Certain habits grow on to become addictions, and addictions are somewhat tough to get rid of. Let's just call this one of my addictions. I get pins and needles, and my hands begin to tremble whenever its been a while since i've written something, and automatically the fingers reach out for the Notepad program on Windows and the rest is history...
Speaking of addictions, i'm host a good many among them. Slave to my senses, you may say must be my vice. You aren't completely wrong if you say that :) But there's something i place much higher above than all of this. This is a vice just as taxing as the aforementioned were. A strain on the wallet, and on the physique. But then, i'm an addict, and this is my fix! Come along then reader, let's go on a trip!
'Twas a weekend just like every other weekend. Time for the fix! After a good bout of searching online, i came across a good source. "TrekMates trek to Kulang...", the word Kulang was enough for me to get hooked. Yes, i'm addicted to trekking and wandering in some of the most godforsaken places on Earth armed with nothing more than a camera! Why do i do this? I've asked this question to myself just as many times as people have asked me, and i have not a satisfactory response to give. Perhaps, its the thrill of the unknown, the fantasy of meeting like minded new people, the excitement on achieving something that was never done before, or perhaps a small measure of peace that all of us seek, and so few of us ever find...
I'd place my bets on the last option. The mountains have their own charm in luring toward themselves a disturbed soul. The attraction's almost lethal, like a moth drawn to a flame. Unmistakeably it draws its victim to its fiery bosom, yet the moth fears not death, but seeks to embrace the flame in eternal love. Ahhh, romance :)
So, where were we? Ah yes, gung ho toward Kulang indeed! The group was totally unknown to me, nothing new for me, i'm quite used to heading out with unknown people and returning home with new friends! And so my adventure began from Dadar, catching the last local headed to Kasara. For those of you'll who haven't heard of Kasara, its the last station uptil which local (read electric) trains ply, the rails ahead are used only by mail and express trains. I met the co-captain for the trek, Manoj Kalwar. Not even a minute had passed before Manoj entrusted me with his valuables to call someone at the station. Gosh, you're a trusting soul, aren't you?? Well, thievery never appealed to me, so lets just call it opportunity forsaken!! Of course he did return back in a minute, finding me watching gingerly over his valuables. The train arrived, we got into the train, the rest of the team began to pull in at diff locations and blah, blah, blah...
Wakey, wakey at 2:00 AM, it's Kasara! Fcuk, just when i was slipping into a nice slumber! From hence, there were jeeps to take us uptil the base village. Enroute, we stopped for some essentials, namely tea and a chance to take a leak ;) This was at a place called Ghoti. Sounds funny huh? All you Mallus out there, pat yourself on the back, for what seemed like the last place where i'd find someone speak anything other than rural Marathi, a Mallu had set up a tea store! Woo hoo Mallu, you make us southies proud!
Tea in Patiala pegs flowed generously down 21 throats, and not to mention a few crusty biscuits. Heck, the tea was too good for the biscuit for that matter! After what seemed like the equivalent of a quarter, we decided to get going. All the while, you would've been thinking we were asleep and relaxing. Wrong you were, i was sleeping and the others were singing and making merry. Well, i'll make merry or make love provided my batteries are charged just right!!
And so finally we reached base camp, Ambewadi sleepy drowsy me despite all the tea. General instructions and introductions followed, who am i, what am i, where am i, blah, blah, blah...
What's so great about this Kulang? What is Kulang? Kulang is a mountain fort in the Northern Sahyadri, and is a part of the formidable trio, Alang, Madan and Kulang. Bang opposite Kulang is Kalsubai, Maharashtra's highest pinnacle. Nothing so great about it, its an easy climb and the overall height is 5,300 odd feet. Kulang's slightly shorter at 4,820 feet but boasts of the highest climb from base camp to the mountain, and of course, sheer craggy cliffs lurk waiting for the careless trekker to lose footing.
This day wasn't clearly one of my best days, because i started out with a dizzy head and nearly lost balance while starting the climb. Nevertheless, the way ahead seemed much more stable, and i managed to hang around with the group. Enroute, we had to collect firewood. Why? Darling! Pizza Hut or Domino's doesn't provide delivery at such levels! So, we're cooking food, and we're cooking it on an open fire! Sure enough, we loaded our bags with the fuel and keep marching ahead. So far so good, and then came the chill, thrill or whatever ill you call it factor...
