Saturday Trek

To get up early in the morning itself is a big deal and that too at 4:30am and after a mammoth round of beer the previous night is a complete no-no. But thanks to a smart deal (by me) and another big thanks to the inventor of the snooze alarm (no need to thanks Peter Henlein again) that made me get out of my dreamland in time. I don’t want to mention all those feelings, obstacles, procrastinations (???) and troubles of getting up early in the morning. You all know that well.

5 am was the time decided to meet my companion Naved, with whom I was going to start this expedition. After a quick breakfast (I don’t know why I felt like having one before a trek) I gave Naved a call at 4:50, expecting that he would already be leaving his apartment. He picked up the phone after a long ring (must have been busy with daily chores) and told a hello in a very husky voice. That was the moment my intuition told me that some of the (my) stars are not in the right places. The conversation was vaguely like this.
Me: "Good morning, are you ready?" (As it was already 4:50)
N: "Good morning, yeah! But the time fixed is 5am"
Me: (Wondering what does that mean? or are 10 minutes too much for him?) "Yeah, it is. So come down"
N: "I will, but why did you wake me up so early?"
Me: (I knew by the sleepiness in the voice itself that something is wrong. Still, being polite.) "Early? What time is it?"
N: "Its not even 4:30" (And I was cursing Henlein this time).

The rest is history. Oh no, don’t think that we gave up. But the chances were enough. Anyway, we started at 5:35am and used a taxi to get to the base. There were 3 known routes, the East gate, the South gate and the doubtful Main gate. We started from the main gate and within 15 minutes, as expected (not by us) lost our way. Any of you who have been to any trek (not with concrete pathway) knows well what does losing your way mean. But they also say that when trekking gets tough, the tough (read "trekking-morons") decide to follow any track that looks like a path, be it some crushed grass or a rocky cascade and we chose the latter.


Fortunately there wasn’t a trace of water and I know well how slippery the rocks are when there's water running down the fall. (Makes me remember of Bhimashanker trek in Sahyadris, near Mumbai). Crossing the fallen trees, climbing big rocks, getting bruises (at least I got few) from the bushes and taking pictures (yeah, that was the only time, till then, we felt like doing something worthy) we climbed for around half an hour when Naved felt (Having a GOOD feeling during a trek like this is not only beneficial but also quite necessary) that he found the actual path somewhere down the left of our current path. But the hard thing was to get on to it as it seemed to be at the end of the hill and the clay was quite loose. So he went ahead in search of the ACTUAL path and disappeared while I waited. Suddenly I heard a "mil gaya (got it)" which rejoiced me so much that I literally started humming "Koi mil gaya" song from a bollywood movie. All this time our only inspiration was the partial glimpse of the tower at the top of the hill and also the trees that were partially blocking the sun to torture these two (I included Naved as I do not want to take the full credit of this expedition, *wink*) scatterbrains who fairly had any idea about climbing.

After another thirty minutes (half an hour sounds less to me) we found that we reached a pebbled road, which reminded me of someone's comment (after I irritated him with my repeated questions about the pathway for this trek) that "You can never lose your way on this hillock (??)".

I thought that we actually had to walk on this road only and finding it after so much trouble is like reaching to the peak itself. Overjoyed, we started showing our photography skills to each other (you can witness them as "Saturday trek" at http://photos.yahoo.com/anujmishra).

Following the road we started again and after some 15 mins found out that it is going down. What the heck!. STOP! About turn! Forward March! Our spirits were too high to get bothered by this small shortcoming of our trekking skills (We felt like that only, after finding that ROAD). Walking, talking and consuming the single packet of biscuits we tread the other direction and after half an hour what we found was not just shocking but also interesting. How come the road goes downwards both the ways? What a real heck! Shall we follow another water-less waterfall was a big decision and Naved favored this but my Angadian attitude left us looking for a sign of the actual path. (Angad is a character from great Indian epic RAMAYANA and if you dont know any of these then read Angadian as "stubborn". *This reminds me of my another Angadian attitude on a monsoon night during the descent of Bhimashanker, with SARDA and Tayal and Sons which left all of us in a death trap by some tribal*. Oops~ the quotes in asterisks are only for few people, others do not get bothered by this).

Soon, we found (I did) a ribbon tied to a bush. The rest of the part was easy except that the soil was pretty loose and there was a deluge of caterpillars (from the heaven).

The descent was pretty cool given the same conditions again and due to one of them I slipped a few times and decided then and there to lose a few pounds and to buy a new pair of trekking shoes (the suitable time is yet to be decided, if at all there’s going to be one).

The tremor

Ummm~ Feeling lethargic I rolled in my hot bed trying to shrug off the drowsiness from my eyes. With great effort I tried to figure out the hands of my table clock and recognizing that familiar angle between them, I turned a little and was about to get up when my mind told me that it is a Sunday. What a superb feeling it was. There was no need to leave that cozy environment. I once again thanked the old Greek philosophers to invent such a great division of the days. Every Sunday is a gift to me. I also thanked the technological advances made by humans, as I cannot find anything snugger than this hot mat. And I thanked my Korean friend to help me with my online transactions for this mat.

