How My Passion for Hikes Ignited
For decades, I have been wanting and meaning to pen down as many of my experiences as a hiker as possible. Today as I have changed career paths to do something distinctly different, I embark upon my desire to share my experiences. Let me begin, well where else than where it all started. As you read, you may come across details from the experience I have gained on hikes, as well as pieces of information, insights about things to do, or not do, tips, and so on, therefore definitely look out for those. At least that is what I have in mind as I start to write memoirParasnath
I was probably only 12 years old when we went to Parasnath, perhaps the tallest mountain in Bihar, a state in India. Today Bihar has been split into two states, Jharkhand and Bihar. Patna has remained the capital of Bihar while Ranch is the capital of the new state. Parasnath is located in the state of Jharkhand. We used to live in Bokaro Steel City and the trip, I imagine, was decided by my father, as were most of my childhood trips. I use the word “imagine” since to the best of my memory, my father planned everything meticulously. There were now MapQuest, google maps at the time. My father had a huge folding map, “Road Map of India”, with all and more details than what we can find on google, even with all its layers. As a side note, that map still exists in my home in Pune, and if I am not too wrong, it was a 1968 edition. When our trip to Parasnath happened, my sister Vasudha would have been about 7 years old, and I recollect that it was at least the four of our family and another family, Mrs. Rashmi & Mr. Gopal Deshpande, who went on the trip. There may have been a few other colleagues of my father, or perhaps other friends. The Deshpande’s used to live in Durgapur, another steel plant city, about 150 km from Bokaro in the state of West Bengal. I do not recollect many details of the trip; the distance, the travel time from Bokaro to Parasnath, any stops we took enroute for snacks, etc., but I am certain we travelled in our Hindustan Motors’, Ambassador car, license number BRW-9949. (Yes, I am generally good with number plates, phone numbers etc.). I do think that the plan was to stay overnight on top of the mountain. However, I am certain that we did not stay on the mountain, since I recollect it being quite dark as we were descending. In fact, the Deshpande’s (who are now in their late 90s), mention that upon reaching the top, we were told that the staying quarters up there were closed, so no matter what, we had to “unclimb” the mountain. Parasnath or Parshvanath was the 23rd Tirthankara of Lord Mahavira, the founder of Jain religion and the mountain is named after him. Perhaps Shree Parasnath lived on the mountain or became a Tirthankar on it. I also recollect not being very happy having to wake up early and leave on the trip. However, I know I had no choice and that I would have made up on the ZZs on the drive. My father would always plan to start driving at 4 AM. He did have very strict discipline which meant driving 90 minutes and stopping for 15 minutes. In the end I think that all our drive trips were excellent and while waking up and starting the drive at 4 PM was a huge irritation, it was greatly rewarding. As a side note, most truck drivers in India have driven till about 2 AM, so early in the morning the oncoming traffic headlights are not menacing. But this is a topic for another essay. Much later in school I learned that with altitude, the temperature drops, this hike/climb had already taught me this, from experience. The mountain was and still is a holy one for the Jains, as I saw several people walking with no footwear. The staunch Jains do not wear such, as they believe that doing so would kill ants and other insects should they step on them. To this day I have not been able to figure out how not wearing shoes does not kill insects. May be the underside of the human foot is softer than a shoe sole. But then I believe ants can withstand weight several times their weight, certainly for a split second that one steps on them. I also saw before I learned that there are two types of Jains, the Digambars and the Shwetambars, the latter of which wear white clothes, which is what the word “Shweta” means. I do not recollect any women walking up or down the mountain, but I do remember that the path was through a forest; that my sister and I were ahead of the rest most of the time, both ways, going up and going down. The path down was very slippery, and I enjoyed slipping and falling. I am told that Vasudha also made it to the top and walked down without any complaints, however my memory does not serve me well in that I do not recollect if she was with me all the time. We were dead tired when we got back home and it was quite late, perhaps past 10 pm. One other occasion when I was dog tired was after climbing Mt Whitney, few decades later. The Parasnath day was a long day, especially for my father what with the drive starting at 4 AM. The hike was about 10-11 km one way. There probably was no school the next day, or this was during a vacation. The Parasnath trip was probably in the year 1972. Thereafter I did not have any opportunity for a hike or mountain climb. It was only in 1987 when I moved to Pune after finishing my master’s in computer science from Visakhapatnam, that I was close to any mountain.My First Himalayan Hike
