National Himalayan Winter Trekking Expedition (Reaching Dalhousie)

We were part of the "National Himalayan Winter Trekking Expedition" starting at Dalhousie organized by Youth Hostel Association. Name sounds fancy? Well only the name does.
More on that later though.

There is a great saying, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Duh! Isn't it obvious?
But my first step was actually in the reverse direction i.e cancelling the trek as Leena fell sick. Hence she had to drop off the trek. Our original plan was to do the trek and bring in the new year in Himachal itself. But instead, i cut my trip short and decided to return after the trek while Leena took rest at her mother's place at Nasik.

I met the Gang (i.e Varun, Arun, Amit and Uttaran) at the New Delhi Railway Station.



Yeah, all of them are smiling(seems more like they are doped). Uttaran seems fit for the Center Shock Commercial. He is losing hair but claims to be in denial. He trying all sorts of Hair styles; wants to do a "Bucket List" of his hair before them falling. What does the hair think?
"I just want to fall off before freaking people out!"

Anyways, now we had a whole day to kill in Delhi. The train to Pathankot was in the night. So First Stop, was Karim's in Old Delhi near Jama Masjid. We took a tonga ride. tonga - horse driven cart for the uninitiated.


Oh wait! What about the after-effects of a 36+ hrs train journey from Bangalore to Delhi ?



Uttaran, the self proclaimed foodie and also the person who claims to have lived in Delhi for 4+ years gave the orders.
The food looks tasty and obviously unhealthy.

All satiated after the meal

Now, after the meal "normal" people would do some sight-seeing in Delhi. We headed to Connaught Place. Stood outside a cinema hall comtemplating whether to watch the [cough]horror[cough] movie, "Rab Ne Baani Di Jodi". I wished "Rab" would "rub" some wisdom into us. And guess what? Next Stop, TGIF !! Yayee, an overpriced pub. Now thats something you don't find in Bangalore.

Uttaran with his rusty knowledge then directed us to another pub which supposedly played decent rock music. The rock music playing club was now a sports bar with all TVs all over the place showing anything but the current "Test Match between Ind and Eng" and playing Disco songs with the singer going "OOww!" every now and then.
The rates were high, the happy hours freebies were quite sad. Hence after half-an-hour of free water and AC, we coolly walked out.

Next stop Barista!! Obviously. If you want have the best coffee its Delhi dude, not Bangalore!
After Ozzy and Arun showed off their out of tune guitar skills, Uttaran his writing-random-numbers-in-empty-boxes appearing-to-solve-sudoko skills and Varun his just-sit-and-stare-in-the-sky skills, we finally headed to Old Delhi Station.
Once the train started chugging along, I got to know Varun's entrepreneurial ventures during his college days which still funds his overexpensive wardrobe. We discussed everything under the sun including office gossip, emacs v/s vim and so on.
We reached foggy Pathankot next day morning. If you want to know, Pathankot is a dusty and dirty litttle town (just like any other town i guess) with a strong military presence.



We had breakfast (lovely parathas) and headed down to the bus stop.



Yeah, i know we look like two shady guys trying to sell dope to school kids. Alright, i don't but Varun surely does. and yes we seemed on a high.

After 4 hrs of travel, we reached Dalhousie. Dalhousie is a town with a old-world charm slowly giving way to tourism and everything that comes with it (tourists, garbage etc). Our base camp was just a 5 min walk from the bus stand. It had a building with beds to sleep, hot water to have bath, mobile charging points and also had free wifi access. Sadly we all work for a company where no one can afford a mobile with wifi capabilites.

Wait a sec! Building? Beds? Hot water? I thought this was a trek! and also wheres the snow?? I was roaming around in a half sleeves T-shirt . Was it winter, really?



Yeah, Coming back to the title "National Himalayan Winter Trekking Expedition" . Himalayan ..no snow! Winter no way. Trek? Wait and watch, things are going to get worse.

We got ourselves registered, dumped the luggage, cleaned up (in all sense) and headed down market place for some shopping. Rest of the gang, sans Anna reached the camp at night. We had our first encounter with a mountain goat a.k.a God father.



and then next day, we had another encounter with another [cough] mountain goat [cough] whose toothbrush had been used to clean everything except his teeth.

