A few weeks back I went to trekking with some friends to a place call Goechala(Sikkim). Here are few comments and photos about that experience.
“Trek is a long, adventurous journey undertaken on foot in areas where common means of transport are generally not available.”
Walking It’s one of the strange things in life I like to do, it is a habit I picked up from my childhood. In those days I walked to places(rather than take public transport) to save few rupees :) , but now I still do it just because I like it. I guess I like it because I enjoy that pace of traveling and like looking at things. It also facilitates the thinking process(there are few problems in life I fixed while walking :) ).
So that’s one of the reasons I went for trekking. In total, we walked almost 90 kms in about 7 days that’s more than 10 kms per day!! One day we started at 2 am at night and finished at 1 pm in the afternoon, that’s almost 12 hours of walking!! We were like walking on a road which did not end. Trekking is a real test of both physical and mental strength.
Snow My one wish was to see snow, I have never seen it in real life except inside a fridge. It was a wonderful site, snow everywhere, once it was snowing when we were walking. The flip side is, it is terribly difficult to walk on snow/ice. More than once I fell down. One of the very important things is to get a very good shoe with grip for trekking. I had bought an expensive “Spalding” shoe for this, after a while(and few falls) I realize, that was not working for me and switched to cheaper “Titas” shoe(from my dad shop cost 5 times lesser!!)
Toilet Ok, dont read this part if you do not like toilet humor :). One of the reasons I think that ladies might stay away from trekking is this. If you are a very hygienic person you will have lots of problems. The toilets(when available) are what I call “medieval type” there is a small enclosure and inside a hole. There are many times you will rather not use this toilet and do it in nature’s one cause some people’s aim is not quite right (There were many ladies going on the trek and one was in our group. I was very impressed by the determination shown by her. It’s just that you need to get the right mental setup.)
Mountain You will not believe the view, it’s simply breathtaking, it makes all the hard work worthwhile. You see the photos and say wow but if you see it in real it’s something else, you can’t really describe it. I was a bit down one day but one look at the mountain and my spirit went up instantly.