We were climbing up a steep flight of stairs carved off a rock wall when i suddenly felt something pushing me
toward the cliff!! FUCK!!! What's happening??? Realization dawned quickly thankfully! The stalks of firewood in my bag were poking out toward the rock face. These stalks were long and supple, and bent when i pushed myself up the stairs. "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction" said Newton a long time ago, and this is where he could gloat over his discovery! But this wasn't the time to celebrate science. I'm being pushed off the goddamn cliff man! The stalks were bending back into shape, and the resultant action, i was being pushed off. A fellow trekker volunteered to get the stalks out of my bag, and so the danger passed. Now i just had to lug the stalks up the mountain as i climbed. Climbing with one hand was far better than being pushed off handsfree!!
3.5 hours later, we summitted. Yay, the climb's over! Now what? The group breaks off searching for places, scenes or whatever that attracts their fancy and starts clicking their pics alongwith the same! Well, i ran a different course, and i had a telephoto lens with me (the only one carrying a 1.5 kg lens), and i set out hunting birds that called this place home.
Up in the mountain so high, there isn't as much wind as you'd like to think. It's rather still, and hence the rocks
up there still bear resemblance to something close to when they were formed. Maharahstra's plateaus are the work of passive volcanoes, and pieces of volcanic rock occur periodically across the Sahyadri. As for lifeforms, invertebrates would have been greater in number than the vertebrates. There were birds no doubt, but far and few and it required a bit of hunting to get to them!
Swoosh! Whoosh, Whirr! The birds were actually flying past me at touching distance! This sound was the rustle of their feathers! The world's fastest flying bird, the swift kept me pleasantly occupied as i tried time and again to capture this poetry in motion onto a frozen frame inside a black box!
Time passed thus and it was time for lunch! After lunch, a brief session of games served as our official ice-breaker, and God, it was FUN! Just as much fun as chasing the swifts! I had never heard of these games before, but they were really good! And our group leader Nilesh Patil surely knew just how to pull the strings right!
By evening, we were the best of friends, chatting away, poking fun as if we knew each other for years. How soon the human mind takes to bonding, doesn't it? All we need is just the right spark, the right person, and the right moment. The rest is magic! To be sharing personal details with someone whom you've just met a few hours before might sound rather odd to you. But then as trekkers, we bond, we share and we care, and we don't give a damn about secrets and shit like that!
And so, plenty of dirty linen kept the conversation colourful until sunset. Just before that occurred an incident that might appear somewhat funny to you, but i assure you, i wasn't pleased the least bit over the whole ruckus!
"MONKEY!!" The call went up, and at once dashed off 4 - 5 of us, including me toward the place where we'd camped for the day! We were camping in a cave, and our food, bedding and everything else of concern on a trek was in there. And a bunch of marauding monkeys found the treasury unguarded!
After a hot chase to the cave, we found our dinner missing! The monkeys had made off with the veggies we needed for the biryani! Aaarrrgh, you're soo dead meat monkey, lemme lay my hands on you, tonite we're cooking monkey curry with rice. And all of us agreed. Like hell, we had nothing but raw rice and spices to make do with for the night! What the fuck?
We found the trail of the monkeys, and we almost caught up with them, but they jumped down to a ledge below inacessible to us, and the bag of veggies was GONE! A big polythene bag full of veggies, GONE!!!
What now? Monkeys too far off to secure monkey meat, and no veggies! Well, raw rice and spice it is!
Post sunset and this 'dinner' was time for some ghostly stories. Legends and fables repeated over and over again over campfires and some songs kept us in good spirits. As for me, the full moon was just a day old, and i was busy romancing the moon with my cam!
Nights on a mountain can be chilly if you're not having the right gear. I had an old jacket, but was well covered in my sleeping bag. At dawn, 20 eager faces were awake before me to see the camera and my lens in action for sunrise. This place has some of the best views of both sunrise and sunset.
After breakfast and the ritual ablutions, it was time to move on. And we descended down, just as we made our way up, except that 21 strangers were replaced by 21 friends! And thus ended on a good note, yet another trek!
