Thursday, June 29, 2006

Trek Diaries 2..

chk out the previous entry on my trek before carrying on.

Our group was christened as 'Bajrang Dal' (the reason being pretty obvious). The only one out of the 31 groups which led to a state of depression in our tent.

Trip to Kullu

After lunch we freshened ourselves up
and headed to Kullu. It is about 8 km from our camp.There was nothing much in Kullu to look around. We just shopped for a few things for the trek and returned to our base camp.


Cheapos didn't buy the caps! The owner of the shop was very amiable.He only gave the guys the caps carefully choosing so that each one wears a different design one.










On the way we got off from the bus, as we had lot of time in our hands so we visited the baes river.















We found a lot of stones having a flat surface then we started throwing stones so that they bounce off the water as many times as possible.



But Robstoy had plans for weightlifting :D



















Now to the most memorable event of the day!























We have camp fire every night during our trek. It is organized by each group every night. The group which landed a day earlier had the responsibility for our first night at the base camp. They came to our camp for singers/stand up comedians etc. I teasingly asked robstoy whether he was interested to sing and he agreed. On top of that we had an air guitar specialist rishi with him.I knew it was going to end in disaster so I closed my eyes when they performed. The song Robstoy sung was 'Sweet child of mine' with rishi as the air guitarist. It was a disaster Robstoy singing and Rishi giving out sound of a guitar. He finished the song quickly to the relief of our camp mates.

I came to know later that he finished the song quickly because he had forgot the lyrics of the song but he was happy that he had got an audience for his singing performance.

Great spirit.Hail Robstoy!

Monday, June 26, 2006

Trek Diaries 1..

The beginning
Just packed an air bag for the trek.Packing for a trek is pretty simple where u needn't take bath for a week :) . Then a 24 hr train trip to Delhi which I slept throughout. One of my school friends, Nisha Mohan, came to receive us at the station.She was our guide for the day. We roamed around the markets and malls of Noida.

The next day we met up with other guys of the group n were off to the Babeli base camp which took approximately 18 hours (Due to the Mountainous terrain).

You can't eat a lot on the way due to the meandering path which causes a vommiting sensation.










On the way we had a bad experience of eating at a Dhabha.The guys gave us salad and curd with what we had ordered originally. Then they added around 160 bucks for the salad and curd with the bill. We ended up having a heated exchange with the dhabha guys as the food also wasnt great at all.






The next day morning on the way to base camp, pit stop for b/fast :










Tomorrow the chicks will be all over us



We reached the camp around noon starved to death.We arrived just during the lunch time and went directly to thulp food.The food was great throughout the trek. i don't know why do we get bad food only in our hostels :( . I am learning cooking and found that its not tough at all to cook a decent meal.
















The anti climax after reaching the camp :












Finally they ended up all over eachother! :D


More in a few days time....captions courtesy Robstoy!

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

lets be on the safer side

I am back from one of the treks organized by youth hostel assoc. of India (YHAI).

In one of the camps I met one of the pioneers of the trekking expedition organised by YHAI. He is a professor of Botany, did mountaineering course in 1964.He is presently Vice president of YHAI.

We were talking about the general attitude around the world about the love for travel n adventure. He mentioned "we Indians always want to be on the safe side. We would never like to take risks. We have very bright brains but we still need to develop fearlessness towards taking risks.Many of them don'tcometo our trek eventhough evrything is taken care of and you just need to trek because of the fear who will go to the himalayas." He mentioned how he met many foreign students who go broke while travelling. Don't where they are heading next day and also on the shoe string budget they travel.

This is where I had been....on the background is the lake being formed from the snow at 13000 feet...