lost in woods...

My biggest adventure of life happened when I was seventeen years old. I was a student of High school then and participated in a nature study tour to a place called 'Panchalingeshwar' ( in Orissa, India)which was basically a wild terrain with five distinct hills and dense forest. I was the part of a team of students and teachers.When we reached the foot of the hills it was early in the morning. Our teachers gave us the liberty to roam freely about the place in small groups of three to four students. I was part of one group. As we were wandering through the woods, somehow I got separated from my group. I was so much enthralled by the beauty and the serenity of the place that I just kept on treading across the woods till I reached a place, a sort of clearing, where a strange smell came to me. I followed the smell and soon I was standing infront of a heap which was nothing but the heap of feces of some kind of animal. At that point of time, I was so curious to know the feces and the animal that I went deep into the forest. I had only a stick in my hand and the darkness of the forest only inflated my curiosity. On my way I met some local woodcutters, who were amazed and a bit surprised to see someone like a city boy alone in the woods. They said something to me in their local dialect which I could not understand. Then, an elderly woman wood cutter came to me and with a stick drew a rough sketch of an elephant with lo9ng trunk on the soft mud. I then realised that I had got into a territory infested with elephants! I was pleasantly surprised and even carried a piece of dried dung of the elephants which looked like a ball of grass. I sat there for sometime and tried to communicate with the wood cutters through sign language. They smiled and appeared quite friendly. I realised that language is hardly a barrier between people.They alsoinformed me that it was almost impossible to find herd of elephants at noon in the forest because the elephants usually move at night or very early in the morning. I was helped by one of the wood cutters to get back to the foot of the hill. My mates and teachers were relieved to find me after quite some hours. They were actually getting tensed and anxious. When I showed them the piece of feces of the elephant, they were fascinated. I regretted though the missing opportunity of seeing the pachyderms from close quarters.