Savandurga - overnight stay four

April 2002

This was the Saturday Pink Floyd was performed in Bangalore. Kiran, one of Kiran's cousin and a friend of his cousin and I. We reached well before sunset, gathered firewood and settled down in front of the stone shelter close to the summit. As the sky darkened we could see glittering lights all around.. villages and towns were lighting up slowly. We could see three major patches.. Magadi to our left, Bangalore straight ahead and Ramanagara to our right.

Around seven thirty, mist started blowing in and visibility was restricted to about 20-25 meters. We were sitting looking towards Bangalore and Kiran was talking about some ghosts and stuff.... "Sidda, look to your right there's something coming towards us." I could see a figure in the haze. As the figure came closer, I realized it was a human. Kiran was telling see if it's a ghost in the form of a man. I told him that generally ghosts prefered woman's form dressed in white saree. Still Kiran was little scared. I'm not sure about the other two guys. The ghost turned out to be a young man. He was drunk and looking miserable. I asked what he was doing here and if he had company. He replied that his friends had deserted him and he was alone. Then he asked if he could go down to the village. We advised him against descending in the darkness. He asked if he could stay with us. There was plenty of room in the shelter, we asked him to spend the night here. I think we loaned him a mat and gave some drinking water. He occupied one if the corners and fell asleep in minutes.

Pink Floyd show, was being aired live on Vividh Bharati, we heard the show on my pocket radio. We saw a sky-shot... pink and white sparkles followed by blue-green, white-yellow lights. We assumed that the fireworks was part of the rock show but the next day we learned that there was no fireworks there. Watching the twinkling stars on the dark canvas, we had dinner, then pitched a large mosquito net and hit the sack. The night was peaceful.

The 'ghost' woke up early morning and left us at first light. I guess he was very hungry and thirsty.

We went to the Basava Mantapa stayed there for sometime and then descended the hill.

PS: There were three previous and one subsequent overnight stays on Savandurga, each time it was a different group. Here are the links to those posts: Overnight Stay One, Overnight Stay Two, Overnight Stay Three, and Overnight Stay Five.

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