And yet again, another weekend, it'll be time for another fix. Perhaps another trek...?
Speaking of addictions, i'm host a good many among them. Slave to my senses, you may say must be my vice. You aren't completely wrong if you say that :) But there's something i place much higher above than all of this. This is a vice just as taxing as the aforementioned were. A strain on the wallet, and on the physique. But then, i'm an addict, and this is my fix! Come along then reader, let's go on a trip!
'Twas a weekend just like every other weekend. Time for the fix! After a good bout of searching online, i came across a good source. "TrekMates trek to Kulang...", the word Kulang was enough for me to get hooked. Yes, i'm addicted to trekking and wandering in some of the most godforsaken places on Earth armed with nothing more than a camera! Why do i do this? I've asked this question to myself just as many times as people have asked me, and i have not a satisfactory response to give. Perhaps, its the thrill of the unknown, the fantasy of meeting like minded new people, the excitement on achieving something that was never done before, or perhaps a small measure of peace that all of us seek, and so few of us ever find...
I'd place my bets on the last option. The mountains have their own charm in luring toward themselves a disturbed soul. The attraction's almost lethal, like a moth drawn to a flame. Unmistakeably it draws its victim to its fiery bosom, yet the moth fears not death, but seeks to embrace the flame in eternal love. Ahhh, romance :)
So, where were we? Ah yes, gung ho toward Kulang indeed! The group was totally unknown to me, nothing new for me, i'm quite used to heading out with unknown people and returning home with new friends! And so my adventure began from Dadar, catching the last local headed to Kasara. For those of you'll who haven't heard of Kasara, its the last station uptil which local (read electric) trains ply, the rails ahead are used only by mail and express trains. I met the co-captain for the trek, Manoj Kalwar. Not even a minute had passed before Manoj entrusted me with his valuables to call someone at the station. Gosh, you're a trusting soul, aren't you?? Well, thievery never appealed to me, so lets just call it opportunity forsaken!! Of course he did return back in a minute, finding me watching gingerly over his valuables. The train arrived, we got into the train, the rest of the team began to pull in at diff locations and blah, blah, blah...
Wakey, wakey at 2:00 AM, it's Kasara! Fcuk, just when i was slipping into a nice slumber! From hence, there were jeeps to take us uptil the base village. Enroute, we stopped for some essentials, namely tea and a chance to take a leak ;) This was at a place called Ghoti. Sounds funny huh? All you Mallus out there, pat yourself on the back, for what seemed like the last place where i'd find someone speak anything other than rural Marathi, a Mallu had set up a tea store! Woo hoo Mallu, you make us southies proud!
Tea in Patiala pegs flowed generously down 21 throats, and not to mention a few crusty biscuits. Heck, the tea was too good for the biscuit for that matter! After what seemed like the equivalent of a quarter, we decided to get going. All the while, you would've been thinking we were asleep and relaxing. Wrong you were, i was sleeping and the others were singing and making merry. Well, i'll make merry or make love provided my batteries are charged just right!!
And so finally we reached base camp, Ambewadi sleepy drowsy me despite all the tea. General instructions and introductions followed, who am i, what am i, where am i, blah, blah, blah...
What's so great about this Kulang? What is Kulang? Kulang is a mountain fort in the Northern Sahyadri, and is a part of the formidable trio, Alang, Madan and Kulang. Bang opposite Kulang is Kalsubai, Maharashtra's highest pinnacle. Nothing so great about it, its an easy climb and the overall height is 5,300 odd feet. Kulang's slightly shorter at 4,820 feet but boasts of the highest climb from base camp to the mountain, and of course, sheer craggy cliffs lurk waiting for the careless trekker to lose footing.
This day wasn't clearly one of my best days, because i started out with a dizzy head and nearly lost balance while starting the climb. Nevertheless, the way ahead seemed much more stable, and i managed to hang around with the group. Enroute, we had to collect firewood. Why? Darling! Pizza Hut or Domino's doesn't provide delivery at such levels! So, we're cooking food, and we're cooking it on an open fire! Sure enough, we loaded our bags with the fuel and keep marching ahead. So far so good, and then came the chill, thrill or whatever ill you call it factor...
