Mumbai & trekking

Sometimes you just know that you're in the big city again because there are beautiful buildings:

And then other times you just know that you're in the big city again because there's ridiculous stuff like McDelivery.
If you didn't watch this commercial that I posted, I recommend you do now.


Sometimes you just want to tell people they're taking work too seriously, like this rail worker as the train comes down the line:


After a few days banging around Mumbai with excellent sights, shopping, and eating, we took off for a suburb to meet some Indian friends who would take us on a trek for a few days! It was wonderful to hike through the lush Maharashtra hills and valleys during the monsoon! Because it was warm out, we just enjoyed getting wet, knowing we'd dry later.


We made it to a small village where we'd end up staying two nights, sleeping on a dirt floor house, eating great home cooked meals (Thank you so much, Amarutha!), and generally enjoying life!

Such a simple setup, yet such complex flavors! Breakfast, lunch, dinner, multiple teatimes, Amaruta rules on the fire oven/stove setup!

Red onion storage behind me. Good thing I love onions. :-)

I was really surprised to see solar panels in this mountain village.


We went for a hike to a big valley edge and watched some gushing, huge waterfalls:


Then took a hike to a temple carved into the side of some caves. These aren't the famous Ajanta caves, but are only a few hours away. Similar origins; these are buried a day's hike from a road, so are less traveled (and thus less maintained, unfortunately).

All in all, Ashish and Amaruta, our friends who hosted us and took us on the trek made our stay perfect. We had a blast laughing and relaxing with you!



Of course no coverage of Mumbai would be complete without mention of their commuter trains. Here's what one looks like 1.5 hours from the city center, at 11pm at night. Joy oh joy.

Goa, India

Another blast-from-the-past post, I'm getting around to writing about the trip through Goa -- we came up on a train from Alleppey (you remember the serene backwaters post?), through Kochin to the south end of the Goan beach paradise, Palolem. The train ride up the coast was wonderfully lush and I could hardly count 10 seconds without seeing either 1) a young boys' cricket game, 2) men standing around talking in their kotis, or 3) women walking with something on their heads. Very lush with acres and acres of palm and banana trees.



Arriving in Palolem, we quickly realized that the Goa we were to experience was not that of most tourists. The beach cove of Palolem can accommodate a thousand or two tourists during high season, but while we were there we only saw about 6 other tourists! We had a bit of rain, but it was still another, great, quiet nook of India.

We had the beaches to ourselves, as long as we shared with a few stray cows and dogs. It was blissful.
After relaxing in Palolem for a bit we headed up to Panaji, the old port city of Goa. This was settled by the Portuguese, and it's still quite evident in the style of the city, from the crumbling architecture to the street signs.

Bodhgaya - town for Buddhist enlightenment

I haven't made time until now to sort through some pictures and video from my visit to Bodhgaya, India. This is the town where the first Buddha (Prince Siddhartha) attained full enlightenment back in 623 B.C. There is a massive monument (54 meters high) and park setup, with tons of burial sites and shrines built by folks from all over the world, known collectively as the Mahabodhi Temple (maha = big, bodhi = tree which buddha sat under). Additionally there is a massive (25 meters high) seated Buddha statue worth visiting. Many sites in the town have been dedicated by the Dalai Lama.



The bodhi tree shown below is, in a manner of speaking, the same tree as the original that the Buddha meditated and reached enlightenment under. A sapling was cut from the original tree for safekeeping and taken to Sri Lanka. As chance would have it, an invading group cut the tree down, and later a portion of the tree was brought back and planted in the original spot.



Lots of Buddhists from all over the world have come to this town and set up monasteries for monks from their homeland to come and study. I was lucky enough to stay in two separate Tibetan monasteries. Others in town were from: Bhutan, China, Japan, Myanmar, Nepal, Sikkim, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tibet and Vietnam (Full list thanks to Wikipedia).


