The descent to the Falls
The terrain hitherto was largely open and expansive. The wind was a consistent part of the hike, with varying intensity depending on the topography. Feeling like Frodo, I climbed a rocky, muddy incline, buffeted, until we entered a sheltered green tunnel. Soon, we reached a divergent path that led down to Bakers Falls.
It was a steep hop, skip, and several jumps for Huz and Amu, slower for trepidatious me, who proceeded with caution, for as you can see, the path was not only steep, it was quite wet and full of obstacles and puddles. As a result, they saw the Falls before I did. And Amu captured my slightly exaggerated reaction 🙂
It was considerably damper and cooler way down at the Fall level. We spent some time absorbing the scene, with the sound of gushing, splashing, roaring water filling our ears. After hours of listening to wind through trees and grass, this was a different auditory experience altogether.
Soaked and quite achy now, my poor legs quaked at the thought of climbing back up to the main trail. In the course of 9 kilometres, this part tired me out the most. So the home stretch, although it continued to be breathtaking, had us all counting the steps till we had come full circle
(Credit for half the pictures (and a lot of the best ones) on this hike go to my better half, Amu. As mentioned earlier, we fought over the camera a lot, and I (being wise and mature) allowed her to be the official photographer 😉 Some of the pictures (like closeups of foliage and the interesting roots and tree structures) have been taken using Huz’s phone camera (by me) and of course, all the pix that feature Amu mean I did sometimes manage to wrangle the Nikon from her hands)
Misty magic ~ 2
Sri Lanka, Horton Plains: (is it still only Day 2?)
So we walked on from World’s End, juggling three umbrellas, a backpack, a sling bag and a bulky camera bag between us. Wasn’t easy to take pictures AND keep the camera (and phone) dry, and Amu and I kept stopping to look around and look at things and capture it all through one lens or the other (we had three) while Huz was content to just focus on walking and enjoying being ‘present’.
There was a disembodied sense of floating in a cloud, where only the trail was in sharp focus and the rhododendrons all around. All else (streams, waterfalls, bridges) seemed to just…materialize…through the mist.
I’m glad we took as many pictures as we did. Really, it all seems like a dream now.
Mun-zooms 