Into Thin Air

As I read Jon Krakauer's book of the same name when I began my trek, I'd never quite imagined I'd end up asking myself pretty much the same questions the book poses- what is it about the Everest that compells people to throw caution to the wind, ignore the concerns of loved ones, and willingly subject oneself to such risk, hardship, and expense?

It took me going through all this and more to come up with a bunch of answers which I can't really say are conclusive. The first definite sign of what I was taking up was the plane crash at Lukla, the first stop that serves as the base for the beginning of the Everest Base Camp trek. Just when I was waiting to leave for the airport came the news of the first ever accident on the Lukla airstrip that had left all twenty German and Swiss trekkers dead, along with two Nepalis. The flights for the day were cancelled and I was shaken up realising that I had insisted on being on the first flight but somehow got the second one. I did gather myself and leave after two days on the trek I'd longed for. Starting on a curious/energetic note, at the end of it, I can say that somewhere along the line it peters down to a test of endurance of the mind. Walking for abt 9 hrs on an average each day does not even count. It's the rising altitude that can play more with your body, as much as the mind. There are sunburns despite SPF 50 creams, nose bleeds are common and so are maddening headaches. You can't eat or sleep, but need to force yourself to do both. Your reflexes become slow and the ability to decide whether you want a boiled egg or a scrambled egg reduces drastically. Probably the only senses the trek would appeal to would be your vision, that meets scenes that the most drugged minds cannot conjure.

All this does not even begin to entitle me to compare my effort with those for whom base camp is not the end but the beginning of their ascent. While I carefully walked on the landslide prone glacier at the base, I was thrilled to see my first avalanche on the mountain across. I was filled with regret and guilt over my thrill when I heard of three climbers who were killed by one the same night. I still think of the phantasmal beauty of Sagarmatha that can kill at will, and wonder how such power can be masked by such deceiving beauty.

I have known and met people who asked me why I chose to go at all, and I'm afraid I have no answer for them. Non-trekkers might label expeditions as a mere adventure, or just something different to do, but its beyond me to put into words how this wasn't the thrill one gets in a bungee jump, or any adrenaline sport, because it isn't one. I met people with disabilities and people at the sunset of their lives, slowly crawling to the top. I don't think it was to prove anything to anyone, but maybe a test of their own will. More than the beauty of the mountains, I was moved by this will of the human spirit. I would willinglingy subject myself to it all over again, if for nothing else but to experience this spirit of those who are invited up there. If the hardship were any less than what it was, something would probably be amiss, for that is not the way of great mountains.

Capital Punishment

'I'm moving to Delhi'.

Looking back on the doomsday when I uttered those words, I can only sway my head and 'tsk tsk' myself. The age-old Mumbaikar saying 'You can never adjust to Delhi once you've lived in Bombay' was brushed aside as a mere cliche. What I'd perhaps forgotten was the fact that all cliches are born because they are true more often than not. The realisation seeped in day by day, as I got used to the perpetual warnings attached to each conversation, about how I must live/behave while in the Dreaded D.

For the benefit of girls who might want to repeat my stunt, I've drawn a list to save them the trouble:

P.S: The following charter is nullified if you have a boyfriend/husband/full-time bodyguard to chauffeur you around 24x7. Or just get yourself a Rotweiller.

Do's & Don'ts

1. Be appropriately dressed at all times. Nothing you wear must be too tight/too short/ too flattering. Going by this, your Bombay wardrobe is totally disqualified, even if it's actually none of the three.

2. Remember Rule 1 even if you are just stepping out for 5 mins to walk to the nearest general store. When I had to do the same, I added a wraparound and a stole to what I was already wearing and then waltzed to the store looking like a cross between an Afghani women and a Hare Krishna devotee- no offence to either.

3. Remember Rule 1 even when you are at home. You never know when you might have to get the door for a courier boy/delivery man/ neighbouring uncle. Yes it's the same everywhere, but this is DELHI you see. Take NO chances. Cluck cluck.

4. Delhi despises solitary behaviour. Do NOT be unaccompanied, especially after sunset. And AT sunset. And before. Always be with another human being- boy,girl, group of girls & boys. Or at least a pepper spray.

5. Never walk too close to the main road, lest you are pulled in by a speeding van. Even on the pedestrian path, keep swaying your head like an owl in all directions to watch out for those who don't have a van to molest people in so choose to walk instead to brush past you.

6. Watch out for pickpockets. While you are trying to save your bottom from being pinched, someone might just pinch your wallet. When the same happened to me, I was told I was not 'careful' enough. True. I was lost in trying to protect my assets and juggling my shopping bags and positioning my stole appropriately time and again to avoid Stargazers.

7. Don't, in general, make heads turns. If something happens to you, it's probably coz YOU were standing out enough to attract bad karma.

All this is not to say that Bombay is the safest place on earth for women, it's just this general air of acceptance and respect I've experienced there, even at the most crowded local railway station, that I will have no qualms in bidding goodbye to the life and times of the Capital. There is a general 'alert status' in any city that women have switched on at all times, which makes me think at times how much better off I'd be born as a fish. Then I'd be quite comfortable in just my skin, literally. More importantly, everybody else would.