Some of the monasteries have extra large prayer wheels for those tough times when you've really gotta belt out literally millions of prayers in one day:



Without further ado, I give you the latest "Places Not To Fall Down" installment:



Also there were large collections of tea lamps / candles which are totally awesome, if not unbearably hot in the middle of the summer:

Here's a random (whiplash) panorama of the Gaya train station. This is a plain, small town train station, at 1:30am. There are thousands like this all over India:


And finally, just a picture to capture the vibrance of India, this one shows the various colors, and the intensity, of the powder used in religious celebrations and every day life, all available for a few rupees in every market.

Backwaters of Kerala

Again, all I have are excuses. This time it's for completely skipping blog coverage for two weeks of my trip -- definitely some of the best weeks -- when I stayed with a friend at her yoga ashram. Among other things we learned yoga for the body, mind, and general energy.

But I digress. This post is about our post-ashram experience in the state of Kerala, India. We came to a small town of Alleppey (Alappuzha). This is one of many of the towns along the rail line where you can catch a houseboat and do a cruise up the backwaters -- the town's nickname is the "Venice of the East!" In addition to getting awesome Keralan food and a clean boat to ourselves we got something that you can hardly buy here in India -- peace and quiet. It seems to be a rare commodity in this country! This was our boat:
We had rented the boat for 24 hours, and sailed at 11am. After cruising some bigger canals and stopping for lunch, we made our way into smaller ones, which I fell in love with. I loved the idea that only our smaller size boat (single, with one bedroom, as opposed to the massive 3 bedroom boats [~30 meters long]) could navigate these. The palm trees arched over us, and the canal was formed by two manmade walls which held in rice paddies. The walls were between 3 feet wide and 20 feet wide, and small houses dotted the landscape.



When we stopped for lunch, a goat that was wandering on the sliver of land between the canal and rice paddies decided to join us -- he got away with two of our lady finger bananas!

The peace and quiet was seldom disturbed, and even then, always in a mild manner -- a quiet fisherman traveling home after work, school kids waiting for the school boat (no school buses here!), or some workers fixing a canal wall.



It was by far my most expensive night in India thus far, but as trusty Lonely Planet travel guide predicted, it was worth every rupee.

Excellent aerial shot from the Kerala Tourism group:  http://greatbackwaters.com/

Varanasi, India

I'm going to have to do this one a bit out of order, because I don't have the pictures from Bodhgaya.

That said, I only have with me a small portion of those from Varanasi, but I figured some was better than none.

We stayed a few days here and were really sick of the constant hounding by the boatmen and their helpers who constantly bombarded us with offers for rides on the river, hotel rooms, restaurant food, sarees, and oddest of all, spices (I'm a tourist -- I have no kitchen. Why do you think I would want some turmeric!?)

I loved all the various 80's-video-game-style graphics that adorned town, and couldn't stop snapping pics:



When is Varanasi, the holiest town for one of the largest religions in the world, going to graduate up to 24-bit graphics? (I should be thankful they have such taste in style, and celebrate their own city!)

Here's a lovely scene: Families and strangers cheering on young boys and girls who are engaged in a swimming race from a rowboat back to shore, in a very holy, public river.

Here's a scene that I'm less in love with: The swimmers are as young as 3 yrs old, and the swimming is happening in the Ganges. The Ganges is not particularly clean. In addition to people drinking and swimming in the water, it is used for bathing, a trash dump, a sewage dump, and for the disposal of human bodies (either post-cremation ashes or if you happen to be alive, but in a coma). Apparently "80% of all health problems and one-third of deaths in India are result of different water-borne diseases." (Source) Yikes. You can do more research, but I found that there is roughly 10,000 times the WHO limit for bathing of fecal coliform in the water. That's what I want my kids swimming in. MMmmmm!





More on that topic: Smithsonian Magazine Article


And here's me earning some extra rupees:

ps. I realize that I have not posted about the better sides of this city, and I apologize. I did see some pretty awesome stuff, I just don't have the photos with me now.