Take A closer look at the brush.


We had a early morning exercise where the leader caught Uttaran faking his exercise (You can fake that too) and called him a 60-year old man and also an insult to Bangalore in pure Kannada.
Then we headed to Panch Pula(Bhagat Singh's Uncle's memorial...yayee) for our acclimatization walk.
The great Anna, joined us for the acclimatization walk and complained. " Its not cold, lame trek, comparisons to Sar Pass and so on". I got to hear this till i found a cure, more on that later though.

We mostly walked on the road. What kind of acclimatization walk was this? I later realized, it was actually to get acclimatized to walk on the road with heavy shoes, heavy jacket and heavy bag because this is what we did exactly on the first day of the actual trek.

Yeah so no trek, just a hike for the first day atleast.

You can have a look at the Trek Pics
Stay tuned for part 2 .

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Three pics from the trek!

Here are 3 pics that at best describe my antics during the trek. A blog is surely in order. But for now..



Collecting Garbage.



Collecting Money.



Don't ask what i am doing to Hemanth.

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Successful Experiment

Whenever you come back from an outing say a trek or just a picnic, your mood will instantly turned of after seeing those dirty shoes. Sometimes it could be your sparkling white sports shoes that had to go under.
We suffered this emotion during our recent outing. Fear not,my dear friends i have a good solution to all such problems.

Just put those dirty shoes into the washing machine!
Yes you heard me right! Washing Machine !!

We had heard/read about washing the shoes in this machine. After being hesistant initially, we decided to take this chance.

The machine soaked, washed, rinsed and spinned the shoes. In the end, my shoes came out sparkling white!! OK not sparkling but pretty decent to repeat this experiment.

The washing machine also remained cleaned.

So go ahead and give your shoes the special treatment it deserves

Icebreaker Speech

In IBM Pune, I am part of the local Toastmasters' Club known as the IBM Thinkmasters.

The first speech that you give here is known as the Ice Breaker. Typically you would take about yourself.
I did just that and i am going to share is here.

Good Afternoon Everyone!
This is my ice breaker speech.
I will talk about myself.
But I won't be talking about Academics and things like that.
I will talk about a bit of my hobbies, experiences and the lessons
that i have learnt.

My Hobbies
----------
I love travelling a lot.
My favourate state is Himachal Pradesh.
In the last 5 years, i have visited Himachal 4 times.
I like going unknown not-very-popular destinations rather than the regular tourist places.
I love travelling by train. As i kid, i was always fascinated by the train and i still enjoy travelling
by train. Along with travelling another thing i enjoy is trekking. Recently I completed 10-day trek again in Himachal.
Besides that, the biggest two passions i have reading books and watching movies.
I typically read a lot of non-fiction books, and the categories range from History, Economics, Philosopy
to Travellogues.
In movies, no specific genre...any good movie is fine.

My Experiences and Lessons learnt
-----------------------------------
1. During my school years, i had fallen into bad company. I was distracted from studies, good friends
and a lot of positive things.The end result was that i got really bad marks in SSC i.e 10th.
I found it tough to get into a good college. Luckily I did get into a good college.
My parents did support me a lot. I realized my mistakes then and worked to correct them.
I studied hard and got good marks in my 12th. That helped me get into a good engg college.
The lesson i learnt from this is that
"we will make mistakes in our life; we will fall down but life
always gives us chance to get up and rectify these mistakes
and we should take those chances and make full use of them"
In the movie "The Shawshank Redemption", there is very dialogue
"Salvation lies within". This is very apt.

