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).