HMI - Part III

To pick up where I left off in my second HMI post, we had finished our main altitude adjustment period as well as completed most of our lectures and practice work on the nearby Rathong glacier. It was time for our final exercise: an altitude gain day with option of summiting a peak, weather permitting. The goal was to reach approximately 18,000 feet (previous high altitude was 15,500 feet on the glacier) -- and the summit of BC Roy Peak.

Panorama, hiking up from base camp to BC Roy Peak (appears at approximately

We set off at the not-so-alpine-start time of a late 6 am, and after crossing a river with tons of yelling and confusion and passing handfuls of sand to step on slippery rocks, started up the peaks north of camp. We hiked at a ridiculous climb rate of 40 ft/minute and continued for about 2 hours. Resting every hour or so, we made it to the snow/ice and put on crampons and other cold weather gear. Ropes were fixed and we used our ascenders (Jumars) as safety as we climbed the final ~2000 ft on snow, in mostly clear, sunny weather. As we reached the final resting spot (and a possible base camp for higher peaks) in a beautifully protected cirque, we organized into teams to try for the summit.

Celebrating at the summit of BC Roy Peak. I have no idea why I'm making the Peace Sign. It seemed like the thing to do. When in Rome, I guess.

I gathered the three remaining members of my team (of originally 10 people) and we picked up two more friends, so 5 of us were roped up together. I led the final couple hundred feet, kicking my own steps apart from other teams that were headed up the same peak. It was really cool to be given the responsibility to pick a safe route and be asked to do the work of kicking steps in the snow/ice. The final altimiter reading at the top of BC Roy peak was 17,765 feet.


(I misheard the altitude reading, and as you can see there was lots of excitement at the top.)

After summiting (er... doing an altitude gain exercise), our time at Base Camp came to a close. We played a few games of soccer and cricket, had a lecture or two more, and then headed out.
Cricket at (allegedly) the world's highest cricket pitch, 14,400 ft.

The solar panel array at Base Camp that I didn't know existed -- I didn't bring my camera battery charger!

My friend liked to cuddle in the hut. He took a particular liking to me because (aside from feeding him), he knew that I, the sole White Dude, would always treat him well. My Indian counterparts were equally divided between petting him gently and kicking him -- confusing for me, let alone a dog! Street dogs in India have it tough.



Up at base camp there wasn't much to do, and because of the altitude we were asked not to sleep more than 8 hours per day -- luckily most of the Indians on the trip enjoyed singing continuously for hours upon hours.


Another nightmarish multi-day trek with 100 people (all hiking together, no gaps, etc.) later, we were back in Darjeeling at HMI.

We had a climbing competition on the outdoor wall (see last post) that I completely biff'd on... but the wouldn't let you study the route before starting your climb, so I'm writing that off as "bad practice." And we all then had a cross country competition. The race, for me, was more of race for the toilets, as my bowels weren't in the best shape. Still, I managed to take second place! The race was about 5 km, at 7000 feet, with hills, and my time was about 21 mins.

Finally, there was a graduation ceremony, where we all dressed up in matching pullovers. The presiding speaker (in addition to the Principal of HMI), was Nawang Gombu(wikipedia). Mr. Gombu(news article) was the first person to summit Mt. Everest twice, and lives in the Darjeeling area.
Each student was presented a pin. Additionally, three medals were given for boys and girls each in the Sport Climbing and Cross Country competitions. Additional awards were for "Best Technical Student" and "Best Overall Student."

Me receiving my mountaineering pin from Mr. Gombu. He also presented me with my "Best Overall Student" and 2nd place cross country awards!

The team I led for a month, with our excellent instructor. "Rope 6" from left: Ashish, Ajeet, Holden, Saikat, Juna Sir (instructor), Hiten (in front), and Tumpa.

With that, the course finished, and we went our separate ways! I have to say that despite my concerns for the safety, organization, and discipline in the course, I am glad that I attended. Though I didn't learn many new things, I really did reinforce and get clarity on those skills I already possessed. I was able to help the other students with their knots, first aid, and mountain skills. I was recommended to take the Advanced Mountaineering Course and will consider that in the future!


