Gravity and evaporation – two basic concepts. We all study them in primary school but the magic of it all became apparent to us only the next morning when we lingered out of the cottage. Water flows down faster in the hills and the stronger the wind and sunlight, the faster it all dries up. This simple fact had eluded us engineering students. What lay before us was a rejuvenated landscape and an invitation by the snowline. Rucksacks left with the shack owner, we began the best part of the trek.
Ilaaka was around 5 km from Triund, set right where the ascent for the mountain pass began and the trip there was nothing less than awe-inspiring, and risky. The awe-inspiring part was the constant view of the snow-laden mountains, cool breeze and wilderness, the risky part was the 2 feet wide trail and the valley waiting to feed on one missed step. The rule of the game was to keep watching your feet as you go. You curse, you laugh, you scream, you sweat, you tire but you keep watching your feet. We would stop from time to time, gather around and enjoy the view but while walking the only thing we could appreciate were the small pebbles on the trail. Look at the big picture? Hell NO! In places like these, life is in the details…
We did have our share of moments. Dipped our fingers and one walkman in the ice cold water coming from the melting snow, clicked someone dangling from a tree trunk and casting his droppings like a bird in the valley below, climbed up to a cave only to chicken out lest there really was a bear inside, prayed to the lord when it seemed impossible to climb down from the cave, lay down on the edge of a rock barely supporting itself on the edge of the cliff, dived to catch the Frisbee only to realize it might have been the last dive, tried to take a shortcut from the already short path only to get stuck and scream for help. And more than all this, we evolved from acquaintances to friends…
All journeys should end in a circle. You go from one route, you come back through another. Else, it becomes kind of boring as the landscape has nothing new to offer and just in case you happen to be coming down a hill, it’s damn hard on your legs! Long before we had reached the town, actually more like halfway, I was done for. My legs were shaking, my toenails hurting with every step. At least on the way up, the frequent stops used to act as refreshers. Here, nothing helped. But climb down we did, for we obviously had no alternative. A long shower, a good dinner, a relaxed hour later I lay down to sleep, happy to have completed the trek, to have had so much fun and looking forward to just recuperate for the next couple of days. That was so not to be…
Friday, April 24, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
The Trek - Part 1: Triund and the Thunderstorm
Exercise Regularly! Quit Smoking! Exercise Regularly! Quit Smoking! Exercise Regularly! Quit Smoking! Exercise Regularly! Quit Smoking! Exercise Regularly! Quit Smoking! Exercise Regularly! Quit Smoking!
The feet screamed, the lungs sighed and the mind cursed as I dragged myself up the rocky trek which would lead our gang of five to Triund, apparently a nice place. The rucksack made things worse and it sure was not my idea of fun, at least back then. It’s not like I would be satisfied with just sitting at a foothill restaurant taking in the view while I wined and dined but I could definitely take things a little slower! Alas, being the youngest member of the group, I was being bullied into pushing myself to the limit. Thank god they realized that it would be simply impossible for me to carry the 20 extra pounds (in the form of a tent) and I was to drag myself and my rucksack with a hateful bottle of rum, shoved in at the last moment, to the top. Every extra kilo mattered and I didn’t even have the capacity to claim my fair share of it!
Slowly and not so steadily I managed to keep pace (by reducing theirs at times) and approximately an hour before sunset we reached Triund. That was one hell of a first impression! After the rocky climb, sweet green grass welcomed us atop the mountain with the huge one-piece rocks giving it a pre-historic feel. Amazing would be an understatement for the beautiful sight and the relief of finally being there combined to raise my mood to the extreme. Standing on the green lawn and staring at the ice-laden mountain right in front released an adventurous yet peaceful smile from deep within. The country’s nearest snowline that felt so far away while sweating on the trek now seemed just an arm’s length away.
There were just two small shacks which served basic food and a mini-cottage of the tourism department up there. Most climbers apparently trekked up in the morning and went back towards the evening. There was just one more tent on the ground, a brother-sister duo. We finished our tea and started our amateurish attempt at erecting our own. The wind was a bit strong but with the help of stones we were almost finished (after all, amateur we might be but we were 5!) when the brother-sister pair started dismantling their own. On enquiring we found that a storm was coming. What? We didn’t see any sign of it. The wind was strong but not so strong! And we were anyways erecting our tent in a safer place. But since we also knew our expertise on the matter, we decided to undo all the hard-work and dismantle our tent lest we lose the tent and with it the security deposit. And then it came!
