My take on life

On day 2, we again assembled for morning exercises and sending off of another group. This day was for rappelling and rock climbing. I had done rappelling earlier and I was quite excited about doing it again, the adrenaline kick is really nice . We got to the place where we were to do our rappelling. We had to climb down a rock face. The instructor quickly guided us on the basics and showed us how to use the rope to get down. Some of the participants were uneasy, but eventually all of them did it.

We got back to our camp and had lunch. The next session was rock climbing. I was really looking forward to this. We had to climb a rock face which was inclined at an almost 60 degree angle. The instructor showed us how we were to find toe and hand holds in the rock. As a safety precaution, he used attached a rope around the waist of the participant who was climbing. It was simply great. 10 times more thrilling than rappelling.

We came back to the camp and had our evening tea. We packed our rucksacks and had to deposit our luggage in the cloak room. We had our rucksacks checked by Mr. Chauhan. He advised me dump all my woolen sweated (I had packed one) and just use my jacket for protection. This was good advice. He also asked me to leave my towel, as the water near the top was too cold to have a bath. So, I left my towel at the base camp itself - this did not turn out to be a good idea (also inert obvious H2G2 reference here ) .

I spent that evening idling next to the river and I loved every moment of being away from Bangalore. Again, there was dinner at 7:30 and a campfire, after which we went off to sleep in our tents.

The next day (21 May) we were woken up at 5 AM with a cup of morning tea. After getting up and running off to the loo ASAP (I had lived in a hostel and I knew how bad the morning rush can get ) we assembled for the morning exercises. We were assigned a group number (SP-21). After the exercises, we assembled together to send off another group off to the higher camp.

This was the day for our acclimatization walk and orientation. The purpose of the acclimatization walk is to check if all our equipment is functional and we are not having any trouble with our shoes. We were issued a rucksack and we packed it with 2 blankets. For our walk, we had to climb a small hill next to our camp itself. On the first day itself, I realized that my regular exercising has started paying off. I did not have much trouble in climbing the hill. We also selected a group leader, group co-leader and an environment leader for our group. The role of the environment leader was to make sure no one was littering the trail.

Once we reached back at the camp, I took a shower and had lunch. The time after lunch was for orientation. The Field Director explained to us the precautions that we needed to take and the facilities made available by YHAI at the higher camps. After sitting through the orientation, we took our evening tea and I spent most of the evening by sitting near the river flowing next to our camp. We had dinner at 7:30 and campfire at 9 and then we went off to our tents.

On reaching base camp (on 20th May), I registered myself at the reception and I was assigned a tent. I was sharing the tent with some 11 or 12 other people, but I did not really mind. I knew that the only time I would get back to the tent was when it was time to sleep. We were also issued a pair of blankets. I spent the first day by eating, resting and exploring the river flowing near our camp. We had dinner by 7:30 PM and then a campfire at 9. The campfire was mostly people singing/dancing/doing solo presentations etc. It was good fun. The campfire ended at around 10 PM and we went off to sleep by 10:30 PM.

The trek to Saurkundi Pass was organized by Youth Hostels Association of India. The base camp for this trek was the Youth Hostel situated at Babeli, a small town near Kullu, Himachal Pradesh. I took a flight to Delhi, and then from Delhi I took a bus to Kullu. All the AC buses leaving for Kullu were full and it was only by good luck that I was able to get a seat in one of them.

The next entries are about my days during the trek.