My First Hike

My first hike was…, well it was memorable. I would not have thought I could make it, but I cheated. I had inspiration from this little marauder. A 10 year old girl, Ana, so confident that she would make it helped me occlude my mind from thoughts of deserting the hike.
We got to the Nagarjun reserve at 9. The armymen at the base got us to ‘register’ our trip with them; they assured us that if we were to get lost, lose one of our friends they would come to the rescue… how very reassuring! Well, we started the hike and the very first climb was killing my feet. When I asked Vishnu dai how long we would walk, he said it would be an hour more to the top. I doubled this in my mind; I was sure he was trying to make me feel we were closer than we actually were. We walked on; stopped in various places and discussed everything from Nepalese politics to integrity of politicians. That was fun, everybody hated all politicians! We finally ended our ascent at around 11. Standing at the tower, and telling myself I had no fear of heights, I felt an exhilarating sense of accomplishment, for having walked up this far. We met an Englishman, Ivon who was cycling around the valley. He has been on vacations since January and has been cycling ever since! We started our descent and I decided that hiking was not such a bad thing.
It was at this time that Surendra Dai and Vishnu Dai decided to ‘Jazz it up’. God, we were walking a normal looking path when they suddenly entered a forest. For 15 minutes we walked on a difficult terrain. Then we had to stop. The hill ahead looked like a straight fall. And, we could not even go back; the path was nearly impossible to climb back, at least for me! We sent out scouts, they said we could come down. Well, I will not go into details, but more than once I thought I would not make it back to my chair on Monday. Well, we slid, fell, got ourselves bruised as we continued the descent. With help from more experienced members of the party, I got halfway down the fall. Now, Vishnu dai asked me to slide! I was SCARED. I tried but had no control over it. Vishnu dai yelled at me to slide on my feet, not my bum, well, that was helpful. I got down to the foot of the hill. There was a sense of relief within me. Not that the hike was over, but that I was still alive. Wow! Well, after that we started walking on a riverbed, with no water in it. It was not monsoon, thank god for small favours. We met a party from Kathmandu. They had come to inspect the water. Well, they told us that we were quite a long way off our target, but that we would meet the highway in an hour. Well, we had just started walking when this party got on their pickup truck. We finally hitch-hiked the last 5 kilometers.
The trip was insane, surely by my standards, given I was on my first hike.
Signing off, until I get a fresh bout of insanity.