21-Jul-2008 -- My friend Gautam Nandy and I, Sean O’Brien had gone to a place called Pachmarhi, In Madhya Pradesh, India for some official work. One day sitting on the net we realised that there were three confluence points nearby. I had already visited a confluence point in Sudan, and hence was quite keen on visiting another. Gautam was soon motivated and another friend Ramachandran, provided us with a car (as the nearest confluence point was about 100 Km off).

We decided to leave Pachmarhi on 21 Jul 08, at about 0900h. Rajbala another friend who was very keen on coming with us had to back out at the last moment due to some unexpected commitments. We reached a point nearest to the confluence by car at about 1130h. Thereafter, we moved on foot with the help of a GPS. The confluence point was about 2Km from the road head. The going was tough in thickly forested hilly terrain. We had to cross two ridges and two dried up streams. Enroute we came across a hyena. We had heard that hyenas hunt in packs. We were extremely grateful to the hyena that he was not in a hunting mood and had not brought his pals along. Nevertheless, to avoid any altercation with the animal we took a detour and climbed up a re-entrant and over a saddle and reached the confluence point around 1415h.

After much high fives and congratulations and taking photos, we set back for our car. After going about 200m, I realized that we had perhaps not reached the exact point (23N,78E). We had touched a point 23.00.307N and 78.00.427. So we replotted and realized that we were still 1700m away from the actual confluence point. So tired as we were, we set off again and at a brisk pace and ultimately reached the correct confluence point at 1530h.

After taking the necessary photographs and drinking bottles of water we set off again back to our car. Luckily we came across a jungle track which we followed right up to the main highway, we were about 2800m from the car and had to thumb a lift to the car, and were grateful to see it. Altogether an exhaustive but nevertheless a memorable experience.