Monday, February 06, 2012

Trekking - Passion, Risk

I felt really bad hearing to the news of Naveen from BMS college who along with his friends 10 boys and 4 girls ventured into Ombattu Gudda. I just saw in TV that they have fished out Naveen's body from the water. I am not sure if these students really knew where they were going or what they were up to when they where heading towards Ombattu Gudda. I had been to this place in 2009 and I was in instant love with this place but then I had realized that any one who would venture in here without a local guide or GPS or a good understanding of forest and maps would land in trouble. It was a unique kind of forest, felt like it was full of secrets, it was lot more different and mysterious from most of my other treks. Let me tell you Trekking is a passion and it has lots of risks some of them are life threatening. I have met different kinds of people during my treks who venture into forest and think it to be a picnic some of the bad things I have observed during my trips

1) Having Liquor and worse getting into water after that
2) Smoking in dry forest
3) Camp firing and partying with loud music
4) Cutting small trees/plants on mountain tops for camp fire
5) Listening to music while trekking ignoring the forest activity or warning calls
6) Swimming in unknown waters
7) Not planning for the night
8) Getting into forest without torch
9) Limited or no water/food supplies
10) Not being serious 
11) Not moving in groups
12) Not carrying first aid kit
13) No GPS or not taking the help of locals

Please take a note, please don't enter forests for partying. Forests are not the place for such activity. I was in Kukke Subramanya yesterday and saw some of these students waiting for their friend, I can only wish for his sole to rest in peace. If you don't realize the threats of nature in here you will land in nature's lap pretty soon. I was seeing police struggling to even get into the place where this mishap happened forget about helping. Locals do a great job during such operations and hats off to them for knowing their backyard so well.
Trekking has lots of risk involved, Trek with passion and not for fun. Trek safe, take care.

4 comments:

Wanderer said...

Terrible thing. I hope people learn from this. Done a post about it too. Linked to your post.

Wanderer said...

BTW I've been reading you since sometime now. Blogrolled you. Hope you don't mind.

poorna prajna said...

Thanks, for spreading the word of caution. I hope people realize the risk. no problem with blogroll :-)

Vidya S said...

Well said Poorna, people should stop taking a granted to enjoy their way and destroying the mother nature.