The storm was fierce and it didn’t take more than a couple of minutes to reach full strength. We ran and took shelter inside the smaller-than-a-car shack, laying our rucksacks one on top of the other and huddling together in more or less the same way albeit horizontally. Then we finally realized that after all it might not be that most climbers “liked” to go back in the evening, there was only one cottage and hence only one tent when we reached. The cottage was an alternative, a very important alternative, in case of a storm. So essentially, we were a stranded lot. But that didn’t stop us from enjoying our soup and maggi and laughing out loud about the situation we were in. I don’t know why but it has been a habit of the gang to laugh harder and harder with every increase in the degree of screw-up we find ourselves in. I guess we find the “what a fool we are!” realization quite amusing.
By god’s grace, the brother-sister duo was nice and they took pity on us. On the other hand, considering the mess we had landed ourselves in, it would take a monster not to help us. Anyways, they gave us a small room where we could drop dead for the night in our sleeping bags. So we struggled through the rain to the cottage and lay down our stuff. The night set in and brought with it another realization – we had just one torch and that too good enough only to find a matchbox during blackouts in the city! For the dinner (dal rice at the shack) we had to again go through the hard rain and strong winds. Imagine walking amidst this weather on a rock strewn path when all you can see is the faint outline of the person ahead you and that too intermittently. It does build trust, well at least upon successful completion! So one person with the torch in front, we charged towards the shack, reached, had food, and charged back. We were going to get a lot of this trust based walk on a thin line of the trek in the next couple of nights…
Fear is one thing, free-riding is another and I just hope people don’t act like how we did that night in apparently emergency scenarios and rather give priority to the fear. The cottage was all of wood and through the window all that the 5 sleeping-bagged exhausted guys could see were signs of a fire – bright red flakes of ash fiercely kissing the window. It was cold alright, we were tired alright, all of us might also be afraid but we spend quite some time debating who would get out of his sleeping bag and check out what’s wrong. After a few rounds of pleading and cursing and what not, I finally gave up and rose only to find the wind playing in circles with the leftovers of a campfire. But what if it had really been a fire and even I didn’t give up in time? We were one hell of risk-takers. Grown up we have, hopefully…
Thanks to the storm and slippery terrain, we would not be able to trek further up to the snowline. And so the first day ended and with it the adventure. At least that’s what we thought…
The feet screamed, the lungs sighed and the mind cursed as I dragged myself up the rocky trek which would lead our gang of five to Triund, apparently a nice place. The rucksack made things worse and it sure was not my idea of fun, at least back then. It’s not like I would be satisfied with just sitting at a foothill restaurant taking in the view while I wined and dined but I could definitely take things a little slower! Alas, being the youngest member of the group, I was being bullied into pushing myself to the limit. Thank god they realized that it would be simply impossible for me to carry the 20 extra pounds (in the form of a tent) and I was to drag myself and my rucksack with a hateful bottle of rum, shoved in at the last moment, to the top. Every extra kilo mattered and I didn’t even have the capacity to claim my fair share of it!
Slowly and not so steadily I managed to keep pace (by reducing theirs at times) and approximately an hour before sunset we reached Triund. That was one hell of a first impression! After the rocky climb, sweet green grass welcomed us atop the mountain with the huge one-piece rocks giving it a pre-historic feel. Amazing would be an understatement for the beautiful sight and the relief of finally being there combined to raise my mood to the extreme. Standing on the green lawn and staring at the ice-laden mountain right in front released an adventurous yet peaceful smile from deep within. The country’s nearest snowline that felt so far away while sweating on the trek now seemed just an arm’s length away.
There were just two small shacks which served basic food and a mini-cottage of the tourism department up there. Most climbers apparently trekked up in the morning and went back towards the evening. There was just one more tent on the ground, a brother-sister duo. We finished our tea and started our amateurish attempt at erecting our own. The wind was a bit strong but with the help of stones we were almost finished (after all, amateur we might be but we were 5!) when the brother-sister pair started dismantling their own. On enquiring we found that a storm was coming. What? We didn’t see any sign of it. The wind was strong but not so strong! And we were anyways erecting our tent in a safer place. But since we also knew our expertise on the matter, we decided to undo all the hard-work and dismantle our tent lest we lose the tent and with it the security deposit. And then it came!
The storm was fierce and it didn’t take more than a couple of minutes to reach full strength. We ran and took shelter inside the smaller-than-a-car shack, laying our rucksacks one on top of the other and huddling together in more or less the same way albeit horizontally. Then we finally realized that after all it might not be that most climbers “liked” to go back in the evening, there was only one cottage and hence only one tent when we reached. The cottage was an alternative, a very important alternative, in case of a storm. So essentially, we were a stranded lot. But that didn’t stop us from enjoying our soup and maggi and laughing out loud about the situation we were in. I don’t know why but it has been a habit of the gang to laugh harder and harder with every increase in the degree of screw-up we find ourselves in. I guess we find the “what a fool we are!” realization quite amusing.