Wild Ways

It's strange how I await my birthday as the the single most important annual event when it's actually on other occasions when I'm totally unprepared, that the grey cells multiply to mark my mental growth. I've finally identified a pattern in this behaviour, and come to the conclusion that it's when I travel that this metamorphosis hits me out of nowhere and transforms me.

It took a recent journey into the wild for me to grow up a notch more. Determined to see Corbett, I set off for a tryst with India's first wildlife park ever. If not from the very beginning, I could feel a wave of difference washing over me the minute we entered the Sal forests. The two-hour drive to Dhikala in the heart of the jungle was so bumpy and so beautiful that it sure shook me.

Early next morning, I mounted on Pawan Pari's back to catch the sunrise by the river side. Riding into the dense thicket of elephant grass and wet greenery, I realised how different it was from my last visit to a tiger reserve. A year back at Ranthambhore, I hadn't learnt my lesson in the ways of the wild and had sulked and sulked till I spotted the big cats. Silently appreciating everything from a jungle fowl to a lone tusker, I heard others whisper murmers of disappointment. I couldn't help but feel a mix of contempt and anger rising in me at the ungrateful attitude that made them oblivious to the sudden start of a barking deer or the flutter of a spotted dove's wings. But then again, I wasn't entitled to feel that way since I had, in many ways, once been there. Gazing at the female elephant carefully nestling her 10 day baby between her legs simultaneously as she walked, it dawned on me that I had new found respect and understanding for the animal kingdom.

A visit to a sanctuary requires an open-mindedness that has finally come to me. I definitely don't expect to see animals the way I did in zoos as a child, but instead where they truly belong, in the wilderness. I'm glad I've grown up.

Karela- God's Own Bitter Gourd

Kerala is one of the strangest places I've been to. I haven't quite decided what I am to make of it. Other matters aside, it's the only place where I've seen reservation for the fairer sex to such an extent that even eating joints have a 'ladies' section with high translucent sliding walls to give them their privacy while they devour rasam rice. Most joints don't have menus either, and you pretty much have to resign yourself to a 'meal'. Where there ARE menus, the only thing actually available are the meals again, more often than not. One of the biggest delights is buses stopping randomly whenever you hail them, a little like the mountains.

I'd been warned that the Lungi bearers like to stare a lot. I don't know why that is any different from a lot of other places. Ok, so instead of thrice, they'd turn around a fourth time. But can it be helped if some people like to satiate their curiosity a little more than the rest? It doesn't quite change the thought behind it. Jaded from the unnecessary attention, heat, queries and fixed meals , I longed for God's Own Country. Whatever happened to the palm-lined beaches, coconut groves and boats on backwaters? Either the entire thing was a hoax, or I was plain in the wrong places.

The day I reached Cliff Land, I realised the latter was true. It was the only time that I was actually smiling through a temperature and a weird rash I'd developed overnight. For it was here that I had my first tryst with the hospitable side of Lungi Land, and menu cards with Puttu and Appams alongside the eaten-to-death meals. Post a Kathakali performance to top the cliche I'd been subconsciously dying for, I knew I'd arrived, finally, to the land of the postcards and the promotion campaign. A trip down to the Cape, and then to the tea hills of Kerala, and I finally like the place somewhat. I'm not sure if it IS God's own country- I've been to places far more beautiful and friendlier- but I can call it God's own backyard that maybe needs a little weeding and pruning.

Of Cars & Camels

Ever since I saw this picture, everything cleared in my head. So this is what I'd been wanting for the longest time and hadn't known known how to put it into words- wanting to leap out of the car right on to the camel's back. Not just a really deadly stunt/stupid move/error, the act holds so much meaning, now that I clearly know what it means. It's a move not from a vehicle to an animal, but a move from the stable to the unstable, from technology to the wild, from a smooth fast ride in a gas-run four wheeler to a slower, bumpier, far more exotic ride on a four-legged moody transporter. It will be a slower ride, but a much more beautiful one for sure. I want to stop and smell the roses each time my camel wants to stop and nibble tree leaves. I want to see every frame and take in the details, not whizz by in a car and watch life flashing by the window or in the rear view mirror.

New Year Resolutions

Today is the beginning of a brand year for me. My brain cells were too sedated yesterday for it to sink in. No no, I havn't taken to crack yet. It was purely the effect of lazing for the last few days in an atmosphere that pretty much has the same effects. Just so you believe, I'll run you through my daily routine:
Wake up whenever the sounds of nature wake you up-stagger to Ajit's for lemon tea, have a long-winded conversation about nothing in particular; Anyways the sum of it is always ' Come to Kasol in summer, now you are my friend'- Go back, take a shower, put on some long, flowing robes and beads- Back to Ajit's, in a grave dilemma over a calorie-laden banana pancake or toast drowned in cheese-Head down the lane to the golden sands and sip the golden brew all day, with of course the perfunctory plate of calamarie, prawn curry and other yummy, sometimes stinky, sea creepies by the side-a dip in the waters if I'm not worn out already with all the binging and the smiling at equally spaced out hippies-walk down to the market to haggle over 'made in kathmandu' felt bags-Head down the lane to the golden sands and sip the golden brew, with the never-faltering perfunctory plate of calamarie and prawn curry by the side- watch fire-eaters under the stars, staff-jugglers, clap after a mind-blowing djembe performance-sleep.

My new year resolution is to do be able to do absolutely nothing and feel as free as I did, this year, or ever. I hope I don't have to break this one.