The Forbidden Mysteries of Matheran

Looking down at the valley hundreds of feet below, feeling the echo of absolute silence brush past my ears, I heard my voice whisper to me – “How would it be to take a step ahead.  To fly down effortlessly to the deep vastness of this silence that lay below me; till it swallows me and makes me one with itself.” Just then, like a sting of infinite intensity, I felt my conscience flood back into me. I turned back and walked on.

It all started a day before Diwali ‘13 – when I realized the away-from-family, friends-leaving-for-their-homes, celebration-devoid disaster my Diwali holidays were going to be. As the last of my friends bade me goodbye, I still gaped at skyrocketing flight charges and overloaded trains wishing something could magically teleport me to-and-fro Delhi. Practicality struck me hard, and so I considered visiting this hill station close to Mumbai, called Matheran, as an alternative to celebrating Diwali a little ‘differently’.

I had heard a lot about Matheran from local friends. Google images made me ogle at the beautiful painting-like scenery, and so the plan was fixed. I packed my bag before I slept that day, and next morning I left early to catch an early local train toward Matheran. Taking a bite off the Samosa-pao I got from the Malad station canteen, I dived into the hell-packed Dadar-side local like a Spartan! Next was the lightly packed local towards Neral. Standing at the door of the train, feeling the soft morning breeze embrace me, with rhythmic music from my headphones, I felt the beginning of this journey couldn’t have been better. Little did I know what lay ahead!

Neral station reminded me of the classic movie Sholay - Red soil, scorching heat, and dust flowing past mysterious grumpy looking faces. I boarded a shared van-taxi to Aman-lodge railway station for 70 bucks, and all throughout the way up the hilly range, I was simply awed to see the beauty of those underestimated lower plains I was coming from. Up at the entrance to Matheran, a ticket for Rs. 50 was to be obtained to enter the station from where a toy train takes you up to the Matheran market. An alternative is a horse ride, or to simply walk up-hill for 20 mins. The toy-train looked fascinating, so I got the Rs. 40 ticket and boarded it, eager to see what the real ‘untouched’ Matheran was like. The journey was short, and as I exited the station, I was surprised to see a fully established organized bazaar – restaurants, resorts, hotels, parks, shops, and it didn’t look much different from the less-crowded version any Mumbai market. With the difference that the only modes of transport were horses, and your two strong legs! That’s why Matheran was untouched by pollution. No vehicles – no emissions.

But alas, this is where my fairy tale gets sorely interrupted. Reminding me of extremely incredibly annoying houseflies, all sorts of brokers got around me – with all sorts of prices for all sorts of places to stay. I’d stay No, thinking I’ll find a place to stay somehow. But they’d still linger on for minimum 100 meters more, asking on average 5-6 questions – “Kaisa hotel chahiye?”, “Resort chalega?”, “Privacy wala room chahiye?”, “Arey budget to batao kitna hai?”, “Valley view room loge saste mein?”, and the questions just got weirder. But the only question EVERYONE on the way had been asking me was – “Who’s traveling with you?” I felt really strange because when I’d answer “No one”, they’d suddenly stop walking and with eyes wide open, they’d just gape blankly at me as if I’d chanted an unforgivable curse. I anyways took the opportunity to boast “I travel alone” with a wink. Still wondering what the deep surprise on their faces meant.

I walked on though. I knew barely anything about Matheran as of then. And so it became really exciting. What was strange was that every time I’d ask somebody “Kya hai yahaan pe?” they’d give a “What-the-fuck!” expression, and so I concluded that just following the crowd was the easy way out. This way, I came across Echo point, Honeymoon point, and Sunset point. I also saw an artificial lake, and had a shitty tea at one of the nearby stalls for 15 rupees. The view at the points was amazing beyond any poetic vocabulary I’ve come across, and it was more than a dozen times I felt like what I saw was the most beautiful painting ever – an majestic creation of mother nature that no colour, no artist, no sketch, no photograph, no words can replicate. The temperature was uncomfortably pleasant, and a slight playful confusion of whether it was fast breeze or slow wind that whirlpooled itself in the valleys of your ears.