By god’s grace, the brother-sister duo was nice and they took pity on us. On the other hand, considering the mess we had landed ourselves in, it would take a monster not to help us. Anyways, they gave us a small room where we could drop dead for the night in our sleeping bags. So we struggled through the rain to the cottage and lay down our stuff. The night set in and brought with it another realization – we had just one torch and that too good enough only to find a matchbox during blackouts in the city! For the dinner (dal rice at the shack) we had to again go through the hard rain and strong winds. Imagine walking amidst this weather on a rock strewn path when all you can see is the faint outline of the person ahead you and that too intermittently. It does build trust, well at least upon successful completion! So one person with the torch in front, we charged towards the shack, reached, had food, and charged back. We were going to get a lot of this trust based walk on a thin line of the trek in the next couple of nights…
Fear is one thing, free-riding is another and I just hope people don’t act like how we did that night in apparently emergency scenarios and rather give priority to the fear. The cottage was all of wood and through the window all that the 5 sleeping-bagged exhausted guys could see were signs of a fire – bright red flakes of ash fiercely kissing the window. It was cold alright, we were tired alright, all of us might also be afraid but we spend quite some time debating who would get out of his sleeping bag and check out what’s wrong. After a few rounds of pleading and cursing and what not, I finally gave up and rose only to find the wind playing in circles with the leftovers of a campfire. But what if it had really been a fire and even I didn’t give up in time? We were one hell of risk-takers. Grown up we have, hopefully…
Thanks to the storm and slippery terrain, we would not be able to trek further up to the snowline. And so the first day ended and with it the adventure. At least that’s what we thought…
Friday, April 3, 2009
I Just Meant I Would Like To Be In Touch
‘You do not stand a chance! It has been months since you had a haircut, days since you shaved and there’s quite some beer on your breath! These Brazilian folks aren’t gifted with the strong sense of smell that Indians are when it comes to liquor but they are a hundred times more concerned about looks!’
The logic of the voice in my head was right and I sunk in my seat with resignation. The bus was taking us to Rio, an overnight journey from Curitiba, from where we would take our flight home, to Nova Dehli. We hadn’t even crossed the city limits and Shukla was fast asleep. Me? I was listening to the voice from the seat behind. Listening to just the voice as the spherical words of Portugese were still giving me a miss.
She was travelling alone, nothing unusual. She was gorgeous, nothing unusual. She was tall, nothing unusual again. Then why did I get attracted towards her when nothing seemed extraordinary about her by Brazilian standards? Maybe it was the absence of cleavage which so often takes a guy’s attention away from the face. Maybe it was the fact that I was leaving the country the day after. Maybe it was simply that she was travelling alone and that would make any single man at least wish what I was wishing. It was probably something I will never figure out. I kept listening to her voice and then she too fell asleep and so did I.
The beard and hair weren’t much heavy to carry considering the weight of the confidence I had in me. I had never approached a girl, let alone a stranger. I felt my teeth would fall out of shame for uttering incomprehensible things if I ever dared to. So I slept thinking of the homecoming, of the new experiences in the last one month, and occasionally, of the girl sleeping in the row behind.
The pit stop and the noises that followed woke me up from my slumber. I headed out and in no mood to eat anything, I sat on the bench outside and lit a cigarette. And as luck would have it, she came and sat beside me. Was she eating something? I don’t know, all I remember of that moment is I suddenly managed the courage to ask “Fala Ingles? (Do you speak English?)”. I was so astounded at myself and so delighted when she replied, “A leetal” that I suffered a temporary loss of sanity. Not just that I couldn’t decide what to say next, I stubbed out my cigarette to hand out the lighter when another girl approached me to light her smoke. (In retrospect I have often wondered whether I had a chance with this other girl. She was also alone and it was obvious she deliberately chose me in the midst of so many smokers. But I was uninterested to say the least!).
Her “leetal” actually meant very very little for I would have given her 1 on a scale of 10 for her English skills. But that was better than zero, right? So I struggled through the conversation for the 20 odd minutes we were there and then boarded the bus again. As I was about to settle down on my seat I had another bout of valor and asked her if I could sit beside her. Boy, I was on a roll!
I am a liar. I prefer to call it White Lying. The kind that doesn’t hurt people and yet benefits you. I used to use it so much that friends and family could probably see through them but strangers weren’t that well-equipped. And that night was the one when I probably lied the most ever. When she told the story of her guy cheating on her, I fabricated my sad failed love story. When she told me something about her college days, I had a similar story ready. I was an expert in the Indian way of life. Heck, I didn’t just read her palm lines, I also read the ones on her forehead. Boy, that was intimate! Holding her hand, looking in her eyes and forecasting something that would make her laugh or smile.
