29/03/2015:
3:57 pm:
I am on train to Delhi. I am with a group of friends, everybody is sharing their experiences. I haven’t heard a story as interesting as the one which Divyanshu (Henceforth referred to as DC) has been telling! Such a mind-boggling experience, with all the drama! I secretly wish I had such a misadventure to tell stories about. But I am glad that I don’t have any!
30/03/2015:
2:29 am:
Damn this McAloo Tikki! I should never have eaten two. I knew I wouldn’t be able to digest them! Now I am sick. I have a full journey ahead and I just puked. Oh man! I don’t know how I am going to face the winding roads in the morning! At least I have one thing off my bucket list- vomiting on a train!
I cannot sleep. There are too many mosquitoes here and I think it is raining outside. I think I have a good reason to believe that this trip is ruined for me. I am not feeling good, we won’t be able to go trekking in the rain, nor will we be able to enjoy rafting. Let’s see what happens.
10:20 am:
We reached Haridwar in the morning. I think the train was late by an hour or so...maybe because of the rains! It was still raining when we got there. We have booked a 12 seater traveler (mini bus) and everybody is asleep. We had a good breakfast. I didn’t eat anything, as I am not sure how my stomach would react to these winding roads, especially after last night’s puking incident. I think Akhilesh has eaten more than he needed as he himself said that two parathas were more than enough. I hope he does not fall sick. Everybody else on the bus seems fine. DC, DTH, GPD, Plashi, Arnav, Aman, Chandak…They are having a good sleep. I am wide awake. I am dosing off, but the winding roads are not letting me. Every half a minute, there is a turn.
11:18 am:
And just when I was about to go into a deep sleep, the bus stopped. Akhilesh has fallen sick. We still have six to eight hours to go and I think I am going to follow Akhilesh in an hour or three! I better get some sleep.
4:45pm:
We have reached ‘Ukhimath’. We are going to stay the night here. This seems like a small village. The accommodation is cheap here. It is nice that we decided to stop. I need to rest!
11:00 pm:
We had a good dinner. We met a trekker who informed us that there is too much ice up there and if it continues to rain, we better abandon the trek. He also taught us some tricks of the trade such as double wrapping polythene bags underneath and on our socks so that the legs don’t get wet by the snow. He said hand gloves are must. So we purchased gloves. The guy has scared the hell out of us when he told us some story of a guy who slipped. He said he didn’t have a metal stick to save him. And all the time I was thinking, ‘Man! I don’t want to die out there!’
Tomorrow is going to be adventurous. We hope to come across some snow. I have never trekked in snow before. I just hope that tomorrow it doesn’t rain.
31/03/2015:
7:03 am:
Today is a good day. There is not a trace of rainy clouds in the skies. I am able to see the Himalayas from the balcony. Hell! I am surrounded by Himalayan Mountains. The view from the balcony is so serene that I feel hypnotized. It feels as if I am in a company of something truly beautiful as well as dangerous.
8:00 am:
We are already late. We should have left earlier. The driver says that the weather changes after 12O’clock. It will take us another hour and a half to reach Chopta.
9:20 am:
We just stopped at a small village named ‘Baniyakund’ to have some breakfast and rent the snow boots.
Now in 10-15 minutes, we’ll reach Chopta.
9:53 am:
Finally, the trek begins!
8:30 pm:
I enjoyed a lot on that trek. We couldn’t reach the top because the weather suddenly turned from sunny to cloudy, even the guides who were with other groups shouted that we should go back. At one point of time, we weren't able to see the upper part because those clouds surrounded us. We thought if professional people are scared then there is something wrong! ‘The winter is coming!’
Anyways, I met a German guy who seemed like an interesting character. While we were making our climb, he was going downhill. We briefly interacted with him.
He asked us, “Is this
your first time in the mountains?”
I answered, “Snow
trekking for the first time. What about you?”
“I was born in the
mountains!” Said he and down he went on a steep slide.
That conversation was
pretty interesting, I thought.
We are currently staying at ‘Rudra Prayag’. There is Ganga (Ganges) flowing behind us. I am finding the constant roaring of the river to be somehow pleasing and so is us being surrounded by the mountains. Tomorrow morning, we leave for Rishikesh. Actually, there is a camp at about 30 kms from Rishikesh. We are going to stay there and then we are going to cover the rest of the distance by river. I am pretty excited about rafting. Let us see! I better sleep now.
01/04/2015:
11:20 pm:
We are staying at a camp. We enjoyed today. I think today was the least hectic day of the trip so far. We reached the camp at around 12:00 O’clock. We had lunch. Some of us took a bath in the Ganges and boy was that water icy! We also played volleyball in the afternoon.
While enjoying evening snacks, DC, GPD, Palshi, DTH, Arnav and I had an interesting discussion on parallels of North Korea and the novel 1984. I also told about the interesting documentary that I had seen which described how people from East Germany came up with ingenious ideas to cross the Berlin wall. We decided that when we get back to campus, we’ll study more about North Korea and its moral policies, for it seemed intriguing to us.
We then proceeded to play the game ‘Mafia’ in the light of two lanterns. The atmosphere was perfect. There were 9 of us, there was a tent above our heads, two lanterns were the only source of light there and the Ganges flowing in the background…That ‘Mafia’ will indeed remain memorable.
The weather has not
disturbed the fun till now. Let us hope that it will be a sunny day tomorrow,
for I want to enjoy rafting to its fullest.
02/03/2015:
3:13 pm:
Life, to me is made of two crucial parts: people worth being with and the experiences that we go through.
4:25 pm:
Rafting was indeed fun! I liked every second of it. Had I died out there, I would not have regretted it. But, at the same time, I was not planning on dying, because there is so much for me to learn.
4:30 pm:
Do not forget to blog this in its original format! Lets try out how this looks…Journal entries!
5:13 pm:
This picnic was one of
the best experiences of my life so far. Not only because of the people, but the
experiences I had have made it worth remembering. I did snow trekking, camping
and river rafting for the first time in my life. I got to know new people. I
also realized a few things about me. First, I do not like McAloo Tikki. Second,
I realized that although I am nothing but a dust speck as compared to the scale
of this Universe, I matter to some people: my parents and some of my friends. I
came to know that I exist!
When I was floating in
the Ganges, there was a moment when I was not connected to anything. I was just
going with the flow. In that moment, I realized that the things that we run
after in our lives are so trivial. Life is more than that.
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Some snaps from the trip: Photos by Arnav Jain: (except for some of them)
