One fine afternoon, a few months back, my friends and I decided to go on an adventure. Every year, in the bright, colourful spring, we always went somewhere or the other for a holiday.

This year, we decided to go to Paris. This time, my best friends, Ayza and Sarah, came along with me. I was really excited as I had never visited Paris before and neither had my friends. A week after we decided on where we were going, we bought our tickets and packed all the things we needed for our trip. Since I love music so much, I just had to bring my mini speaker and my headphones along with me.

We boarded our flight and settled down to do our own things. I immediately put my headphones on and started listening to music. After a while, I started feeling sleepy and just before I could fall asleep, the pilot made an announcement, “One of our engines has failed. Everybody please grab a parachute and jump out as we may crash.”

Sarah, Ayza and I took a parachute each, held hands and jumped out fearlessly. After we jumped out, we fell free for a while before our parachutes opened and we slowly floated down.

We landed in a lush jungle, but all safe, thankfully. We were so curious about our new surrounding that we immediately started to explore the jungle. We came across colourful and exotic birds, such as wild parrots and love birds. There were tiny creepy crawlies scampering around our joggers, looking for food.

Soon we became hungry and tired due to walking so much, so we came to a decision that we should make a tent with the large, sturdy sticks we found and the parachutes. After completing our tent, Ayza thought of the perfect idea to camouflage it. We took all the leaves we could find and placed them on top of our tent. After our tent was completed, we ate some of the food we had managed to take in our bag packs from the airplane.

A few days later, we ran out of food so we were forced to eat all sorts of wild fruits and plants, including some fish that we caught from the streams nearby. We would roast and eat things, but it would always taste horrible. We were lucky that we at least found some raspberries and apples, and streams with fresh water.

A few days later, we were sitting inside our tent, just playing with sticks and missing home. Suddenly, we heard the sound of a helicopter overhead. We all quickly ran out and started waving to attract its attention. Finally someone in it saw us and managed to land it a few feet away.

When its engine stopped, the pilot came out and walked towards us. He told us that there had been a search going on for the passengers of the plane, which the pilot had managed to land safely in a field. He told us that the plane’s pilot had sent him to the jungle to see if anybody had ended up in here.

We were so happy to be finally rescued and quickly grabbed our things and climbed into the helicopter. The pilot took us to the nearest city and from there we caught a flight back home.

When we arrived home, our families were very happy to see us as they had been worried for days. We gave our families a big hug. We then told them all about our adventure.

Published in Dawn, Young World, April 25th, 2020