I told her I liked her and she took the compliment pretty well. (Only if she could know how much effort it took me to say that the end might have been different.) I told her I liked her, we chatted about something else for a while and then I again told her I liked her. This time she got the cue and then the bubble burst, the light faded away, the hope sunk. She said something in Portuguese. I knew she was saying a polite No but pretended I couldn’t understand and repeated a third time….. “I like you… and would love to keep in touch.”
And then I flew home, bringing with me the image of her face which I drew in the two hours I stared at her while she slept so peacefully right next to me. The eyes, the nose, the hair, the lips and the bangle-sized earrings.
It was her face, yes. It was her face…
P.S. – the one (translated) email I sent never got a response. I am no expert now about how these things work but back then in 2003 I sure was an amateur. What makes me believe that I ain’t one no more? The fact that now I have a real love story to tell and that too with a happy ending.
The logic of the voice in my head was right and I sunk in my seat with resignation. The bus was taking us to Rio, an overnight journey from Curitiba, from where we would take our flight home, to Nova Dehli. We hadn’t even crossed the city limits and Shukla was fast asleep. Me? I was listening to the voice from the seat behind. Listening to just the voice as the spherical words of Portugese were still giving me a miss.
She was travelling alone, nothing unusual. She was gorgeous, nothing unusual. She was tall, nothing unusual again. Then why did I get attracted towards her when nothing seemed extraordinary about her by Brazilian standards? Maybe it was the absence of cleavage which so often takes a guy’s attention away from the face. Maybe it was the fact that I was leaving the country the day after. Maybe it was simply that she was travelling alone and that would make any single man at least wish what I was wishing. It was probably something I will never figure out. I kept listening to her voice and then she too fell asleep and so did I.
The beard and hair weren’t much heavy to carry considering the weight of the confidence I had in me. I had never approached a girl, let alone a stranger. I felt my teeth would fall out of shame for uttering incomprehensible things if I ever dared to. So I slept thinking of the homecoming, of the new experiences in the last one month, and occasionally, of the girl sleeping in the row behind.
The pit stop and the noises that followed woke me up from my slumber. I headed out and in no mood to eat anything, I sat on the bench outside and lit a cigarette. And as luck would have it, she came and sat beside me. Was she eating something? I don’t know, all I remember of that moment is I suddenly managed the courage to ask “Fala Ingles? (Do you speak English?)”. I was so astounded at myself and so delighted when she replied, “A leetal” that I suffered a temporary loss of sanity. Not just that I couldn’t decide what to say next, I stubbed out my cigarette to hand out the lighter when another girl approached me to light her smoke. (In retrospect I have often wondered whether I had a chance with this other girl. She was also alone and it was obvious she deliberately chose me in the midst of so many smokers. But I was uninterested to say the least!).
Her “leetal” actually meant very very little for I would have given her 1 on a scale of 10 for her English skills. But that was better than zero, right? So I struggled through the conversation for the 20 odd minutes we were there and then boarded the bus again. As I was about to settle down on my seat I had another bout of valor and asked her if I could sit beside her. Boy, I was on a roll!
I am a liar. I prefer to call it White Lying. The kind that doesn’t hurt people and yet benefits you. I used to use it so much that friends and family could probably see through them but strangers weren’t that well-equipped. And that night was the one when I probably lied the most ever. When she told the story of her guy cheating on her, I fabricated my sad failed love story. When she told me something about her college days, I had a similar story ready. I was an expert in the Indian way of life. Heck, I didn’t just read her palm lines, I also read the ones on her forehead. Boy, that was intimate! Holding her hand, looking in her eyes and forecasting something that would make her laugh or smile.
I told her I liked her and she took the compliment pretty well. (Only if she could know how much effort it took me to say that the end might have been different.) I told her I liked her, we chatted about something else for a while and then I again told her I liked her. This time she got the cue and then the bubble burst, the light faded away, the hope sunk. She said something in Portuguese. I knew she was saying a polite No but pretended I couldn’t understand and repeated a third time….. “I like you… and would love to keep in touch.”
And then I flew home, bringing with me the image of her face which I drew in the two hours I stared at her while she slept so peacefully right next to me. The eyes, the nose, the hair, the lips and the bangle-sized earrings.
It was her face, yes. It was her face…
P.S. – the one (translated) email I sent never got a response. I am no expert now about how these things work but back then in 2003 I sure was an amateur. What makes me believe that I ain’t one no more? The fact that now I have a real love story to tell and that too with a happy ending.
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