Year 12 Camp - Life at the Top (Part 2)

The girls at Upper Lake View

Today it was planned to start with devotions at 8:30 am followed by breakfast at 9:00 am. We would then depart for our morning sightseeing, return to the hotel for lunch and a rest (great custom) then another tourist venture in the afternoon. The evening activities are to be the cultural activities that did not happen last night (I thought our Oz cultural activities then were very good though) followed by an 8:00 pm dinner and bed.

Nice Indian plan to start with but it went off the rails at 8:30 am - yes, the very first planned event. IW and I were ready at 8:30 but there were no signs of life from anybody except the breakfast staff. At 8:50 a couple of kids straggled in and we chatted and shortly after some of the teachers arrived and said we would have breakfast first. I did make a cheeky enquiry about how kids got to school on time (which they do) and this was greeted by a nice smile and the traditional Indian sideways head shake. Enough was said in this non-verbal statement.

Breakfast was had and then we sang and did devotions. It was about 10:00 am when we departed for some more sightseeing. Pillar Rock, Guna Caves, Silent Valley the Pine Forest and Upper Lake View were on the itinerary. For some reason not many of these eventuated and the ones that did were so covered by mist that we affectionately called the morning journey 'Mistifying'.

We did get to the Pine Forest where a lot of Tamil Song Clips are made. It is a nice place and the start of the walk to the Upper Lake View. Another feature of this forest is that it is full of monkeys that are so used to human company and being fed by them. There were vendors there selling carrots that were purchased by one species and consumed by both species.

We got back to the hotel at around 2:00 pm for our lunch and a short rest. After lunch IW decided to stay at the hotel and rest as her throat was quite sore.

At about 3:30 pm we set off for Chettiar Park and Bear Shola Falls. Chettair Park was a nice green spot on the side of the mountain which featured manicured hedges cut into animal shapes. It did not take long to see all there was to be seen but for some reason we had 90 minutes here. After sitting for a while most girls were getting restless so I decided to introduce them to some great Australian pastimes.

I tried my best to explain how much fun rolling down a hill was but no one could understand the fun in it. The only thing to do was to demonstrate something I had not done for at least 35 years. I went halfway up the hill laid down and let gravity take its course. It was not exactly as I remembered when I was young, or the hill was steeper, or the increased weight caused a much faster roll. Needless to say the hedge at the bottom took quite a battering as I staggered to my feet to the applause of all.

It was not too long before we had girls rolling and squealing everywhere as they discovered the delights of 'hill rolling'. After 15 minutes of giddyness and crashes I was surrounded and asked what was next. At this stage I was appointed chief activities organiser. We had about another 30 minutes so I decided that seeing we had a ball that they were not very good at throwing. catching or kicking, we would engage in a bit of human ten pin bowling.

If you thought hill rolling was hard to explain, try explaining how to be a human ten pin that has to fall when hit by a ball or another falling human pin. Again I resorted to the human demonstration as I found one of the girls who understood the concept of rolling the ball.

I carefully positioned myself at the three pin position with nine girls filling the other positions and got the ball rolled at us. By an act of God it hit me and I threw myself in the air taking seven girls to the ground with my fall. There were no major injuries but a few did retire to the sideline.

The plus side was that they immediately got the idea and I could retire to the sideline thus saving any major injuries through having to demonstrate again. We gathered quite a crowd of onlookers as we proceeded to have a revolving 30 minutes of human ten pin bowling. As our time elapsed we heard the shrill call of the whistle of the Tour Guide (TG) calling us back to the bus.

I was very dubious about our next stop as it was listed as Bear Shola Falls (subject to availability of water). It looked like it hadn't rained in decades but these Indians are people of faith so we set off. After a short trip we pulled up at the bottom of a suburban hill and proceeded to walk up the hill, through a gap in the fence then off into the scrub. "Hasn't rained in a long time" I thought to myself as we tramped through the dry, dead undergrowth.

Some of the girls asked if there would be water and the TG assured them there would be. The cynic in me could not see how but I was soon amazed by Indian ingenuity. As the falls came into sight, there was a large rock face about 20 metres high, but they were as dry as a dead dingo's tongue. The girls protested loudly but TG stood defiantly and held his hands high, much like Charlton Heston in 'The Ten Commandments'.

A hush fell over the crowd as water started to trickle over the edge. TG had sent the bus drivers on ahead and they climbed to the top and emptied about six buckets of water over the top of the rock. It was not the most spectacular water fall I have ever seen but the girls seemed to be happy with it.

We returned to the bus and headed back to the hotel for the evening 'Cultural Activities' which were due to start at 7:00 pm. I was looking forward to the evening but soon found out that my understanding of 'Cultural Activities' was way off the mark. At about 7:40 pm the man brought in to run the evening sprang into action. He explained the evening. It would comprise the group being split into four teams and then contesting three rounds of competition comprising a quiz, a tug-of-war, and a dance contest. This was my signal to morph into the official photographer for the evening.

IW ended up in group 3 and at the end of Round 1 were joint leaders with group 4. Round 2 was a knock-out Tug-of-War. I immediately appointed myself as coach of IW's team and issued the tactical instructions of ToW. They seemed to grasp the idea well and easily won their first match against group 1. We watched the second match and it was obvious that we were up against a bigger, stronger team. The only way to win was to outlast them so we talked about not pulling but just holding them until their energy was spent.

What followed had to be seen to be believed. The other team pulled and pulled, they had our team within 10cm of defeat when the call went out to pull. They were taken by surprise and our team pulled them over the line for a great victory. Maximum points for the victory before round 3 - the Dance contest.

The dance comprised three parts, modern, traditional and free-form. IW was not feeling at all comfortable as all had to participate or the team got no points. After some quick instruction in traditional Indian dance IW entered the fray with her team. They finished second and thus assured themselves of the prize of first place.

The one hour 'Cultural Activity' finished at 9:15 pm and we were asked to sing some songs and lead the group in prayer before we moved off to dinner.

The victorious Team 3 (with IW hiding)