After moving to Pune, the task at hand was to find a job. I had a couple of offers, one from Medha Stephens, from Data System Services, as a software engineer; another one, with guidance from my father’s friend, Prof V M Deshpande, from an engineering college, as a lecturer in Computer Science. I chose the latter, as I liked being in front of people. I had developed a liking for this purely from the Wednesday school assembly at St. Xavier’s school, Bokaro Steel City. This was the “big assembly” where one of us from the senior most class would deliver the weekly news. I enjoyed doing so, was nervous at the first go, but got quite used to it. News was school news (such as if our school won a sports or other competition), state and country news as well as world news, the last of which always interested me most. It meant keeping abreast of current affairs. The school library had the daily newspaper, with The Statesman, which was published from Calcutta, being most popular. As a result, I did not think I would be afraid to go in front of a class of 50 to 60 students. Sure enough it was not a problem for me. Students seemed to be really not very knowledgeable, what with no internet those days, there was nothing they would prepare in advance for a lecture. This was certainly to my advantage. This aspect of teaching is quite different from teaching in the USA. It was August 1987 that I started my first job as a teacher. It was definitely a very rewarding experience, especially to see the eyes light up on a child’s face when they had understood a point I was trying to make. The other rewarding experience was the flip side when a light shone on my face when I realized that a student was confused. I would speak out the student’s name and ask him or her what was so difficult to follow. The student would be stunned, knowing I had realized that they had not followed it. There is no comparable satisfaction. I soon came to know that this job had a lot of paid vacation. Summer break would be almost 60 days. 60 days of doing nothing and getting paid. But I could not stand the idea of doing nothing. Instead, I began to look at options to spend the vacation in either a constructive manner or doing something that interests me. I got acquainted with my hiking guru, Chandrashekhar Bapat. It turned out that a few years later when Vasudha got married, Bapat became a relative of mine through Vasudha’s in-laws. Yet our friendship grew and I started to enquire about hikes. Bapat is an amazing photographer and has won awards from the Prime Minister of India for his inventions in the area of photography. He was a regular hiker in the Himalayas. In the month of June 1988, I came to know of a hike that Bapat had completed. He had been describing incidents on the trek, the beautiful scenery and in general his travels. This was my opportunity to ask if I could go on a trek with him. I did not get a positive answer, instead I heard how difficult it was and how one person’s failure would affect the entire group. I was determined to not let that person be me. I started practice hikes, little did I know the yardstick to determine if my practice hikes were adequate. I had heard that climbing up and down the Singhad fort, some 30 kilometers from Pune was one criterion. Initially I started this by traveling 30 km by a local city bus, from Bhikardas Maruti. The route was #50, or #51. It would take almost an hour to get to the foot of the fort. The first bus departure was 4:30 AM. After reaching the trail head, I would have a quick cup of tea and start the hike. Never having done this before I had no clue what to expect. Soon I realized that this was a pretty steep climb. After a short “warm-up” gradient, it would quickly increase. Yet, of the 3 km hike up, the final 1 km is much steeper. The overall gain is about 2000 feet (600 meters). I made it to the top in 1 hour and 26 minutes. To me this was not very convincing, but I gave myself the benefit of the doubt as I was doing this the first time. Once again, I only got negative feedback from Chandrashekhar Bapat, that my timing was dismal. I ignored everything that he said and continued by weekly (Saturday or Sunday) hikes, not only timing myself, but making notes about how exhausted I felt. I also noted how I had slept the previous evening, what I had eaten, how my stomach felt in the morning, what the temperature was, the humidity, what I was wearing for clothes and my shoes. These and many more parameters impact the performance. However, pretty soon I had knocked off a good 20 minutes from my first attempt. In due course, I timed my best to be 56 minutes. More importantly I was gaining the confidence that on a hike in the Himalayas, the group would not suffer because I was the weakest link. Moreover, I have learnt that everything is “up there” – that is, in the mind and I was determined to not be the cause. December of 1988, Bapat had indicated he was planning a “Char Dham” yatra in the summer of 1989. This is a pilgrimage to four places, namely “Yamunotri”, “Gangotri” or the origin of rivers Yamuna and Ganga (often misspelt and mispronounced as Ganges) respectively, Kedarnath and Badrinath. The timing could not be better. I asked to include me in the team, and having witnessed my Singhad hike progress, there was no reason for Bapat to turn me down. More serious practice hikes commenced. Occasionally we went up to Singhad, descended half way (till what is known as “metta”), went up again. Earlier after reaching the top we would enjoy hot snacks on the top of the fort, now we started skipping these. The customary “nimbu-sarbat” (lemon juice, water, lot of sugar and salt) was a no-brainer. We also started carrying backpacks with weights which went from 5 kgs to 20 kgs closer to the actual trek day. In those days, teachers in India were not paid a huge salary, nor was Chandrashekhar drawing a big amount, and possibly most of the others in our group. Therefore, Bapat had been told that all his treks would be on a shoestring budget. That was fine by me. We traveled from Pune to Delhi by train named Jhelum Express. I believe the train passed through the infamous Chambal valley, known for the notorious female bandit, Phoolan Devi. Thankfully our train was not looted. However, quite unlike present days, the train was delayed by a few hours. We ended up having to take a late-night bus from Delhi train station to Rishikesh. But the bus would not go to Rishikesh, and we had to change buses in the middle of the night. Even that one took us only till Haridwar, and thereafter we engaged a shared “tum-tum” an enlarged version of an auto-rikshaw. The whole journey from Pune to Rishikesh was not one of the most comfortable ones that I have ever undertaken. It did not end there, as we were to then proceed to Janaki Chatti, the trail head to Yamunotri.