An insatiable curiosity made me walk on. For minutes altogether, it would be just me walking through the forest-covered hill roads. Greenery in all levels and genres of time – freshly sprouted shrubs like newly born toddlers, to ancient tress bent by the weight of their own years, hugged close that hard rocky crude road on which I walked on. It was easy to get lost. And that’s where footsteps of horses on the road, and their dung helped me. If there was fresh dung and prominent horse steps, I would confidently walk on. If the steps were scare, and the dung was dry, it was a less preferable road to take (because of some mysterious reason!) And the worst case - No dung. No horse steps. Fuck.

I thought of life in the woods. Far far away from the gaping brutality of city madness; from the place where a thousand emotionless faces swim by in dead stringent silence every morning, every night. Here – the birds, the tress, the horses, the wild dogs, the insects, the ants and their gigantic anthills, music of the leaves brushing against a humble breeze. The harmony was bewitchingly captivating!  The naturally unconditional resonance was pure fascination for me.

Lost in these thoughts and more, I stopped and looked down at my legs which were numb by now due to constantly walking on the ruthlessly hard rocky way. And suddenly that moment - to pure spine-chilling astonishment I noticed there were no horse-steps, no dung. I’d been walking for hours now. If I’d turn back, I might not reach to the main road before dark. And who knew how long was the road ahead (if there was a road ahead!). I suddenly noticed how alone I was there - alone as a modern human being, as effectively an alien to that ecosystem. As minutes ticked by, I heard occasional mysterious roars coming from the woods. I guessed it would be wild dogs, best case scenario. But in the back of my mind, I realized that as the dusk approached, the sounds seemed to crawl nearer every minute.

And just then, like a ray of hope in absolute darkness, I saw the tip of an old ragged hut meters ahead. It was my oasis in the desert of negative solace. I remember running towards it like a flash, absolutely forgetting about the pain in my legs. An old lady came to my rescue – giving me some water to drink, she showed me the way to the market. I still carried my backpack and was clueless about where to spend the night. But anything was better than a night being lost in a jungle with unknown wild animals. God! I shall never forget that horror!

On returning to the market, the brokers’ swarm surrounded me again. One of them showed me three places – unbelievably highly priced and unbelievably shitty condition. I thought this was illogical!  There were people from all strata who visited the place. There MUST be someplace affordable. The reason, I got to know much later, was because I was alone. Once I got rid of the broker, I searched on myself. Worst case, I thought, would be to sleep on the railway station. But it would be too cold at night, with new species of mosquitoes, and it was not wise to be beaten up by police in the middle of the night. Another stroke of luck, and I met an owner of a shoe shop, who happened to have a guest house. After an array of questions, he calls up my mother and asks another set of questions – “Is Karan your son?”, “What does he do?”, “Do you know where he was come?”, “Is he suffering with any mental depression?”, “Has he done anything to harm himself recently?”, etc. Although my mother was quite disturbed, she answered him plainly. A conversation later, I was surprised to know the reason behind this endless mystery – it was not allowed in Matheran for a person to stay single there. Why? Suicide! He told me that people who visited Matheran alone committed suicide. And the hotel where that person stayed would be investigated and hotel owner badly grilled. As no owner wanted to take worthless risk, even after asking me a billion questions, they’d offer me high prices for shitty rooms. This guy fortunately gave me sensible prices, and so without thinking much I agreed.

The next set of events was funny. I was given a room for 2 nights for 1.2k, and was asked to pay advance. After all this was done, I was ready to shift to the room, when a man in late 20s came our nervously from the adjoining room and started whispering something to the Guest-house owner. I intervened, asking if there was any problem. He just stood with an interestingly weird expression on his face, and that’s when I saw a girl peeping from behind the door of his room. The owner requested me to shift to a different room, as the man has supposedly complained that I might disturb them at night. I didn’t know whether to laugh or blow a punch in that bloke’s face. My legs were too numb to keep up that rage, and so I quietly shifted to the other room. To my surprise, the room was really decent. The bed felt heavenly, and as I removed my Woodland shoes, my feet came out numb and badly red. That night I slept like I’d been awake for ages.

An adventure had come to an end. Another, more mysterious one was supposed to start the next morning.