Having been thankful to a lot of human and abstract powers of the world, I finally got out of my bed. Not because I had any aversion to enjoy a Sunday morning nap but I had to install Hitman Contracts on my PC. For this game I had spent my precious three Saturday night hours and still I could not run it. Last night I went to bed after 3am but even then I have to get done with this before 11am for there was one wedding ceremony (my first in korea and that too of a korean friend) to attend in the afternoon. I recalled what I had done yester night. I could remember mirc, winiso, daemon tools, alcohol 120% and one site having step-wise-instructions to install this game. Stepwise instructions are very important. I remember once I was cooking Dam Aloo using online instructions and finally I ended up having a Aloo-bharta-curry "without tomotoes" just because of that "smash them properly" line.

Anyway, I strictly followed these step-wise-instructions this time and after spending my most precious two sunday morning hours (which would have helped me to explore some new horizons of my imagination during my comfy nap, lying on this precious gift from another like minded human's fabulous imagination) in front of my PC and finally ending up with lot of installed programmes, Trojans and adwares in the process of searching something I can not mention here and also losing two of my valuable EMPTY disks, I gave up on Hitman. The hands of the clock again had some unwanted angles between them and I decided to get ready for the wedding ceremony as it takes three quarters, at least, of a silent-hour (use a bus in korea and you will come to know about this silence thing) to reach the place.

I started with shaving and needless to say that the moment I entered the washroom the comsoul of Elvis Presley, Eric Clapton, Black Sabbath and Kurt Cobain apprehended me. (Comsoul is a term indigenously developed at the Neungpo apartments, korea and it simply means "the combined soul of", mind it its only one soul but has multiple personality...oops~ that’s the reason I do not watch Hollywood movies). Surprisingly my apartment mate did not make any noise and that means he was awake ^_^ (Don’t ask me, even I do not know this strange phenomenon). Having cleaned myself of some unwanted, God-or-else-biologists know why-always-growing hairs, I decided to trim my odd looking (people say so) arbit-shaped beard.

I was almost finished and was trying to create an optimum temperature of the water to wash my face when the door of my apartment mate’s room opened ajar with a bang and yelling my name aloud he ran out of the apartment. Before I could answer anything, a big gust from the apartment door (our apartment is at the top of the hill) rushed in and started shaking everything in the apartment, even the floor of the toilet. Bewildered, I looked outside the toilet (the door was open all the time) and had a glimpse of my computer shaking violently along with the table. I was about to get angry on my apartment mate’s strange behavior when all of a sudden my mind went blank. I was able to see, feel and listen everything but somehow the mind did not respond. The best way to explain this situation would be to compare my mind with a computer that was "hanged" because a lot of "heavy" information has been provided to the processor simultaneously. But thank God brains do not reboot ^_^. And I realized that the floor couldn’t be shaken by the wind. But till then it was over. My roommate came in and before he says anything I understood that it was a tremor, my first earthquake, which I did not experience at all.

Party Time

Another party~ yeah another party, second in the week, yet. But this was not just another office party. This one was special. Special in two senses: First the menu was pretty different than usual, routine office-party menu and second the occasion bein special in the korean culture. My colleague was celebrating the first birthday of his son and that is a big event. The koreans celebrate this event with great pompousness. Another similar event is celebration of the 100th day of the child. I have been to one such party also. We get some gifts for the child and sing birthday songs. The reason I said these parties are different first of all is a huge gathering in comparison to normal parties and then the menu. Ofcourse~ I was more interested in that only. Apart from normal kim pab (rice), meat and noodles there are different kinds of fried dishes, cakes, cookies and many other things about which I do not have idea (other than the taste).

The ride back to the apartment was in RETONA (REtun TO Nature) of my another colleague. Either he drives fast or the wheels are very high or whatever but it made me feel like i am just going to take off and so naturally I fastened my seat belt. And as usual grabbed the sides of my seat also. Before I could cry out in fear and anticipation of another phyeuntek episode the car banged into a lorry. It was a new
car and it being the second collision this year itself, the driver was pretty mad at himself. We tried to console him (given that I can speak a single sentence in korean but I can make good faces). It was fortunate for us also as we were also about to take off. But either my colleagues intuitions are quite sharp or my prayers sometimes really have some effect, but we managed to stop at a safe distance from the
two collided ones.

Coming back

As expected, I started feeling the cordial environment at Incheon itself while going through the immigration formalities. So instead of telling the officer that "I am coming from India and I have a multiple entry visa", I told him that "I, indo..multiple entry visa" and like always he understood that very well and wished me a good stay in his country.

Exhausted by the long journey I tried to take a quick nap in the local flight from Gimpo to Sacheon but the air hostess, to much of my annoyance, which I could not show at all as I was lost in her pinkish smile and partly in her eyes (partly because the eyes ofcourse weren't big enough to drown a ghorey*), didnt allow me to lower my seat and I accepted that with a "anything-for-that-smile" grin, which I am sure she also understood very well.

One pleasant thing happened in the flight when a one year old (i guess) kid on the front seat made some happy noises on being so close to a foreigner. 'The child is the father of the man'. There couldn't be a better way to understand this eminent quote of Wordsworth than this purity. The elder ones in the act of being mature chose not to listen to their once unadulterated hearts. And that's where Wordsworth found his inspiration. Being lost in those thoughts I forgot that the flight was only of one hour and time flies without any schedule, which it leaves for us to follow. Time is a strange thing. It weighs most on the one who has it least (The opening line of a renowned bestseller).Stepping out of the boeing 727, I again dreamt myself being on the heavenly exotic planet from where the air hostesses come. But the expedition was over. Being disappointed once again by the luscious futility of the human imagination, I set foot on the land of morning (i would rather prefer "perpetual") calm.