Travel

Touched By An Angel

T. SHER SINGH

My pet peeve over which I am known to often rant and rail is the Big Ugly that Niagara Falls has been turned into, especially by us Canadians who have control of the lion’s share that falls north of the border with the U.S.

I often try to imagine how it must have looked before the developers and hustlers arrived and, hand-in-hand with the town’s greedy and ignorant burghers, conspired to shroud it all in chintz.

Oddly, one has to go all the way to a country like Venezuela to get a vision of what it must have been like in its pristine state. Provided, of course, you can first manage to get past Venezuela’s own chintzy resorts.

Everybody’s heard of Angel Falls, the world’s highest waterfall. There’s a wonderful glimpse of it in the opening scene of Jurassic Park. At 1000 meters high, it is 18 - yes, E-I-G-H-T-E-E-N! - times as high as Niagara Falls.

But that’s not what makes it ethereal. It’s everything else about it.

We bought tickets for a day-long trip on a small plane which would fly us 400 km inland, over the great Orinoco River and into Las Gran Sabana, a region where the rainforest then still thrived as it merged with the Amazon forests and spilled over into Brazil.

The brochure touting the trip showed a smart 20-seater aircraft, impressive in its modern sleekness. It explained that it would take us about 2 hours to get to our destination. It also explained that because of its isolation from the world, and the fact that it was surrounded by dense forest, we would merely fly through the canyon and try and catch a glimpse or two of the falls from close quarters.

Provided, of course, the cloud cover which usually blanketed it was impregnable and would permit such a manoeuvre. Success or failure, we would then head out to Canaima, a native village 50 km away which boasted a landing strip, and spend the rest of the day on a hike through the rainforest.

We arrived at the Porlamar International airport at dawn. We were quickly shepherded out onto the tarmac.

As we emerged from the building, however, Pedro, our guide, informed us that there had been a slight change: we would be flying in a Dakota.

“Of 1943 vintage,” he added, with a mischievous glint in the eye.

I was familiar with the rickety Dakotas. The last time I had flown in one was as a young boy in India. I remember the considerable hulaballoo when Indian Airlines had announced that it was “modernizing” its fleet by replacing its ancient Dakotas with Fokkers.

That was half a century ago … I wasn’t even in my teens then.

Pedro had stunned us with news of this switch, but hastened to assure us - with total sincerity - that there had never been an accident on such flights, and that the Dakota, though ancient, was not only sturdy, it was also the ideal aircraft to be on while flying at close range inside a canyon, doing short circles.

A Tilley-equipped German contingent that had joined us for the journey, glowered at us and our qualm-laden faces, their eyes yelling “Chicken!” at us. We didn’t say a word.

Once in the air, we resigned ourselves to “que sera, sera … whatever will be, will be.”  Even after discovering that the seats were ancient, possibly stolen from a variety of discarded planes, now somewhat tackily bolted onto the bare floor.

There was no insulation, no niceties. We threw our knapsacks onto the bare metal floor, stretched out our legs …  l-o-t-s of room!  The seats rattled, the plane shook and vibrated, but at least we weren’t bothered by seat-belts; the contraption was from an era before the safety device was invented.

And this was Venezuela!

I could clearly see our two pilots from where I sat. There wasn’t much of a wall - and no door - between the cockpit and us. One was reading a magazine. The other, irritated by the glare of the rising sun, picked up a newspaper and neatly scotch-taped it over part of the windshield, before settling down in his seat.

They looked perfectly calm. So, we too resigned ourselves amidst the roar and rattle. The scene that we could see unfolding below us through the window quickly distracted us.

Our eyes followed the vast waters of the Orinoco until it disappeared into the savannahs.

A plush carpet of green took over and roller-coasted over relatively untouched hill and dale. From time to time we spotted isolated settlements of pre-fabricated dwellings: evidence that “civilization” had arrived and was poised to play havoc with anything that could yield a quick profit.