We were climbing up a steep flight of stairs carved off a rock wall when i suddenly felt something pushing me
toward the cliff!! FUCK!!! What's happening??? Realization dawned quickly thankfully! The stalks of firewood in my bag were poking out toward the rock face. These stalks were long and supple, and bent when i pushed myself up the stairs. "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction" said Newton a long time ago, and this is where he could gloat over his discovery! But this wasn't the time to celebrate science. I'm being pushed off the goddamn cliff man! The stalks were bending back into shape, and the resultant action, i was being pushed off. A fellow trekker volunteered to get the stalks out of my bag, and so the danger passed. Now i just had to lug the stalks up the mountain as i climbed. Climbing with one hand was far better than being pushed off handsfree!!
3.5 hours later, we summitted. Yay, the climb's over! Now what? The group breaks off searching for places, scenes or whatever that attracts their fancy and starts clicking their pics alongwith the same! Well, i ran a different course, and i had a telephoto lens with me (the only one carrying a 1.5 kg lens), and i set out hunting birds that called this place home.
Up in the mountain so high, there isn't as much wind as you'd like to think. It's rather still, and hence the rocks
up there still bear resemblance to something close to when they were formed. Maharahstra's plateaus are the work of passive volcanoes, and pieces of volcanic rock occur periodically across the Sahyadri. As for lifeforms, invertebrates would have been greater in number than the vertebrates. There were birds no doubt, but far and few and it required a bit of hunting to get to them!
Swoosh! Whoosh, Whirr! The birds were actually flying past me at touching distance! This sound was the rustle of their feathers! The world's fastest flying bird, the swift kept me pleasantly occupied as i tried time and again to capture this poetry in motion onto a frozen frame inside a black box!
Time passed thus and it was time for lunch! After lunch, a brief session of games served as our official ice-breaker, and God, it was FUN! Just as much fun as chasing the swifts! I had never heard of these games before, but they were really good! And our group leader Nilesh Patil surely knew just how to pull the strings right!
By evening, we were the best of friends, chatting away, poking fun as if we knew each other for years. How soon the human mind takes to bonding, doesn't it? All we need is just the right spark, the right person, and the right moment. The rest is magic! To be sharing personal details with someone whom you've just met a few hours before might sound rather odd to you. But then as trekkers, we bond, we share and we care, and we don't give a damn about secrets and shit like that!
And so, plenty of dirty linen kept the conversation colourful until sunset. Just before that occurred an incident that might appear somewhat funny to you, but i assure you, i wasn't pleased the least bit over the whole ruckus!
"MONKEY!!" The call went up, and at once dashed off 4 - 5 of us, including me toward the place where we'd camped for the day! We were camping in a cave, and our food, bedding and everything else of concern on a trek was in there. And a bunch of marauding monkeys found the treasury unguarded!
After a hot chase to the cave, we found our dinner missing! The monkeys had made off with the veggies we needed for the biryani! Aaarrrgh, you're soo dead meat monkey, lemme lay my hands on you, tonite we're cooking monkey curry with rice. And all of us agreed. Like hell, we had nothing but raw rice and spices to make do with for the night! What the fuck?
We found the trail of the monkeys, and we almost caught up with them, but they jumped down to a ledge below inacessible to us, and the bag of veggies was GONE! A big polythene bag full of veggies, GONE!!!
What now? Monkeys too far off to secure monkey meat, and no veggies! Well, raw rice and spice it is!
Post sunset and this 'dinner' was time for some ghostly stories. Legends and fables repeated over and over again over campfires and some songs kept us in good spirits. As for me, the full moon was just a day old, and i was busy romancing the moon with my cam!
Nights on a mountain can be chilly if you're not having the right gear. I had an old jacket, but was well covered in my sleeping bag. At dawn, 20 eager faces were awake before me to see the camera and my lens in action for sunrise. This place has some of the best views of both sunrise and sunset.
After breakfast and the ritual ablutions, it was time to move on. And we descended down, just as we made our way up, except that 21 strangers were replaced by 21 friends! And thus ended on a good note, yet another trek!
And yet again, another weekend, it'll be time for another fix. Perhaps another trek...?
