Vacations are structured. Often predictable. They don’t always slake our thirst for adventure. They cost a pile and guzzle time and energy. Boarding trains and planes and checking into hotels. And the compulsive, overpowering desire to ‘discuss’ the holiday with anyone signed up on Facebook. Oh, the numbing sameness of it all.
What’s more, annual vacations can disappoint. They often do. A flu, a backache, a flashflood or a dismaying number of likes on FB is all it takes to spoil one. After scrimping on comforts through the year just for that vacation, this is sad.
The good news is, we don’t have to put all our eggs in that much-awaited vacation. There is proof. There are people in our midst who enjoy an annual vacation under faraway skies, but also manage to have vacations under a familiar stratosphere, midweek after midweek. For these holidays, they travel light. With just a tent and a heart that burns with a fascination for the great outdoors.
They also travel short.
Ask Peter Van Geit, who has camping near home down to a fine art. He scours around for pristine places on the fringes of the city, where he and his friends from the Chennai Trekking Club (CTC) can pitch a tent and have a midweek holiday. Now, don’t confuse these trips with the treks CTC undertakes during the weekend. Those outings are relatively longer, further from the city and more demanding.
The ones meant for the weekdays can be had at will. Here’s the usual sequence: arrival at the spot after work, a night under the stars, an early morning swim in a water body or a water-filled abandoned quarry, a cycling trip or a run, pack up and back to civilisation in time to swipe the card at work.
And obviously, these ‘mini-cations’ are orchestrated at spots that nestle close to developed corridors. These places are however surprisingly spotless.
One of their exciting finds is Ottiambakkam, near Mambakkam. It’s located near two arterial stretches: Vandalur-Kelambakkam Road and Old Mahabalipuram Road. Geit and his friends take a right at Navallur (travelling from the Thiruvanmiyur end of OMR), and head towards Ottiambakkam, about three to four kilometers away.
Geit explains why he’s often seen in the Mambakkam-Ottiambakkam region. It has abandoned quarries that sparkle with crystal clear water. A hill near Ottiambakkam provides an arresting view of the OMR skyline. Most importantly, here civilisation treads with lighter footsteps.
Another of their favourite bivouacking spots lies on the East Coast Road, a little beyond Kalpakkam. Geit describes it as the meeting ground for the Palar river and the sea. This section of the Palar’s course, around a hundred metres wide, is completely dry for most part of the year.
The soul-stirring beauty of the night spent under a star-studded sky and near waves that roar and cheer all night long, keeps drawing them back to this place. On these bivouacking trips, members carry out basic cooking, which provides completeness to the camping experience.
Development in and around Chennai has enabled several other groups, many without names, to have a similar experience. For example, development of the road from Vandalur to Oragaddam has opened up new vistas for Nature lovers. This stretch has water bodies that seem to have been created just for bivouacking.
On the other side, there is the Kelambakkam-Vandalur Road offering exotic options. Not just these, the expanding city is now digging in the ribs numerous other green patches that once seemed too far away. The Kumizhi hills, around 12 km from Guduvanchery, is one of them. K.V.R.K. Thirunaranan, founder of The Nature Trust, who has moved from tent to tent, exploring Nature spots, cautions on the choice of bivouacking spots. According to his experience, campers in this part of the world are viewed with suspicion and easily draw the hostility of the locals. He believes informing a local authority before pitching a tent saves trouble later.
Last birding season, when he went with a group of volunteers to a spit of land, roughly measuring 4,000 sq.ft., in the Pulicat lagoon, close to Anamalaicheri, he took the help of the local fishermen. That helped immensely. One of them retrieved the visitors’ tent, carried away into the waters by the blustery winds.
Thirunaranan laughs at the memory.
He says, “We can take away memories from camping trips, but should never leave anything behind. We should always leave Nature as we find it.”