We disappeared into a thick quilt of billowy white, and our worries returned. We kept an eye on the pilots. In our private thoughts - it was impossible to have a conversation in the din - we mused about the inadequacy of pre-World War II technology and whether the clouds would mercifully force us to turn back. 

And then, right on cue, as if somebody had pulled back the cloud-curtain, a majestic scene unravelled before us.

Huge islands appeared above the clouds and then, as the cotton balls blew away, they revealed themselves to be the fabled tepuis: a hundred plateaux scattered throughout southern Venezuela, many of the flat-topped mountains as much as 1000 meters high.

This meant we were close to our goal. The pilots came alive. The cockpit was roomy. One of them beckoned us with hand motions to join them in groups of two or three, to hang around them for a bit so that we could get a panoramic view through the windshields.

Pedro informed us, through exaggerated lip-movements and accompanying hand-signals, that we were indeed approaching Auyun Tepui (“Mountain of the God of Evil”), whose flat-top alone was about 800 sq km in area.

It was atop this mountain that, 60 years earlier, an American bush-pilot, Jimmie Angel, crash-landed his four-seater plane in a marsh and, while attempting to find his way out on foot, “discovered” the kilometre-high drop of the Churun River down into the Canon del Diablo (“Devil’s Canyon”), before it merged into the Carrao.

Ergo, Angel Falls. (Somebody quipped that it was merciful that the “discoverer” was not named Smith or McDonald!)

Miraculously, the clouds were gone.

We entered a canyon, flying low - the cliffs towered around and above us. Midway into the “U”, somebody yelled out - “There!“

And there it was.

No gush like the Niagara. In comparison, only a trickle.

But it cascaded from way above, the top almost out of sight, and fell, slow-motion, taking an eternity to reach the ground.

It didn’t. It bounced off the rocks below, exploding into a mist and turned everything around it into pastels.

The pilots, as excited as we were, swung the aircraft around.

One of them saw us clicking away with our cameras - we were in the cockpit! - and leaned over and slid a window open. A gust of cold air rushed in and sent the newspapers flying.

We were but a hundred feet from the cliffs, the rocky face shooting by at lightning speed - things were moving too fast to permit any thoughts of safety.

A misty-spray filled the cockpit.

“It’s here again”, a dozen voices in a babble of languages yelled out in unison.

Then, all sound evaporated.

The plane flew on, in slow-motion, as if. The groan and rattle of the tired machine were gone. We froze - sitting, standing, bending - whatever we were doing.

Even the cameras seemed to click and whine silently.

The cliff parted, and a thunderous roar - primal, timeless, all-pervading - poured in through the open window. It turned all white outside.

We floated by.

No one moved.

Then, in an instant, it was gone. We were surrounded by lush green again.

As if on a signal, we dived towards opposite window, and then back again, as the pilots decided to do one more fly-past.

One of them made strange motions at us; they didn’t make sense. He stuck his head out of the window, literally, pulled back in, looked at us and shuffled out of the way.

It was too good to be true to think and waste even a split-second.

I held onto my turban with one hand, put the other around my beard as best I could, and stuck my head out. Couldn’t keep my eyes open. A flash of white permeated my being. Awash in spray, I rested my head on the sill.

How long was it? A second? Two? Eternity?

Minutes later, as we headed out of the canyon, heading for the air-strip in Canaima, we sat quietly in our seats, dripping though smothered in towels, consumed by the vision.

I limply lifted my camera and realized I felt one with it. The shuttered lens of our eyes and soul had been given a split-second glimpse of the splendour, of sheer majesty, and then, it was gone.

But the image was indelibly photo-synthesized on the mind’s eye. Forever.

Two days later, back in civilization, a Venezuelan told us of the seven Cessnas that had crashed into the cliffs of the Auyun Tepuis during the last 18 months alone. No survivors.

And then, there was the Dakota which had to crash-land nearby in the village of Kavac, but all had survived - except the pilot. The sudden whirlwinds and rainstorms tended to take the most experienced of pilots by surprise.

Strange, I said to myself. I wonder why they didn’t state all of this in the brochure.

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