2. In 2004-05, I had just finished my 2nd yr of engg and i had gone with a local pune group for a himalayan trek.
On the last day of the trek, (the day we have trekked the most). We were completely exhausted.
I, along with another friend on the trek got lost in the jungle.
We were lost and spent the entire night in the jungle.
I was just an amateur trekker back then, just learning and this friend was an expert.
We had to cross a lot of dangerous terrain which wouldn't have even in our wildest
dreams. Even though I was not a greater trekker or very fit trekker, i never thought of quitting
no matter how tough or dangerous the terrain was. We are lucky to have lived to tell the tale.
I learnt firstly "Don't get lost" and "secondly, When there is a will, there is a way"

3. Now, I will talk about the most important part of my life.
I am really lucky that I got to marry the love of my life.
There were a lot of issues which we knew of before hand, that
would surely prevent our being together. There were times
when our closest friends would say that it not going to happen
and that we should stop seeing each other etc.
But obviously, we couldn't live apart and things fell into place
and everything got resolved.Again My parents supported me here as always.
I learnt that "When want something from the bottom of your heart
the entire universe will conspire to make it happen and surely does!"

These are some of the most important lessons that i have learnt in my life.
I thought sharing these experiences and the lessons learnt would help others.

I hope i have broken the ice !

Interesting Incidents during the Sar Pass Trek - Part 3

This blog completes the trilogy of the interesting incidents that occured during the Sar Pass Trek. Some one got inspired to go for such a trek after reading the first Part. Leena told me to warn him that such things don't happen to everyone just a few lucky ones like Me .

Incident 6: Correlating 3 incidents

Here i just correlate 3 events and the conclusion is highly speculative and may not even be true.
This happened at Guna Paani camp. During the night,in our tent we talking general stuff. (Incident 1) One guy (Mr P) mentioned that during his visit to Hyderabad, he visited a pub where there was some semi-nude dancers. Although he couldn't stick around for the whole show as his wife was waiting for him at him; He felt he was deprived an oppurtunity of a lifetime. Moving to the next morning. All in our tent didn't sleep well because of the uneven ground. (Incident 2) I was surprised when Mr P said that, He had a very sound sleep. I thought "Lucky you!". Before we move out of any camp, all the tents have to cleant. (Incident 3) I and Hemanth usually cleant our tents. We went inside and were dusting all the blankets, when i noticed that the blanket i was dusting has a round wet spot around 6cm in diameter. It was coincidently Mr P's blanket.

Just correlate the 3 incidents mentioned above. Get a hint? Hemanth and other folks who told this story got the hint.

Incident 7: Atop a bus

One of things in Himachal not to be missed is sitting on top a bus. Yes! not inside but on the top. We experienced it twice during the trek and once after the trek. After finishing our trek and moving out of the Kasol YHAI camp, we were waiting at a bus stop to catch a bus to Manali. A private bus stopped and we were to climb on top of that bus. The conductor stopped us; it was against the rules to do. So we kept our luggage on top and sat inside the bus. After crossing Bhuntar, the bus broke down.

We all got off. Luckily another bus of the same company came along. Well there wasn't any space inside. So we all went top of the bus. Yayee! Dream fulfilled.

We enjoyed the journey though cautiously circumvented all the wires and trees in the way.
Krishna said he didn't know what to expect next. We surely didn't. It started raining. We were ok with the drizzle, but then it came down hard. We got down at the stop; leaving our bagts on top of the bus. The bus was already overfull. Before we could get in, the bus started moving. We were now left at the bus stop without our bags.

We waited patiently and helplessly for the next bus. We desperately climbed on it and hoped our bags were safe.
We thought at Kullu, we would change buses as that was long stop. When we reached Kullu, we realized the bus that had our luggage had already left for Manali and this bus was only until Kullu. Things were getting worse or more exciting i can't say.

We then boarded the bus Manali. On reaching
Manali, we realized none of us knew what was the number of that bus that had our luggage. We spanned out all corners of the Manali bus stop. We eventually found our luggage, although we had a hard time explaining the conductor as to how we and our luggage travelled on different buses.

Incident 8: Solang Valley

Manali, one of most sought after tourist places in India is crap. So are places around it eg. Rohtang Pass , Hidimba Temple and worst of all Solang valley. We were told by some one in the trek, that Solang valley was a very good/beautiful place. I, having visited Manali the 4th time (in the last past 5 years) already knew that Solang Valley would be as good (or bad) as Manali. But I was ready to proved wrong. So when these folks were making plans to go to Solang Valley, i didn't play spoilsport and followed the plan.