And finally, here's a picture of my most-favoritest brillo pad salesman in the world (to date) showing off his wares. You'd think that displaying one of the many identical packs would be enough... and I really do wonder how many pads he sells in one day (in this miniscule town in Sikkim that has 3 streets (named "Street 1," "Street 2," and "Street 3")?

HMI - Part II

After our week and a half of physical training and lectures in Darjeeling, we commenced our trek up to HMI Base Camp. A quick bus ride later put us at the start of the trek, in Yuksom, West Sikkim, India. (Yuksom is an ex-capital of Sikkim, with a coronation seat, and was the meeting place of the lamas.) From Yuksom, at about 6,000 feet, we made our way up through Bakhim ("House of Bamboo"), through tiny Dzongri, over Dzongri Pass, and finally arrived at the Base Camp, at 16,400 ft. With rest days and acclimatization hikes each afternoon, the trip took 4 days.

(Shot while taking a break on the trail -- the yaks were carrying lots of food and cooking equipment that we'd use at Base Camp. Shot just above Bakhim, around 11,000 ft.)

Let's play word association. I say "this bridge"... you say.... "safe?"

HMI Base Camp (To see in Google Earth click here) is officially called "Chowri Khang" which means "Grazing place of the Yaks," due to the bit of flat land magically plopped among towering peaks. The flat spot is, of course, not wasted when yaks aren't around, as the worlds highest cricket pitch, as well as a usually-unaccessible helicopter landing pad. At camp there are a number of stone, fiberglass, wood, and tin roof buildings: one hut each for men and women, a few huts for instructors & caretakers, a kitchen hut, and a mess hall hut.

(HMI Base Camp from above. Since our course was so overpopulated, we used extra tents (row of white) in addition to cramming in the huts. The tents sometimes prevented runaway soccer and cricket balls from bouncing down the ravines -- but not usually.)

Here's a (whiplashing) panorama movie shot at base camp:

And two shots, one looking up at the Kabru peaks, the other looking down the valley towards Dzongri Pass.


Almost every day we made a 2-3 hour trek (each direction) towards the north west to reach the Rathong Glacier. Here we learned and practiced sequence climbing on ice, pick and toe (and other methods of) ice climbing, crevasse rescue, rappelling, and self arrest. After a few hours on the glacier we'd get some tea and then hike home, reaching Base Camp in the mid-afternoon for lunch. Afternoons were spent resting, attending lectures, and lots and lots of singing (Bengali, Nepali, Hindi, etc.).

Treking up to the glacier - one one of the very few good weather days. Our random pet street dog came with us to the glacier sometimes (he never had his crampons or ice axe, though!).

My friend Ashish on the glacier.


(Lecture on ice and snow anchoring techniques. Coldest lecture of my life. And in Hindi.)


Random glacier activities.

My team practicing making an improvised stretcher. From top, clockwise: Instructor Juna Sir, Ajeet, Saikat Banerjee, Holden Bonwit, Tumpa Roy (in stretcher), Hiten, Ashish Palande.

Up at base camp we had almost the same diet as in Darjeeling, with the following exceptions: no leavened bread (chapatis for breakfast), no eggs, and rare servings of meat (mutton) and soya for the vegetarians. There were a few occasions when we got halva parantha, kheer, or some canned pineapple dessert.
(Typical lunch or dinner at base camp: water, dal, rice, & potato subsy (also had chapatis every meal, I think those were in my pocket at the time of the photo -- I promise, I can explain).)


One of our pieces of equipment (an ascender / Jumar), proudly proclaiming its historical origin: "Made in USSR"!

Going for the summit: as we headed out from Base Camp for the summit of BC Roy peak, I got an education in Indian Mountaineering trail food. The top two items (chocolate & energy bar) in the picture I happened to bring personally, but the others (all candies + biscuits) were meant to sustain us for the 8 hour summit / trek & (I assume) save us in the case of emergency. Sugar, anyone?

