Reaching
the top of the mountain was a great bliss. Severely exhausted we threw
ourselves on the ground. Just before I sat down I had a severe cramp on my left
forearm. My fingers were getting clenched all by themselves; I could not
stretch them no matter how much I tried. It hurt like hell. I just sat there for
10 minutes until the muscles relaxed and I could stretch my fingers again. I
had almost panicked and thinking of quitting at this juncture. This had never
happened to me before (as I had never pushed myself that much before). Here we
met a local who told me about this secret water hole just off the path. While
the other 2 rested I ran off with him twice, thus filling up my whole stomach
and all the other reserves with water. If it wasn’t for this we would most
likely to quit here.
Now
on top of the mountain we were supposed to tread with our bikes on the narrow
ridges towards the 3rd control at “Dighi Top”. So we keep following other
competitors as overtaking or riding wasn’t possible. Here we cross Prashant
Tidke and his team from the open category. Prashant is desperately riding with
a punctured tire. At one point the path moves away from the ridge and starts to
descend down from our left side. I have doubts about this route, because the
control was supposed to be at the top of a mountain. So I climb on a small
hillock and notice another route that leads to the control point. I shout and
alert all the others who were blindly going down the wrong path. Later I came
to know that it was here that Sid’s team had lost their way. So trudge back to the
right path and arrive at the control. Here we find out that we are the first
ones to report from our category. This was very encouraging.
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| Sunset From Dighi Top |
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| Dighi Village as seen from the top |
It was time to leave the mountains and start
descending. I wasn’t sad to leave them but I was definiltely going to miss the beautiful
scenery from the ridge, especially that of Raigad, Lingana and Konkan Diva fort
all together painted in golden hues by the setting sun. I promised to myself to
come back in leisure.
Riding
our bikes down the mountain was definitely a pleasure after all the hiking. But
the roads weren’t exactly paved, lots of sharp rocks were scattered along the dusty,
uneven road. The lights came on as the sun set and soon we reached the lakeside
village of Mangaon, another check point. Now it was total dark with no moon to
guide us. We had to rely heavily on our lights which thankfully were brighter
than we needed. All three of us now were going real strong with only slight
complaints about sore bums n backs. However, water was still hard to come by.
We could not risk going down to the lake as it was very dark and no path could
be seen. Fortunately we came across a small pond with water still in it. It
looked all green with heavy algal growth but that did not stop us from drinking
that water. Yes we were that desperate. Even filled up the bottles.
Continued in Part IV
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