We rented a taxi (for 600 bucks) and reached Solang Valley. Now the question what is Solang Valley?
Is it a beautiful valley with amazing vistas?
The answer No!, its just a flat ground with a few hills around it. The flat ground has a lot of stalls put of akin to melas or fun fairs we visited as kids. This had some adventure sports though.
Like you can do gliding for less than 2 mins but for more than 600 bucks. Or Stand inside a big ball and roll inside it for another 700 bucks.
We had already spent 600 bucks for the cab, and had had all the adventure we can think already!
Evidently, these guys were all pissed and ready to track down that camper who adviced us this place and beat him up.


Paragliding



Rolling in a ball

Krishna was thinking of ways of claiming back the 700 bucks. There was a stall put up where if you knock out all the glasses from the table with a ball, you get 500 bucks. You pay 20 bucks for 3 tries. Fair enough?
Krishna was ready to take the chance of losing 20 bucks. Sri decided to take a shot.
Did he have a good aim ? Did he have the necessary skill ? Could he have made it to any IPL team even the Royal Challengers?
Well, the answer is No!! He missed all his tries, by almost a kilometer. But could he have still made it to the Royal Challengers team ? With their current form, can't really say!

That was the last incident that happened. After that we all parted ways, Krishna and Sri went to Shimla for some more adventures. I and Hemanth returned to Delhi and then to Pune and Bangalore respectively.
It was truly an amazing trip i had done in recent times especially with all the incidents that we witnessed/experienced.

Interesting Incidents during the Sar Pass Trek - Part 2

Incident 4: Fart Master.

It was around 5am in the morning at the Kasol Base camp. I was half asleep. I heard a really loud noise almost like those really loud lakshmi bombs that go off during Diwali. My eyes were wide open. It was a fart. Not only did Hemanth,Sri and Krishna confirmed that, they also told me that when i was out the tent to attend nature's call, another bomb went out. Only after a couple of days did we find who the culprit was ( I'll refer to him as Mr.F) ; as he always tried to better his record. There were other bombs let of by his buddies (as though competiting) that went out in our tent but albeit of lower intensities. We were trapped.
Now, during our trek through Sar Pass, there was a very steep climb where it was adviced that only one person climb that stretch at a time. Hemanth And Krishna had already crossed. I was next and Sri followed. Sri stayed back and waited until I crossed . Now Mr F comes overtakes Sri and is trying to climb. Sri told him to wait until i complete. But this guy was in a mighty hurry. He started climbing. The scene looks like this, Sri is standing and Mr F has started climbing just above him. Now Mr F fires out a bomb (loud enough to cause an avalanche ) right in Sri's face. When Sri finally reached on top. His face was worth looking at, but we weren't looking we were laughing our heart out.

Later we found Mr F and his buddies wolfing down a lot of groundnuts. We dreaded the night ahead.

Incident 5: A fight.

Which are the verbal fights you like the most? I really enjoy the ones where the participants don't understand each others' language. On the trek, I witnessed a fight between a female who was continuously yelling in Kannada and a guy apparently arguing back in Hindi.
How did the fight start?
There was an old rickety bridge which only one caould cross at a time. Each one took turns. This Delhite overtook the female from Haasan, Karnataka albeit cutting lanes. The lady freaked out and started yelling . This guy surprised as ever was quiet initially as lane/line cutting in Delhi as very normal. Even after a lot of the folks tried to quell her anger, she still kept yelling unecessarily. Eventually this guy also lost his cool and started yelling back. This female's husband also joined in and knew only Kannada. It took a while to resolve the whole issue.
I can understand folks arguing when they understand each other's language. But its really amusing when they don't and just vent out their anger.
In Rheotic, Hemanth asked, "Have they come all the way up (8000ft) to have a fight? Don't we do it everyday in the cities?"

