An exciting experience in the wild

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I have been fortunate enough to spend some exciting times in the wild. But only few incidents will come close to an encounter I had with my teammates in Sahyadri. It was in April 2017. It was almost dusk and after a long day of walking and travelling by boat in the scorching heat, we lay on the boat just lazying out. The boat was anchored to a secluded island and our boatman went to a nearby village to spend the night. We decided to spend a night on the boat. After having dinner as rice and daal, we dozed off on the boat. 

I, suddenly, woke up to some loud water splash sounds. I could see some fuzzy reflections in the water, and something was approaching our stranded boat. It took me no time to realise that it was a group of animals, and that too sloth bears. Stories of being attacked by sloth bears were pretty common in the region and I had heard so many of them. Most forest rangers and watchmen have had similar experiences. Honestly I was scared and woke up the other guys by cautiously calling them. Stranded on a boat, miles away from the nearest village, we sat still and watched as the bears made their way towards our boat. We have had dinner and the bears approached our 'jungle kitchen'. There was some left-over rice and dal in our cooking vessels. I saw the bears inspect the vessels, and some bear cubs playing in the water. We pulled out our torches and headlights, just so that we have something to try to scare the bears if they came too close to us. It was around midnight and the only way we could see the bears was due to moonlight. It was a full moon night. Giant, fuzzy shapes moved around exploring that part of the island. To our surprise and relief, after about an hour, the bears headed back to the nearby patch of forest. They were only about 10 metres away from our boat. We took a long, relaxing sigh of relief. I do not think any of us could sleep that night.

That was one thrilling experience! 












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