Some road trip memories that are difficult to erase

Door can't be opened

Today, I was looking at Google map to see the roads I have covered so far and the roads I still need to. Suddenly, my eyes got stuck on a forest area west side of Ooty. I zoomed in and finally found the place — Mulli forest check-post. I was not searching for the place; but it’s one of those places I may not forget for a long time. Couple of years back, a trip that was so good turned out to be bad just because of two forest guards there.

It was the first trip my mother's elder sister had with us. We were on the way back from Mettupalayam after attending a marriage. While returning, we stayed in Ooty for two days and then headed to Mannarkkad via Mulli. There was not much traffic on the road, and by noon we reached Mulli check post on Tamil Nadu side. We could see the Kerala check post may be 200m away. But TN forest guard didn't let us pass. He mentioned that we probably didn’t sign at an earlier check post at the Canada power house project. It was true that we didn't sign, it was probably open and no one stopped us. so, we simply went in. He asked us to go back some 12 km through multiple hairpin bends to enter the car number (Karnataka registered) there. We talked with him for sometime thinking someway we could escape that. It was noon time and we were at the last leg of the journey. He didn't budge and threatened with filing a forest case; finally we had to travel back to the other check post.

After a while we reached the check post near Canada power house. This time, there was a guard. However, that guy didn’t let us make an entry there either. Instead, he forced us to go al the way back and take the Manjoor- Mettupalayam- Coimbatore road to reach Kerala. That was a long route with forty or more hairpins in total. Also it was lunch time and we were very hungry after two days of continuous travel. What to do. He insisted that we should go back all the way!!! Finally we went back and reached home after ten in the night instead of noon. On the way back, so many vehicles had passed us having Kerala and Tamilnadu registrations. He might have let all of them go (as we didn't see any coming back). Only one car infront of us had to go back. It was one of those moments when I felt so powerless in front of bureaucratic might. He could have fined us, or resolve it some other way. But no...

To this day, I don’t know why those two people—probably in the last decade of their service and having seen the ups and downs of life—behaved that way. It’s not like the road was closed off for traffic. Right in front of us, the guy at the Canada power plant let a car carrying politicians go. Now, I don't remember the name or face of the forest guard at the Canada power plant; can't recall the name of the guard at Tamil Nadu's Mulli border check post. However, I still can’t forget his face nor his words.

Sajeev