Incident 6: First Slide/Torn Pants
We had heard from other folks from previous camps, "Don't miss the kilometer long slides around Sar Pass". So here we were at the first natural snow slide. We were explained how to sit and go . There wasn't any support . If do something wrong you're screwed. How could I not goof up here? You sit; lie back; keep your legs in the air and slide down. Your elbows are your rear brakes and Feet the front brake. We all know what happens if you apply the front brake instead of the rear brakes. As if i didn't know that already, i did exactly that.

Initially during the silde, i was going down on the support of my back. Then applied the front brakes for some reason. I had a blackout for a second. When I opened my eyes again, i was sliding down on my stomach!!
When i reached down, i had snow all over and inside me (including underwear); folks were laughing their heart out. Krishna exclaimed, " This was the most entertaining slide, we have seen. Why do such things happen to you?"

Now, while trekking in snow you aren't always sure in which parts have snow melted and in which parts are they intact. So normally the guide tests the snow and makes the path, you just follow. Near our lunch point, i was walking around generally on untested snow. I kept my foot on one patch, and my leg went way down. I heard a particular sound which you don't want to. The result :


Yes, my jeans were torn at a very strategic position. Luckily i had another set of pants ( which were worn out). I didn't have a choice. The following day, what i dreaded came true. These pants also tore. Yeah and at the same place. I was lucky that Hemanth lent his jeans and they fitted. He kept verifying though that his pants weren't going to be a victim too. Krishna again exclaim "None of the other campers had any torn pants, You had two! Why do such things happen to you ?"

Wait, there are another set of incidents. Stay tune for Part 3!

Interesting Incidents during the Sar Pass Trek - Part 1

I am not going to write a blog about how the Sar Pass trek was in general, instead i am going to write about the interesting incidents that happened during the trek.

Incident 1: Learn to wear your belt correctly

This happened to me on the very first day at the base camp itself. Hemanth has a pic of it. I hope he uploads it quickly.
We were moving out of our tent for a session on first-aid. When i came out of the tent, i realized that i had forgotten to wear my belt. So i got it out and started wearing it. This happened while standing out the tent. After buckling the belt; i started to move. Then i realized, i couldn't; something was holding me back. All the folks around me started laughing and clicking snaps. Only then i realized that not only did the belt go through all my pant hooks, it also went through one of the ropes of the tent. The rope that keeps the tent standing. Hence i couldn't move and gave people a hearty laugh.

Incident 2: Life gives you chances to say "No", use them!

After Incident 1, we moved to the central camp for a session on First Aid. The lady doctor called on volunteers (who she guided) for showing how to attend to sprains, setting up an oxygen cylinder etc. For the last demo, she scanned around the tent, and her eyes feel on me. She called me forth for a demo on CPR (Cardiopulmonary resuscitation). In layman's language Mouth-to-Mouth . I thought she would just make me lie down, talk in general about it and let me off. How wrong was I ! . First i was told to take off my T-shirt. Then the guy acting as a aid was told to take off my belt!. Folks started laughing and i started getting a bad feeling about it. I prayed to God, "Please not the pants! not the pants!" . Luckily the pants stayed on. She explained certains things and then came the mouth-to-mouth . Yes, the lady doc gave me a mouth-to-mouth. Lucky for me she placed a handkerchief on my mouth before she proceeded. Unluckily, i could hear flashes go off. So photos were clicked, and were then used to blackmail me.
Later folks, asked me what was going through my mind during the incident. I replied I was praying to God "Please save me!!"

Note: Lady Doctor wasn't hot.

Incident 3: In search of a special kind of grass

This happened at our first camp, Gunapaani. Hemanth and I climbed up a small hill nearby. We were later joined by another person from our trekking group. He was married, had 2 kids and seemed in his late 30s. He started searching for something in the grass. He mentioned that in Uttaranchal, there is a special type of grass which cost 10 grand per kilo. Hemanth guessed it to be some sort of dope. He said no dope. It was good for sex. We were amused. He then told us the story of the discovery of the grass. Farmers found that their old and useless male horses had suddenly become "very active". The farmers were surprised and kept a watch on them. Then the farmers found this special grass . I was in two minds to ask, how did they find out that it worked for humans also ; before which we were out of that place.

There are more incidents that happened. I'll talk about them in the follow up of this article. Stay Tuned!

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