Impressed by the peace and quiet of the place, I decided to spend one night there to experience a fuller exposure. The setting is totally pastoral. Tribals living here and there survive on forest produce - quantities of honey and gums among them - and cattle herds. Names of places in the neighbourhood reflect this, for example Goras, a small tribal habitation almost ten kilometers away. Nostalgia could induce a sense of spurious romanticism. But one is not in the land of milk and honey. Harsh reality of survival forces the locals to sell most of what they have.

I reached there towards the day's end. At night, it was very quiet except for the continuing gentle murmur of the river broken by an occasional sharp call of a wild beast or a fowl. The night was starry signaling the nearing end of rains, and rain-washed skies had a beauty which they can achieve only in a place away from the dust and din of humanity.

I got up early next morning. Daybreak slowly exposed the surrounding glory. With first light, one could see animals and birds on the water's edge and over it. Later the rising sun created in the small pools of water on the river's stony bed gem-like brilliance, which kept changing its shade with the passing hours and the play of clouds above. Or, was the river looking at us with so many eyes.

The rest house itself is a beauty. Originally a hunting lodge of the Scindias, it is a watch tower like structure with rooms below and above. The view from above is breath-taking. Forests stretching for miles together. The cook-houses are joined with the main building through a corridor which, in fact is a coach of the erstwhile Gwalior Light Railway. Its coaches still run between Gwalior and the wilds of Sheopur Kalan on very narrow rails, offering a thoroughly enjoyable toy train journey, though the fact is so little known.

The railway coach sitting there lock stock and barrel is a special attraction. Somebody's brilliant idea. The walking space inside is hardly 6-7 feet. One can see in it a precursor of Railway Coach Restaurants the world over whose Indian counterparts exist in the Taj Palace, Delhi and the Ashok Lakeview, Bhopal.

As I slept that night in the rest house - was it a sleep or a reverie mixing reality with imagination - I was overcome by a sense of history. I dreamt of the scions of the Gwalior ruling house with their vast retinues spending some of their time in the same surroundings. Next morning, I found evidence of it in the wash room in the form of a beautifully painted though slightly chipped ceramic jar by the side of the washing-bowl. It was no doubt a heritage piece, still surviving there.

For me the night spent there is an unforgettable experience of nature in the wild. To experience it, though we have to step out of the creature comforts and air-conditioned spaces. There nature opens itself out to us in all its majesty in vast spaces and open skies and we feel its all-surrounding embrace.

Dharmendra Nath