MunZooms | Mun-zooms

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)

En route to World’s End

And so began a 9 km hike.

The wind made my hair dance.

Thataway.

Into the strange hush we trudge…

Except for a curious knocking sound made by an unseen bird, and the rustle of the wind through the grass…not a sound.

The trail was sandy at first…

Wet and surrounded by vegetation further on..

Just the gentle sound of light rain on the overhead leaves…

When the going got rocky…

And dream-like.

We reached World’s End, the lesser one. A misty, windswept precipice not as high as the actual World’s End, but the view was similar….if only we could have seen it. (It is a cloudforest after all.)

We walked on from there and soon….

We were halfway through our trek! Here stands a triumphant Amu, at the edge of a precipice that plunges dramatically for almost a kilometer down to the lowlands below.

This is what we saw.

An assortment of nationalities.

One of the local guides there warned us that if we had found the walk challenging thus far, it would get tougher henceforth, especially the detour to Baker’s Fall. We could turn around and go back the way we came….or continue to walk till the end.
It was a no-brainer. 🙂