More about the summit attempt of BC Roy peak, places not to fall down, and the final installment in the HMI series in the next post!

HMI - Part I

This is the first of a few segments about my brief stint (1 month) at the Darjeeling based Himalayan Mountaineering Institute (HMI, official website, official website #2). The institute was founded in 1954 by the Prime Minister of India, upon Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary's ascent of Everest (the first in history). (As I stood in front of Norgay's final remains and monument, I was reminded of my time in New Zealand where I was traveling at the time of Edmund Hillary's death, earlier this year. Interesting happenings for someone only moderately interested in the sport of mountaineering.)
I was part of the 28 day, 266th course at HMI,: Basic Mountaineering Course. With an enrollment limit of 60 students, our course naturally had 117 students, for after all, this is India, where any rule can be broken. Safety and student learning thrown aside, a military high school had decided to send an entire class, and allegedly the Principle of HMI could not refuse entry. Despite demanding all entrants be physically fit, few students were turned away throughout the duration of the course for not meeting this criteria.
Over the next 10 days, we attended lectures, did physical training and yoga, and practiced rock climbing skills, before heading higher into the Himalayas (Future Blogpost: HMI - Part II). Our lectures ranged from Mountain First Aid, Map Reading, Knots, History of the Himalayan ranges, and Avalanche Safety, among other topics. Physical Training consisted of a 5 km run alternate mornings with general calisthenics - stretching, push ups, crunches, squats, etc. and yoga on the other mornings. Rock climbing exercises were conducted on natural rock as well as indoor and outdoor artificial surfaces.

The natural rock climbing area in Darjeeling is shown in this movie. Having worked and climbed (on and off) for the past 10 years with those new to the sport, I can not fathom a worse environment for a beginner. Besides getting randomly yelled at (mostly in Hindi, sometimes English) to climb faster or use this or that hold, belay techniques and general safety were sketchy at best. Further, honking jeeps, yelling hawkers selling pakoras, and tourists and schoolchildren interrupted our learning constantly. Miraculously, only one member of my team was seriously injured here (dislocated shoulder), although another left the program because of the "learning" environment at the rock.



The outdoor artificial rock (sport) climbing wall at HMI is one of only two UIAA certified walls in India (the other is at NIM). It's 50 feet tall, 20 feet wide, and overhanging in varying degrees.



Finally, just before leaving Darjeeling for the high mountains, we did a training trek to the nearby Tiger Hill. From here, on a clear day, one can see not only the nearby Himalaya that are visible from HMI (including the third tallest mountain in the world, Kanchenjunga), but also number 1 (Everest), and number 4 (Lhotse). Unfortunately, it was completely cloudy the morning we made the 22 km round trip hike with our laden packs.
(A quiet trek with 116 of my new bestest friends.)

View of Kanchenjunga from Tiger Hill (Same as that from my dormitory at HMI).

Food at HMI was, to say the least, very regular. For breakfast we normally had some white bread toast with some sort of potato subsy (salad/caserole) to go with some tea. A few days at the beginning we got a small egg omelet, before the breakout of bird flu here in Darjeeling.
Lunch and dinner always consisted of at least the following, clockwise from top left: water or tea (chai masala), roti/chapatis (unleavened bread similar to tortillas), chaval (rice) with some dal on top (lentil soup), pinch of salt if you want, potato subsy (salad/caserole), more dal (lentil soup), and if we were lucky, some achar (pickled vegetables for flavoring). On a rare occasion (~5 times in 28 days), there was the option for either paneer (cottage cheese) for vegetarians, or mutton for non-vegetarians (as omnivores are called, in India).

Stay tuned for "HMI - part II" to learn about trekking up to HMI Base Camp, living at 14,600 ft for 2 weeks, exploring Rathong Glacier, and a try for the 17,765 ft. BC Roy peak!