Trekking trips and life lessons

Last Saturday, a bunch of us from office went trekking at Mt. Kalsubhai, near Igatpuri. I was hoping my colleague, Robin, would put together a post on the trek at his blog, so I could simply link to it and add a few of my own comments. But no such luck. Robin has decided to do a review of ‘Singh is Kinng’ instead, leaving me to do all the hard work myself.

The plan initially was to go to Bhandardhara, about 35 kms away from Igatpuri (and 180 kms from Mumbai) – the waterfalls out there were the primary attraction. I thought that would be an ideal thing to do in the rains – go someplace nice, with lots of natural beauty, enjoy the waterfalls, return to the resort to piping hot meals, and laze around a bit – my idea of a dream vacation. But Deepak, our boss, soon convinced us that trekking at Kalsubhai was a better option. I was a little skeptical at first, which is my usual reaction to any activity that requires physical exertion on my part. But I had never attempted trekking before; this, and a misplaced sense of adventure, led me to fall in with the trekking plans.

We left office a bit early on Friday evening to shop around for some trek essentials – I purchased a pair of electric blue Reebok shoes, and I totally adore them now. We also bought a lot of dry snacks to carry on the way – chocolates, chips, fruit juice and biscuits. We didn’t realize it at the time, but we ended up buying way too much stuff – we lugged that stuff up a hill, and then down, untouched.

Ours was going to be a one-day trip; we were to leave in the morning and return by night, as opposed to the original plan of staying at Bhandardhara overnight. As there was to be no accommodation expense, we decided to splurge on travel instead – and hired a car (a Tavera) to take us there, and bring us back.

The driver assigned to us was (surprise! surprise!) extremely incompetent – he arrived about an hour late, and managed to get us lost even before we were out of city limits – instead of driving on to Kalyan from Thane and then hitting the Nashik Hwy, he started driving in the opposite direction – towards Mantralaya. Robin and Deepak are both from Delhi and understandably unfamiliar with the geography, and all I really know about Mumbai is limited to places on its Western Rly network – Virar to Churchgate, and a teeny, weeny bit about getting to Thane from Borivli. But we all knew that Kalyan and Mantralaya were diametrically opposite to each other on a map, and driving towards Mantralaya would not get us to Kalyan. So we asked around and eventually managed to get on to the Nashik Highway. We were already a couple of hours behind schedule, and encountered a massive traffic jam near Karjat. We lost more time there, and reached Bari village, at the base of Kalsubhai, only at 1.30pm – a good 3 and a half hours behind schedule.

 

The sight that met us at Bari evoked mixed reactions, I must add – about a 100 school kids were camped all around, having lunch, evidently just back from a trekking expedition themselves. Their clothes were wet and clung to their bodies – and their jeans were splattered with mud. I rejoiced inwardly – if a bunch of school children had managed to trek their way up and had returned with no obvious casualties, then the trek wasn’t going to be as challenging as I had started to fear it would be. The guys were obviously disappointed – there’s no fun scaling summits that even ordinary school children could. But we decided to go ahead and explore.

And I shall not dwell on what happened next in too much detail – I have spent considerable time already typing the above – but here are a few things that I learnt on the trip that I think would be of value to anyone contemplating such a trip themselves.

- Trekking during the monsoons is not a very good idea – especially if it happens to be your first trekking trip. The steep slopes, coupled with gooey mud and wet, slippery paths, make for treacherous climbing. I myself slipped once, and ended up with bruises on my wrists and my palm, and mud splattered all across my windcheater and pants.

- Avoid trekking altogether if you were never the active, out-doorsy sort, like yours truly. And it didn’t help matters that Deepak was a trekking superstar of sorts (I suspect he was a billy goat in some former life). So he would quickly amble up steep slopes and make it look effortless, while I was always at the rear, huffing and puffing, and suspecting I would die of a cardiac arrest any moment.

- Know your limits: I did a decent job of climbing up the first phase of the hill, and with a bit of panting and cursing and stopping every few minutes to give rest to my furiously-beating heart, did make it across the second phase as well. But I knew the third phase was much more steep – I had read on the internet that there was this gigantic, flat rock that had to be crossed at a 90 degree angle on metallic ladders built for the purpose. Sense prevailed. I dropped off, and asked the guys to carry on by themselves, while I admired the spectacular views of the valley from the second level. Which turned out to be a good thing, because the guys later reported that even they had trouble with the steep slopes.

So I parked myself on a nice grassy spot, and the whole valley was spread out before me. I could spot atleast a dozen waterfalls on nearby hills, and it was a beautiful thing – the gentle drizzle, the silence, and the verdant hillside.

I was also feeling a bit bad that I couldn’t make it to the summit of the hill – in my overly dramatic fashion, I assumed this to be a metaphor for my own life – an indicator that I would never make it to the top of anything because I lacked the drive and the energy. I thought to myself: while others make their swift climb to the top, you’d always be stuck here at the bottom, content with admiring the scenery.

And as I sat there ruminating over this, I suddenly recalled a TLC song that I used to listen to quite often as a kid; the song is called ‘Waterfalls’ and in that moment, it afforded me great consolation:

‘Don’t go chasing waterfalls
Please stick to the rivers and lakes that you’re used to
I know that you’re gonna have it your way or nothing at all
But I think you’re moving too fast’

I didn’t feel like a loser then, and I was congratulating my mind for coming up with such an apt song when I was most in need of encouragement. But , when I came home and googled up the lyrics of the song, I discovered, to my dismay, that the song was meant in a whole different context altogether. But I shall pretend I didn’t notice.

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