Chapter 14 Danny– his story (1/2)

Danny was sharing his tent with Ben. Their tent was adjacent to the tent occupied by Zia ma'am and Zoya on one side and that of Sunny and Sherpa on the other side. The boys had occupied tents at the extreme ends kept the tents of the 5 girls and their teacher in the middle. This was to provide protection to the girls in a way.

As soon as the girls bid good night and headed for their tents to sleep, the boys also made their way towards their respective tents. Danny and Ben also bid good-night to their fellow students, Zia ma'am, Luke Sir and Sherpa. Then they headed towards the end of the tents towards the forest side as they had pitched their tent there.The tent of the girls and ma'am were after their tent. Next to their tent was that of Sunny and Sherpa.

Danny had been very excited about the camping trip. He had read up about the area where the camping site was and he was intrigued with the three days trip. In a way, it was an adventure. Like Chris he wanted things to run smoothly but if then there would be nothing exciting about it. But if they met some obstacles/difficulties on the way and cleared these obstacles, then the trip would really become adventurous.The night sky and the moonlight being reflected by the snow covered mountains was a dream-like scene and it was so beautiful. The moonlight was shining on the mountains and the white silvery glow was being cast on the tents. The sky was so clear that one could see clearly even a few bats flying around on the other side of the hills from where they had come.

Danny wished that they would take another route than the one they had used to reach the camp.He liked to study stars and was a stargazer. His father had even bought him a powerful telescope to do stargazing. He found the night sky fascinating here in the campsite. The clarity of the stars was astonishing. At home, he had never been able to see so many. There was no pollution here so there was no haze and you could see an abundance of stars. In the cities and due to pollution there was a constant haze and you could only see a hand full of stars.He had not packed his telescope for the trip but he had used the telescope that Luke Sir had brought. It seems that Luke Sir was also a stargazer.

He saw that his tent mate was also getting into his sleeping bag.

Due to the excitement; it was perhaps not easy to sleep as sleep would not come into his eyes. Sleep was playing hide and seek with him. Anyway, he decided to follow the example set by Ben and jumped into his sleeping bag. He tried to sleep by counting backward from 100, then he also started counting sheep but nothing was happening. He was also restless and unable to sleep. After all, it was not his bed and his bedroom at home. The comfort of one's bed and one's home is the best.

Ultimately, he tried to visualize his mother singing him a lullaby that she used to sing to him when he was a toddler and started humming the tune. He had to sleep as lights were out and there was nothing to do to pass time till sleep would take over. Without phones, life was extremely difficult. He could not even read his favorite novels on web-novels. They all were getting a taste of no connectivity, no phones, no mobiles, no net, no YouTube, etc. and no electricity.

He knew that in the early 1980s, people had those landline phones which were the push button types. Earlier than that, the phones had a dialing system where slots were from numbers 1 to 0 and you had to place your index finger in one slot then dial it all the way around one after another to dial a number and call someone. His father used to tell him all these things. Even with those types of phones, mankind was able to launch numerous space visits including a landing on the moon in 1969. There were a number of call booths called Telia in Sweden, PTB ( Public Telephone Box- the Dr. Who's Tardis type phone booth) the UK or some other name like PCO (meaning Public Call Office in the Subcontinent of India and Pakistan). You could call within the city, outside the city and even outside the country.

Now everyone used mobiles and many people had surrendered their landlines unless it was an add-on for internet plus mobile and landline and nominal charges. Progress is a continuous process and it takes time.

Anyway, it was quite peaceful without phones ringing everywhere. He had never realized that people had made this technology from helping in connectivity into a nuisance value to some extent. He was disgusted with the way people used this mobile technology. People were always on their mobile phones. Even when driving or while crossing the road they would not stop using them. These chaps were a hazard to others as well as themselves and such action on their part caused major accidents as they walked looking into their phones and drove while looking into their phones. Technology had its disadvantages too.

All said and done, he still needed to call his parents to let them know that all was well with him. Parents do tend to worry about their children. In the morning he would try to contact his parents.The guest-house should be having a system whereby they could contact their relatives just to tell them that they were safe. If the guest-house could not help then, of course, there was the Sat phone with Luke Sir.He had mentioned that he possessed one when they were trekking to this camping site.

Danny felt that Ben had finally fallen asleep as he could not hear any movement from the sleeping bag of Ben.