides of the cave to sleep. Luke and Sherpa would keep watch for 3 hours each. The sun rises early hence they would get up early around 5 a.m. they had a lot to do tomorrow.