Step Into My Shoes..

(Disclaimer: It's a long ass article) October 27th, 2018 4:00 am - excitement The morning was dark and freezing. And the six companions had decided, "we have seen the same mountains from much closer for far too long already" so there was just the two of us. I left my room with much apprehension and I was actually holding my breath when I made my way to the stairs. I took the first step down, only to find out - hey it isn't so hard after all. So with a pep on my steps, I made it downstairs and out the hotel. The time was 4:25 am. We had a torch with us but my friend is an owl - he doesn't need anything but the moon to light his way. We were told the Poon Hill tower was an hour long uphill climb and sunrise was forecasted (by me) to be at around 6:15, so it still doesn't make sense why we woke up so damn early. But turned out, there were people who must've gotten earlier than us since we passed so many of them on our way up. The trail is well o...

Continued.. The instructions weren't very clear but we were in a great hurry to go somewhere, do something, climb a mountain! For about an hour, all we did was walk either downhill or straight with zero difficulty and remember, we were travelling light. At the end of the first hour, we reached a place which was like the base of the mountain that we were going to have to climb. We had only just reached there that it kinda started snowing. At first, we weren't sure what was happening. We had seen cloud forming at the tip of the mountain but we were definitely not expecting it to snow this far down. But lives don't work alongside our expectations. Some of us hesitated but the rest wanted to carry on. So majority won and up we went.  It wasn't the first time for some of us to witness snowfall, but immediately after we started walking, we sighted a danphe - the national bird of Nepal, definitely a first time for all of us. It felt like a good sig...

For the umpteenth time in my life, I have cheated death, again. Okay, may be I am being a little too dramatic. I am an adventurous person but I don't go and seek to partake in risky activities like jumping off a cliff, climbing a steep mountain, walking into the unknown in a failing daylight when it's snowing - but in retrospect, I have done all that in the past week. Let me elaborate. A week ago, I left Kathmandu with four people with the intention to trek to Khopra Ridge and come back with some good instagrammable pictures. I did come back with many great pictures but also I am glad to have come back with greater stories to tell. Normally, when I travel, I am on the driving seat. I decide where we go, when we go, how we go and every such things. I like being in control and knowing what's coming. Many a times, plans have succeeded and I have come back content. This time, however, I had been designated the passenger seat from where I couldn't even see where we...