When Andy first mentioned a camping trip to a waterfall he was very clear - we weren't to tell anyone the location. The spot is too perfect to let it get overrun by, well, others like us, travellers in Goa looking for the next big adventure. I'll keep up my end of the bargain.
Six of us planned a 10 day trip to the remote jungle location, which sounded great until Erin and I realized it meant carrying enough food and supplies on our backs to live for 10 days. Andy, Maria, two Erics, Erin and I hired a car and driver to take us several hours away from north Goa to the village nearest the waterfall and hiked the last three hours to camp. Andy and Maria had been there before, but when they turned off the path into what looked to the rest of us like deep jungle I was momentarily worried. Maria assured us they knew where they were going, that we were in fact following a path of sorts, but I was unsure until we came out on a beautiful jungle stream. Our camp was a small clearing on the edge of a deep pool.
For the next nine days we swam in the pool, hiked up and down the river to find other pools and small waterfalls to play in, kept a fire burning all night to keep away the panthers that live in that part of the jungle (which required hours a day of foraging for downed logs to burn) and ate the meals cooked mostly by the two Erics. Canadian Eric and Andy stumbled onto a big cat's den on one excursion, returning breathless and briefly afraid after seeing the bones and half-eaten carcasses of cows and goats. The den was two km from our camp and after that we were all (Erin in particular) a little more vigilant about the nightly fire. We weren't too worried - six humans pissing and shitting (buried, of course) in a hundred-yard circle around our camp seemed like a great way to mark our territory, and the big cats of India are wary of hunters.
The real adventure was on our way out. There's a railway switching station at the bottom of the mountain below the falls, and we'd learned a train to Goa stopped there at 4 am every morning for two minutes. We decided, for reasons that made sense at the time, to hike down the steep path to the switching station, a two hour walk at least, at midnight to try to jump on the train.
The steep walk down the mountain was grueling and dark - we weren't as weighed down as the walk in but each of us were still carrying at least 15-20 kilos on our backs. The worst almost happened - in the narrowest place, over a 100 meter drop, Erin slipped and almost went over the edge. To the others it looked like I'd grabbed her in time but it was only her twisted knee that saved her life when it caught on the way down. We were all shaken by the close call and Erin suffered what at best was a strained ligament, but adrenaline kept us moving.
We were relieved when we reached the switching station about an hour before the train. The lonely station attendant was scared out of his wits when we walked up in the dark. Andy and Eric speak Hindi well enough to learn that he thought the voices he heard coming up the track were ghosts. When we sat down to wait Erin's knee started to swell.
The arrival of the train was surreal. It rolled to a stop in the darkness and we ran out to climb on, but the doors of each car were locked from the inside. We ran the length of the train, trying all the doors and calling out to anyone onboard to open one for us. Finally, at the last car, a man got up and unlocked the door - just as the train started moving. I stopped running - I figured we'd missed the train and would have to figure something out. But Andy jumped up on the ladder and hauled Maria in before we knew it. I heard him yell "Erin, you're next!" and she gamely limped/ran over the loose rocks and got her foot up on the ladder. As she tried to lift her injured leg into the door she suddenly fell backwards, hanging onto the moving train with one arm and leg, the other limbs flailing precariously close to the rolling wheels of the train. There was no time to panic - running behind her, I got my hands firmly on her butt and launched her through the door. American Eric was the last one on, running at full speed to catch up.
Once we were all safely inside the train we sat and looked at each other with stunned silence. A big adventure was over. Erin limped for two months.
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