Where dreams are knit under an azure blue firmament and are run-down by a dash with reality
By D N Singh
Morning was misty and little heavy due to floating clouds. It was 4 AM in the morning when we left the Kalinga Ghati forest bungalow, carved on the niche of about 2000 ft above the sea level.
The bungalow has its charm, overlooking down a huge expanse of foliage, ‘sal’ trees and some recent years’ acacia plantation serving as a canopy.
A wide walk-way encircles the guest house and at the far end it steeps down paving the way to the road which leads to the Ghat section.
Slowly ushered in into a spectacular marinating of green and quietness stretching for miles amid the hills where the early hour tranquility reign for years.
As the vehicle mounts on to the ghat it encounters myriad turns, some of them with blind cuts down and precipitous. Anytime an encounter with a hair-pin bend suddenly become challenging for a driver who is not familiar with the hills.
When the vehicle negotiates the bends, it is hard to avoid a glance on the left, treacherously down and down and then ends on small tribal hutments and the people from that height look dwarfed to half their real heights.
Our early dawn snooze ends as we ascend towards the top at a height of 2,235 ft above, pre-dawn smog thins and at the top, you get a literal feel of the clouds caressing your body.
The early sun can be seen flashing through the gaps in the clouds and down on the ghat roads.
An occasional cricking of toads make it feel it wild coupled with sounds of insects whose regime prevails here.
Then starts the descend and it was, for a while, painful transition from the bosom of pure nature down towards the planes where the gurgle of streams accost you to a drenched morning.
