Be warned in the very beginning that this happened a long time ago. In fact it happened such a long time ago that you would be well advised not to believe a word of it. Why so? Because my recollection of it can no longer be trusted I guess.

I was at the beginning of my career, working as a mechanical design engineer in a company that shall stay nameless, and we had got this whopping project in a Cement Plant that was coming up in Rajasthan. Our company was understaffed, and the people were perennially overworked, so as soon as the design part was over I got bundled off to the plant, to help with erection and commissioning of equipment I had designed. THAT was a familiar experience though.

Real back-of-beyond eh? The nearest town was Sirohi, about 25 kms away; nearest railway station was Sirohi Road; from there the road to Udaipur passed through this small village where we were supposed to put up. The plant was another 20 kms further, but there were no places where we could stay there. The road went along to Abu Road, the gateway to Mount Abu, tallest peak of the Aravalli range.

As it happens, initially, the two of us could not locate a place to stay, so in desperation we rented an empty garage in the town and stayed there for a month or so while hunting for houses in the evenings, and toiling to set up the site office during the day. No fans, mosquitoes, scurrying rats - because of the heat we would keep the rolling shutter halfway up, switch on a noisy table fan borrowed from the owner of the garage, trust our luck and sleep.

The dominant animal forms in that village were pigs and donkeys. And rats - people may remember the terrible plague epidemic in Surat of Gujrat; our place was not very far off and there were some cases of plague there also. Mostly being Jains, the people never used to kill the rats off, so entire villages and towns were breeding grounds for plague germs. The donkeys were touchingly obstinate; the pigs were having a lot of babies all the time, so there was an abundance of little pigs with their striated marks running around.

The road to Udaipur skirted the village and soon got into the forests that lay along that road for a distance of around 60 kms. There were stories about tribal people in these forests who tried to supplement their meagre livelihood by occasionally looting a car or two - fairly honest, I would say - so after 5 PM there were no travellers along that road, except a few buses in groups.

My colleague went back to Delhi to get a means of transport - essentially an old open jeep that had been purchased - and drove it back to where we were. After that we took a local driver. He, luckily, was married to a woman who was the eldest daughter of one of the local tribal chiefs, so travelling with him at the wheel was considered very safe for us. Mentioning his name even if he wasn't around was supposed to work. I had to put it to the test once while returning from Udaipur after a delay there, when our driver was sick - and it worked!

By this time we had set up our office - at the very back of the cement plant, closeted on three sides by low hills. Supplies had started coming, so our yard was full of steel sections and plates, and fabricated equipment. We appointed a security guard. Beyond the hills more of the local tribal people lived. We had several raids on our yard, essentially to lift scrap steel, by these honest people trying to supplement their livelihood, and the first time the guard challenged them he had three arrows shot off at him. Luckily he had a mere scratch, but next morning we were greeted by the sight of a two foot long arrow sticking out of the door to the office, and a security guard in hysterics. We asked him to stay inside the office at night and not challenge anyone who might covet a bit of steel. On complaining to the Plant officials, they offered jobs to the tribal people as unskilled labourers in exchange for their stopping their night time raids - that worked, though they refused to let go of their bows and arrows when working.

That reminds me of a story - how the Britishers had cajoled the Afghan tribes living around the road to Kabul to not shoot at each other across the highway, but always civilly march off to one side of the road and settle their disputes, so that travelers along the Kabul highway stayed unscathed.

We were ringed in by near and distant hills, with a hue of colours - green, burnt earth, ocher, yellow, reddish, black, brown; the sky was so clear it was like wine; once winter came the temperature stayed near 2°C at nights and once went below zero. Our driver, despite his dubious exalted status was desperately poor, and had no warm clothing; so I, who was rich in warm clothing - I had two pullovers, mind you - and a knee length jacket as well - gave him one of mine. I have not since then seen such an expression of gratitude in anyone for any good turn I may have done. By the way, I did not realize until later that the jacket I had bought off the streets of Delhi for a bargain was actually meant for a woman, not a man.

Further up, the loftier peaks of Mt. Abu and surrounding mountains dominated the sky, all hazy and purplish, with wonderful sunsets every day, and clear lakes by the way side. Little merry rivers insinuating their way around boulders, below culverts, made me think of Kenneth Graham's description of a river in his Wind in the Willows: "Never in his life had he seen a river before - this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh." They belonged to that class of rivers, in my mind.

We had located a place to stay - an entire upper floor of a house of Jains. They were unmindful of most things but were cautious about checking up on whether we were vegetarians. We said we were. The only place you could buy mutton there was to go near the railway station and locate a dubious shed where a Muslim family used to sell mutton. We would buy that and take it to the top floor, light some incense so that the smell of mutton cooking did not waft down, and have it. Other times I used to try out mutton cooked at a place on the highway, but the amount of red chilli powder in the curry was beyond me, so I gave up such misadventures and while eating out - which was most of the time - stuck to the fare available at the usual places - huge local breads, a generous helping of clarified butter, pulses and whatever vegetables would be available - precious few, actually.

To buy site supplies we had to drive to Udaipur; to send a fax we had to often drive atop Mount Abu, as the only other available fax machine 10 km away was often out of order; but generally driving around in that locality was a treat, so who would mind? Once our driver wanted to take us to a temple. We drove along the road with a hill slope on one side and a precipice on the other, both with thick jungles, then took a right turn, drove along for some 200 metres and there we were. A smallish temple, with a stream flowing right through. While coming back, the priest came out and clapped; and numerous monkeys came rushing down the slope at the back of the temple; graciously waited while we bought some goodies for them from a lone shop keeper there - bananas, and some cheap sweets - then snatched the entire bag out of our hands and went off. People apparently went there to feed the monkeys.

At the place where we stayed we realized there was another semi-airborne form of dominant life in the village - the Indian Langoor with a black face. They were regular marauders in the village, but earlier from the level of the garage we had not taken notice of them. When we started using the roof we had lively encounters with them almost every day.

Later on when the Plant's guest house facilities went up I was invited to come and stay there - that was another saga. No animals there except jackals at night, and large camels tottering along at day time, led by their owners. Hard work and solitude. I had taken a number of books along - among the books I read during that time was one history of the Boer war that I still remember - for a while Koos de la Rey was my hero.

Travel back to Delhi was either by bus - very strenuous - or by train. By train I used to travel in the company of a courier the company had - he knew all the ticket collectors, so he could get you onto any train and bribe the TC with a bottle of cheap Indian whiskey and travel without tickets, essentially. Not because I wanted to travel without a ticket, but because it was impossible to get a ticket at such short notice. If just a bottle of whiskey would not do, at Ajmer he would get down and buy some chicken kebabs and omelettes and fortify the drinks with that. Once two TCs and the courier got merrily drunk on the train and I got picked on by all the passengers for having such an atrocious travelling mate.

I still dream occasionally of that ring of hills in the distance and their rude forms and colours. All in all it was one of the most beautiful places I remember.