Author: Aryan Yadav, Class VI F
Today, my grandfather and I met for the first time after the lockdown. I was so excited to meet him and by the way, I forgot to tell you that my grandfather lives in Assam. We both are nature lovers. Sadly people have started to destroy nature.
When our flight reached Assam, we took a taxi to my grandfather’s house. My grandfather is a retired forest conservationist. There was a small but lush green forest. In the evening, my parents had to go somewhere, so they left me with my grandfather. After a few minutes, we heard a call of distress coming from the forest, so we headed into the depths of the forest. We heard the call of distress again and followed it, and finally, we found it was a sambar caught in a trap set by hunters. It was wounded because of the trap. The sambar tried to stand, but it could not do so, as it was badly wounded. I gently moved my hand around its body to pacify him, and soon it got to know that we were his friends and not the ones who would cause harm. We decided to take it home and take care of it, but then we realized we were lost in the forest.
I asked my grandfather if he had his phone. He checked his pockets. He had lost the phone. It might have fallen out when we were running. It was still daytime, and we had the rescued sambar with us, so we quickly started working. My grandfather told me to look after the sambar and find a cave by the time he went to gather some food and wood.
I soon found a cave. It was very dirty, so I took a branch of a tree and used it as a broom to clean the floor. After cleaning the floor, I took the sambar inside the cave. Then I went out and got some grass for the sambar. After a while, my grandfather also came back. He had brought some fruits and water, but before drinking the water we had to boil it, so we had to light a fire. My grandfather came up with a technique named The Hand Drill, which he had learned during his forest survival training camp. It would take some time, but it was the only option we had, and luckily we were able to light the fire and boil the water. We drank some water and also gave it to the sambar, and then we slept.
On the second day my grandfather went to set some traps to catch fish, collect some firewood and water. I loved watching survival channels. So I know something about the wild forest. There were many bamboo trees around our cave. I took a stone as a sharp knife and started to cut some bamboo trees to make a raft. It took me the whole day. When my grandfather returned, I was shocked to see that he had a handful of fish and fruits that night. We ate nicely.
My grandfather said that we needed to set a huge fire as a sign that we were alive and help the police find us. I showed him the raft I had made and he was happy and hugged me. We got back to chopping down wood for the fire. It was evening by then. We started the fire at night. We saw some torches at a distance. We were so excited! And then we could hear the footsteps closer. Then we both shouted with excitement, so the police could hear us, and it did work. We saw the police and finally we were rescued.
This was the best adventure with my grandfather.
