We woke up as usual. We got ready and started walking around 7:15. Today is Sowmya’s last day on the walk. Tomorrow she will take a flight back to Bangaluru. We will miss her on the walk. We walked through hills and fields. As we reached a small village we saw two baby goats and Sowmya just had to pick one up and pet it. The baby goat tried its best to get away but Sowmya caught it and petted it for few minutes. Once the goat realized what was happening it relaxed. We reached our lunch stop by noon and had lunch at Maa Narmada Seva Kutira in Dhalkheda. Each place we stop for a meal they serve hot food. Simple food. Rice Roti and Daal. Sometimes little vegetables. We ate and rested for while as it has become a routine in last five days, then we started walking again. Afternoon we stopped for tea and rest for few minutes. Each such stop gives us rest and rejuvenates us to continue. We reached the evening spot by 4:30
. The place is near the Narmada river. The name of the place is Bhukteshwar Shiv Mandir and Narmada Gowshala. They have about 350 cows. Many cows are old and do not give any milk. There are some that give but this place does not collect the milk because there is no one To milk the cows. We went to meet the Mukti Baba, person who runs the ashram. We found him smoking something that looked like Bidi(Indian cigarette). Not sure what was in it. He looked a little out of it. All he asked us was where are you from. He had about ten people watching him sleep. Some of them asked us more questions. After ten minutes or so we went back to our Asan (place where we sleep). This place rings a bell for each meal/tea time. Afternoon when we came we didn’t know this. When the bell was rung for tea we saw a few people walking over to the kitchen area. The tea kettle was placed on a counter outside for self serve. Later we followed everyone for dinner. It was special dinner for Deepavali celebrations. The desert was Sanjori(round deep fried pastry filled with homemade Mawa with sugar). This is only made for Deepavali festival. They also gave buttermilk. After the first serving both Baiju and Sowmya were hoping for more. They were missing buttermilk/yogurt at meals. So when the gentleman serving the food picked a bucket both of Baiju and Sowmya had the same thought and quickly picked up the buttermilk cup and gulped it down so that they can have a second helping. But the gentleman brought Daal. I noticed this from corner of my eye couldn’t help but crack up. This made both of them laugh.
🤣🤣🤣
. Jayprakadhjj, one if the Safhus, noticed this. All three of us were giggling away. Baiju and Sowmya did drink couple of more cups of the buttermilk. We had a great time thinking of it later in the night. Today we walked 20kms.