KALAHEO — Atlanta man Vittal Karra was chasing a rainbow on the evening of April 25 when he got lost for 15 hours in rainy Kauai jungle wearing only pajamas and slippers.
He had no phone, no food, and no water, and lost his shoes halfway through the night.
Th experience, he said, made him want to spend more time in the wilderness.
“I slipped down a cliff and slept under farm equipment with swarms of mosquitoes. I came across wild pigs and throughout all of it I thought to myself, ‘one must experience the wilderness to know the fullness of life,’” Karra said over breakfast five days after the ordeal.
The Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources State Parks Division recommends planning for hikes by doing things like wearing the proper clothing, knowing the trail you’re about to hike, knowing the conditions, understanding your own limits, and not hiking alone.
Karra didn’t follow any of those rules and he acknowledges his story could have turned out badly.
“Next time I will be much more prepared,” he said.
Karra got lost between Kalaheo Gulch Road and Lokoawa Bay on his third day on the island and while it all started with a rainbow, the adventure quickly became painful and a bit scary, he said.
Once he’d gotten the shot he wanted of the rainbow, Karra decided to continue to the trail he’d heard about in an attempt to get to the beach.
“Deciding to go out on a hike that direction that late, that was his first mistake,” said Fred Statila, the friend with whom Karra is staying in Kalaheo while he’s on the island. “Sun sets around 7.”
After getting directions from a passerby to go through some fields to get to the beach, Karra found his way to the shoreline, but a steep cliff and thick vegetation gave him pause.
“I found a break in the bushes, though and so I grabbed a stick and kind of made an opening and started to hike down, and I marked my way with stones,” Karra said. “But then the rock where I put my foot came loose and I slipped.”
He continued: “It was already dark and had already started raining at that point. I couldn’t see the beach anymore. I didn’t know what to do, so I just followed the stones and climbed back up.”
Once he pulled himself back up onto the top of the seaside cliff, Karra tried to take a rest, but instead came face to face with four or five wild pigs, complete with their young.
“They were protective and I was in their territory and they charged,” he said. “I bowed my head and backed out of there and then I walked and walked and finally came to some farm equipment.”
It was still raining and Karra said his legs were starting to hurt, so he decided to take shelter under the farm equipment.
“I’m guessing that was at about 10 or 11 at night,” he said. “I drug myself under the farm equipment and it was full of swarming mosquitoes.”
That’s when his legs hurt even more.
“I got scared. It didn’t feel OK, it felt like something was wrong. They were really hurting. I sat in lotus (position) and that seemed to help,” he said. “At that time, I heard police sirens and hoped it was someone looking for me, but I couldn’t get up.”
Eventually with the help of prayer, mantras and willpower, Karra did stand and started jogging.
“It was very painful,” he said, “but I didn’t want the blood to clot. I was really worried about that.”
After jogging until his legs wobbled, Karra slowed to a walk and the rain stopped, revealing shooting stars and a waxing moon, and that’s when Karra took a moment to enjoy the beauty of Kauai’s nights.
“I was in awe of nature. Suddenly I felt so very connected to all of it,” he said.
Karra wandered in circles, not knowing where he was going and finding rest alongside the fish pond at Nahunakueu.
He says he knew he’d found civilization when he finally saw lights on the top of a hill in Kalaheo at about 3 or 4 in the morning.
It took him a couple more hours to get to the neighborhood and he said when he finally stepped back into civilization, the first thing he saw was a school bus driving down the road.
“I was so tired and I tried to get a ride back to Fred’s but no one would pick me up,” Karra said. “I was lost, and then I was close to the house and Fred found me. He was driving around, looking.”
Statila had been looking for Karra for several hours. He called the police department at about 1 a.m., but had inclinations that something was wrong when he didn’t come back to the house before dark.
“I started checking all the hospitals because too much time had passed,” Statila said. “He wasn’t at any of the hospitals, so I started looking for him.”
Throughout the ordeal, Karra said he stayed calm. He compared the type of fear he felt occasionally through the event as akin to how you’d feel if you saw a ghost.
“I was lost, and when I feel that fear, like I saw a ghost, I will look the ghost in the eye and ask what it wants,” he said.
