An Almost Encounter with the Tiger

I and my 3 friends were trekking our way down from Kedarnath which is the holy town in the state of Uttaranchal in India. Before the trip we decided that we will take bus to Kedarnath but will come down by foot trekking. So after spending 3 days in Kedarnath we started our journey back. At the beginning trekking looked pretty easy but it got tougher by the hour.

We did not know much about the trekking route so we met a tourist who had a map of the region. He told us about a village "Maggu" 20 Km down. We decided that till the end of the day we need to reach "Maggu" for accommodation. We wanted to avoid sleeping in tent because of Tiger threat in the area. We were covering distance with a healthy pace and were all set to reach Maggu by evening. At around 4:30 in evening we reached where Maggu village was supposed to be. We looked around in shock because there was only 1 house and nothing else. We were tired and hungry we looked around and found a sign board of Maggu.

We were frustrated and started arguing with each other. Then we saw a woman coming out of the house. We went to talk to her. Her name was Kamlesh; she told us that we were indeed in Maggu. She also told us that we’ll have to spend night there because we couldn’t have made it to next town before. She said that her husband has gone to town that’s why she can not let any of boys to stay in the house but she can let Swati inside. Considering the danger of tiger at night it was best for Swati to stay in the house.

So we had to spent night outside in a tent. While we were setting up the tent Kamlesh cooked food for us. Food was really very delicious. After meal we went to sleep in tent, we took out torch and a big knife we were carrying out of our bags. We spread some of our stuff around tent so if the tiger comes we will know about it from the noise.

So we put the knife outside the tent and I along with Akshay and Mithlesh went to sleep in tent where Swati went to sleep inside the house with Kamlesh. Around 2 AM we heard a huge noise which woke everyone of us. Our fear was turning into reality; we thought it was the tiger. We were scared and didn’t know what to do. Akshay asked me to grab the knife and go outside to check out. I told him I am not going out there alone, if he wants to check then he should go out there. Then he asked Mithlesh to go outside first Mithlesh pretend like he was sleeping then he told him the same thing I told earlier.

We were trying to figure out what to do; we knew that tiger must have noticed us. We were worried that if we stayed inside the tent and tiger attacked us we’ll be trapped. So we decided instead of one we all will go out to face it. We thought this way we had better chance of surviving. So Akshay took the torch, I grabbed the knife and we all came out of the tent screaming as loud as we can and started searching for the tiger. We were screaming to would you believe it scare the tiger. We looked around but could not find tiger. We thought tiger had left us; it must have been scared and ran away.

We were feeling very proud of us after all we scared away tiger. When I looked on ground I could not found any tracks of tiger or any other animal. We were surprised, our bags just outside the tent were fallen apart, and they probably made that noise. After thinking for a while we figured out the mystery. Our friend Mithlesh was over six feet tall and his legs could easily got outside the tent. So only logical answer was that he kicked the bags while asleep and from noise we thought it was the tiger. Next morning we told Swati about it and she could not stop laughing on us. We were embarrassed and wished it was tiger.