(MIS) -Adventure Journey To Saputara
Saputara, Gujarat's own hill station has great potential for adventure sports. Its eco tourism circuits offer adventure to nature loving tourists. But for me going to Saputara itself turned out to be a great adventure. Stay at the hill station added to my thrill as every moment was filled by adventure.
These man made challenges were at times more tough than what nature has created in Saputara and around.
I decided to go on August 15, holiday, to fully experience the charm of the hill station. There were three holidays in a series and some creative brains had turned it into a mini vacation of five days by taking one leave on the fourth day. Fifth day was a holiday. So it was a full crowd holiday. Trains were running late because of monsoon fury and I thought that bus was a better option.
Only State Transport buses go to Ahwa and Saputara. No one seems to know why no private luxury bus goes to Saputara, Gujarat's own hill station.
I checked bus timings from the internet as I could not make anyone lift phone in the inquiry. It appears that IT savvy staff of the State Transport wants people not to use outdated telephone system. There is no number of inquiry on the website. You keep on trying the inquiry telephone number, it can be a good pass time if you have patience. In the timetable on the website it is quite interesting to find that Vadodara -Saputara route shows more buses coming from Ahmedabad as compared to Ahmedabad - Saputara route. Inquiry at the window shows much less!
Ahmedabad- Saputara shows four buses while Vadodara-Saputara shows 11 buses of which nine are through Ahmedabad ! If you want to find out timings of Saputara-Ahmedabad buses from the internet, you can't. Saputara does not exist in the from column of the chart!!
I reached at the bus stop at 5.45 as there were two buses for Ahwa at 6 am. (Ahwa is the district headquarters) One can go to Saputara via Ahwa or by changing buses on the way. There were some other passengers also. After 6.30, I made an inquiry at the booth. I was told that bus will go. Others were also waiting. They had the coolness of the Saputara simplicity of trust of tribal in their approach and I also followed them. At 7.40 a bus Ahmedabad-Saputara came. Before I could reach there, it was full. It had come from Nehrunagar, part of Ahmedabad.
Fellow passengers kept on reassuring me that bus would come. Same was the positive attitude of the controller at the booth. I really took it as a patience building personality development exercise. By 9.45, I lost all hopes even as others continued to reassure me. I must say that we Indians have great patience. All continued to chase every coming bus to find out whether it was bus to Ahwa, But no one disturbed the authorities .I resolved to develop some foolproof method next time and made way back to home.
I am also an Indian with great faith in positive powers. Next day(August 16)when police announced success in serial bomb blast case, I felt that probably it was because of this that I could not go to the Dangs.I could easily send my stories to different publication for which I write. Finally, I decided to go by train on August 23. I inquired with many, but did not get a definite route of train to make my trip least time consuming. Ultimately, I got into Gujarat queen and reached Valsad past midnight. Somehow I managed to get a bed to sleep in the government Vishramgruh (rest house).
Next morning, it was another series of experiments, when people gave me strange look at Valsad ST stand on my query for bus to Saputara. Interestingly, Saputara is just 130 kilometers from Valsad. The man in the inquiry told me that there was only one bust at 9 am. At that time, it was 5.45 am. It was difficult for me to convince him that I had seen more than one bus to the Dangs in the morning on the website. There are six buses on the web timetable on Valsad- Saputara route. Most interesting is the fact, that the 9 am bus mentioned by the Controller is not shown in web time table.
I had some sense of direction and some names in my mind as I had done lot of homework for coming to Saputara.I got into a bus going to Ahmedabad for Chikhli . I met principal of school of Motivalzar, Anupsinji Parmar who had been going to Vansda for the last 28 years. Vansda is on the way to Ahwa and Saputara both. He became my guide. We got down at Chikhli. He said that there were some long distance buses. He continued to tell me that he was a Rajput and his village Kukeri and Chapaldhara had maximum number of teachers in the Dangs. Every house had three four teachers in these villages dominated by Rajputs. For a journalist it was a good story.
In the meantime, he drew my attention to a local Bilimora- Saputara bus and said that I should get into that bus without waiting for the express. Journalist in me said that like a good student I should have experience of traveling in local bus and learn about local people. By now, I had told Anupsinhji that I was a writer. This saved me of suspicious looks the word media invites from people. Now people can tell you how media works and what it should do. They say all this in quite a patronizing way.
He showed me pucca houses of tribal and gave me brief about his views of selective benefits of reservation policy to make sure that all people got benefit. He said that half of the tribal who got benefit and raised their standard of living were the enemies of the other half. These haves should not get benefits until the have-nots also got the fruits of reservation policy. All along the 101 km route I saw boys in jeans and girls in dresses. It was really difficult to say that adivasis were backward. The story of the eastern part of the Dangs is different, as I realised on the third day of my adventure trip.
The local bus which had started from Bilimora, 10 kilometers from Chikli, was late by an hour. There were no rains. Long buses were also late. I do not know in what conditions the web timetable and GPS systems work. Any how, I reached Saputara around noon. It took four hours for 101 kilometers. Enough to make someone boil. But, cool breeze of Saputara had a soothing effect.
The bus stop was bus stop because bus stopped there and passengers offloaded themselves. No fencing. Dilapidated building. Holy cows with their dung all around was the great sign of our Indian culture. Two huge hordings of Chief Minister Narendra Modi with a smiling face were the welcome signs.Someone in the Inquiry office was cleaning plates.
I asked about the circuit house. Canteen boy showed me the way up the hills. I looked around for a vehicle. People stared into my eyes when I asked them. I thanked God that I was still a proverbial able bodied man and climbed the steep rise with my bags. I wonder what handicapped people do without their own car or taxi .