As the sun disappeared in the west, we were
all ready to start with our sixty kilometers run back. We were laced with one
litter of water and chocolates to keep us alive on the way. We crazy bunch of adventurer
were ready to kick start. We aligned our map with north direction and started
towards our town. As we progressed ahead, the darkness kept on haunting us. It was
so dark that we were not able to see any person ten meters ahead of us.
We were running in the dried river, where
the pebble stones were making things difficult for us. Our high ankle boots
were good enough to prevent any kind of ankle injury. As we wanted to reach
back before the first light, we were running with our backpacks. In the river,
there was some water but it was not enough to drown our ankles but it was good
enough to make way inside our high ankle boots to cause wetness and unrequired
blisters in the foot. Now this was a challenge for us to keep our leg dry. We had
torch in our hand which we were using to make our way in the moonless dark
night. After three hours of continuous motion, we reached a mountain and within
no time we realized that we had lost our way. I took out the map, and tried to
locate our current location. It was difficult to locate in the dark night as
nothing was visible. I guessed our location, and marked a way in which we had
to climb the mountain and go on the other side, which is the shortest route but
the difficult route to reach on the right track. It is easy to climb, but it is
really difficult to control the speed on down-slope. We reached on other side of
the mountain and after another ninety minutes we hit a road, which was going to
take us towards the highway.
We halted for ten minutes as one of our
group members was completely exhausted. I shared my water with him, and then we
started moving. The time at this point was 0100 hrs. Now, our next objective
was to hit a village which was around ten kilometers away. We started running
on the track which was going through the forest reserve. There was still no
sign of light but now our eyes were able to see in the darkness. We kept
motivating each other and continued to move. As soon as we reached the village
after an hour, we took ten minutes of break and filled our water bottles from a
water hand pump located on the edge of the road. At the same time I located the
path leading to the highway. Right now, time was 0300 hrs in morning.
Everybody was now exhausted and we had
covered around fifty kilometers, we were just ten kilometers away from our
town. We started our moment, now we were not able to run, but we were trying to
push ourselves by keeping moment as fast as possible. We were keeping longer
steps, soon we reached on highway and now only eight kilometers were left. I was
familiar with the path, and I ran in front of our group and guided them. The darkness
was disappearing, but our group was going silent. But none of us gave up, we
were about to achieve something which not everyone can do. Around 0530 hours we
reached our town and still there were no rays of sun visible.
We had completed sixty kilometers of
distance on foot with our heavy back packs. We hugged each other after the
completion and entered our houses. I removed my shoes and cloths, took a hot
shower and entered the quilt. I was satisfied that we had done it. As we say,
everything is mental, and our mental strength made us to cover sixty kilometers
of distance in nine hours.
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