Cathy was sharing here tent with Shana. Their tent was adjacent to the tent occupied by Zia ma'am and Zoya. As soon as Zia ma'am and Zoya called it a day, Cathy and Shana also decided to sleep. Cathy was already tired like the rest of the students. She bid goodnight to her fellow students and Luke Sir and Sherpa and proceeded to her tent along with Shana.
All the 5 girls were tired and wanted to sleep early. The long walk through the forest, then the conifers and then the reforestation and finally the excitement of coming into the alpine area had indeed tired them. But all that excitement did bring tiredness but sleep was evasive. It was just not descending into the eyes. Maybe it was due to the fact that the tent was not like home. After all, sleeping in a sleeping bag is not an everyday affair. The comfort of one's bed and one's home is the best. That is why the saying goes, 'East or West, home is the best.'
What to do till sleep would overcome and eyelids would drop down and close? There were no telephone towers and no landline cables; hence, there was no connectivity. There was no mobile data which meant no what's app, no social networking site, no YouTube, etc. Cathy felt she was cut off from home and wanted desperately to have some contact with her parents. She was an affectionate child and like Zoya, an only child.
Zia ma'am knew that they would be cut off from the rest of the world and had informed all of them. The SMS and normal calling facilities were also not working. So, no one could connect to family and friends or access social sites. This made Cathy extremely sad. She started wondering how people managed when there was not much connectivity. It felt like they were back in the early 1980s when there were no mobiles. Come to think of it, it was quite peaceful in a way, without disturbance from anyone. No phones were ringing anywhere. No people with phones stuck to their ear and walking around without looking. Technology has its advantages but it has its disadvantages also.
Tomorrow morning, when they all assembled for breakfast, she would ask ma'am to try to see if the guest house had a system whereby they could contact their relatives just to tell them that they were safe and enjoying themselves. 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.
Cathy got into her sleeping bags, and was soon warm and snuggled inside. She tightly closed her eyes and started to count backward from 100. But there was so much on her mind that she kept forgetting and would keep starting her backward count from 100 again and again.
She was restless too, like Zoya, and felt that she should not disturb Shana who was sleeping in her sleeping bag. She was restless due to the unfamiliar place. No one can enjoy a good sleep in an unfamiliar place that too in a sleeping bag and that too at a camping site. She was more concerned about her parents. After all, though she was almost 18, she was still a child and had lived a protective life. She loved her parents and missed them. This was the first time she had been away from home overnight. She was very helpful at home and had learned to cook from her mother.
Besides this, she was in the girls' guide and they were taught a number of things like cooking on campfire and survival techniques, emergency measures, etc.
She started to think that Luke Sir was a nice person and he liked Zia ma'am. She felt his feeling for ma'am was more as compared to ma'am's feelings for him. Maybe he had fallen in love with her at first sight and had been watching her earlier, without her knowledge. Zia ma'am was reserved and it seems she had met Luke Sir for the first time today. No one can force matters, who knows that by the end of this camping trip, she might come to like him immensely which would turn into love later on? They seemed to be suited as a couple. Something like made for each.
She then started to reminisce about her own life until today. What had happened in her life and what she wanted to achieve in her future.
Her father's name was Ron and her mother's name was Reva and both of them belonged to City B. Ron was in the Air force. They had only one child and that was Cathy. She was born premature and had thus been handled with lots of love and care. She was pampered a lot by her parents as she was a precious child who had somehow survived by God's grace. After her birth and all the looking after that the parents had to do, they gave up the idea of providing her a sibling. Doctors had informed Cathy's parents that they should not go for another child as it would be dangerous for the child and mother.
Cathy was a weak child, naturally, born at 7 months and passing time in an incubator required the full attention of the parents. As she grew, she gained in strength and by the time she was 5 years old, she was fighting fit. She wanted to learn everything there was to learn and would operate the mobile of her father and mother going through the net to gain information.
Her mother had been a working mom but after her birth, she gave up her job to give her the best care. Her mom had felt that she could look after her daughter more than any maid could. Her mom had decided that she would go back to work once her daughter was in the 6th or 7th Class as by that time she would be capable of handling herself.
Perhaps as Cathy was born premature, there was an element of insecurity in her. She was always looking towards her parents to obtain their approval for anything she did. The streak of independence had not as yet entered her heart. Because of her closeness to her parents she had learned how to cook and manage everything at home. She managed her school work took. Everything worked like clockwork. She had joined the Girl's Guide to learn how to handle emergency situations. She had gone for day excursion trips but it was never an overnight stay.
She did well in her class and wanted to get into Hotel Management after she finished school. Hotel Management was a huge area with specific fields. Though she knew cooking she was more interested in the actual management of the hotel and thus was eager to learn all about the Hotel Management industry. She knew which professional colleges she would need to apply to do this course after completing her High School.
She thought that this camping trip would be useful for her to practice some of the skills that she had learned recently. So far, others were managing the show. Actually, Luke Sir had taken over everything. She wanted to manage things like him. Hopefully, an opportunity would present itself for her to gain confidence, she was sure about that.
Slowly her eyelids started to close and within minutes she was asleep.
Early morning, around 5 a.m. there was a huge disturbance outside their tent which woke both the girls. They could hear the sounds of screams, grunts, and persons were running here and there. Then there was firing from a gun. Both the girls left their sleeping bags and moved towards the opening of the tent. Cathy quickly unzipped the opening of the tent so that they could go outside. Just as they were exiting the tent they heard a shot being fired again. By the noises that were going on it seemed that a wild animal had made its way to their tents and attacked one of the tents. But who could have fired the shots? Hopefully, whichever animal it was, it was scared away by the gunshots and was not injured by a bullet fired from that gun.
The gunshots must have been fired by Luke Sir, Didn't he say that he was always prepared for any eventuality. He must be carrying a gun, she thought.