This was a lesson that stuck me as the Suggestica team was trekking in Wayanad last weekend (look at the post “Suggestica Team goes for a fun outing to Wayanad“). After visiting a lake the next spot for us in our plan was to visit a falls named “Meenmutty water falls”. We reached a spot where we saw a milestone saying 3.8 Kilometres right to reach Meenmutty falls. We were traveling in a van and the width of the road almost equal to the width of the van. As the van driver carefully drove inside the road, at a point it started getting narrower with narrow turns uphill and to the left was a deep valley and on the right there were small houses. At one point the driver hesitated and stopped. One reason was that it was too risky to proceed in the van and another was there could be some other vehicle like a car coming in the opposite direction, and there was no room to give way and it would be too risky to come in reverse.

We stopped a villager and asked him if we could continue, he said we could, up till a point and then we had to walk. Without any request he got into the vehicle to help us reach the falls. At one point there was a house with some space in the front where the driver could reverse and turn the vehicle. We all got down there and the villager took lead to take us to the falls. He said that we had to walk for 3 Kilometres and knew a short cut to the best spot that will give us a good view of the falls. We were under the impression that we would have to just continue walking the path which was like a small road and we will land up near the water fall. We walked about 500 meters. Slowly the path was no more a road but a footpath that just started going downhill. As we started to go down, the path became rugged; we had to cross rocks, deep pits and places where the tree roots acted as a step to move on. The challenge was we could not stop as the slope was pushing us to continue. I would have asked the villager every now and then how far we have to go and how hard it is to get there. Every time he answered only this “we are almost there and it is not hard at all”. We were panting and our legs were shaking as it was unexpected and we were physically and mentally unprepared. But one positive aspect of the whole adventure was the villager’s first part of the statement “we are almost there”. It had a psychological impact giving us a hope that we will be there, so we kept continuing on.

But the second part of the villager’s statement “it is not hard at all” was a little too much for us. He was so used to walking in those paths that he didn’t hold any support and did not pant while we became monkeys after some time using our hands and legs all around to get down. It struck me at that time how much difference experience makes. What looks difficult to someone is easy for someone else who has gone through it so many times. If you are a senior person in your team and you have few newbie’s to this industry and if you have faced a situation where you feel “Why it is so easy, why he/she is finding it difficult to understand/solve it?” then the experience gap is playing it’s role. Experience makes us forget the struggle we went through. On top of it the situations what we went through and what the current college pass outs to this industry go through is different. In such a situation use the villager’s first part of the statement “we are almost there” to the newbie and guide him/her place every step at the right place.
Coming back to our adventure, we did reach a spot very close to the water falls and it was breath taking scene in its true sense. The effort was really worth it and we were glued on amidst the few leeches that were silently sucking some of our blood. And walking back uphill was again tedious though we didn’t need the villager to say that “we are there and it is easy”. We rewarded the villager with money as he literally guided us, stayed with us until we reached back to our van.

Thanks to Prakash, Suggestica Content lead who took the pain to post more Wayanad Trip Photos. Have a nice day.