Thirty-first/Thirty-second

Its 4:27 in the morning. I have been awake for the past one hour now. Desperately trying to sleep. After all, there is a 9:30 alarm on my phone which I just cannot avoid. Well, rewinding the hour that past by, I can put it down in following points-

1. Heat and a strong pang for water wake me up.
2. Reach out for my bottle. Find it empty. Curse myself for not being far-sighted while gulping down that last sip.
3. Put on my t-shirt and proceed to refill my bottle and quench my thirst. I stay in top wing and all water-coolers in my hall are in bot wings.
4. I find temperature surprisingly pleasant outdoors. Or maybe my room's relatively warmer. Decide to throw open those glass windows after 4-5 months.
5. Come back and finish that chore. Lie down to sleep but there are bloody mosquitoes all around me.
6. Try to ignore them. Can't.
7. KILLING SPREE!
8. I try to keep count. Fail miserably. 
9. Give up. Turn on my laptop.

But the past few days weren't so depressing. Except for the Institute Blues Fiasco. Which was both sad and distasteful. Patty is one person who deserves the top honors without an iota of doubt.

Coming on to the happening things. We finally had a departmental outing. Well, there was just a lukewarm response (13 out of 39) but we went forward with the plan. We had zeroed in on Barbeque Nation for a sumptuous lunch. And we traveled all the way to Lucknow for that. And boy, that was one memorable trip. I wonder why didn't we plan such outings before. And I never realized when between those boring lectures, project discussions and assignment deadlines we forged such close bonds of friendship.

Courtesy Lohia-ji and his brand new DSLR, we had some amazing snaps. Here are some that didn't find their way on Facebook:

Everyone minus Lohia

Photo-bombing 

Cheers to Y11 Economics!

After the beer was stolen

Customary 'birthday' celebrations for a free cake

Well, awesomeness didn't end with the trip. For the first time in four years Techkriti had me excited. They had managed to do the unthinkable. Every music fan in the campus had listened with envy tales of POTF (Poets of the Fall) grooving the campus sometime in late 2000s. And Techkriti brought them back to campus. And to say their performance was mind-blowing would be an understatement. I could feel the reverberations from their performance and my heart-beats syncing to their beats even hours after their concert. Thank you Techkriti team for this experience.

  

Among other things, swimming pool reopened this week. It always feels good to get back to kicking water and treading over those black lanes. 

Thirtieth

The countdown has begun in my head. Its 42 days till the end of end-sems. To the end of a journey. And to the end of perhaps the most amazing phase of my life. Well, I'll cut the senti feelings for later posts.

Focusing on the week that passed by, the high-point was the Budget Panel Discussion we (Abhishek & I) organised. We convinced two of our professors to take some time out and be the panelists for the session. We had to indulge in a bit of haggling but eventually all the doubts were ironed out. I utilized my newly developed Adobe Illustrator skills to make a poster in our quest to attract junta. And things fell in place. Over 100 people turned up, right on time - a rarity for student organised activities on campus. When the session concluded, almost everyone left with a satisfied expression. Hope this momentum is sustained.

Moving to the Adobe Illustrator story. So we had this 20% mid-sem project for the communications design course. We had to design some logos, icons, indexes and symbols for Indian Olympics. Although I intended to give 3 days for this project, but that's too ideal a scenario. So on the d-day, I install Illustrator and open up some tutorial videos. Last-minute panic fueled creativity and I designed/edited my project way beyond my personal expectations. Here are some of the best ones:

Indian Olympics Logo

Hockey Icon

Mallakhamba Icon

Kushti Index

   

27/28/29

Yes, from the title you could easily say laziness is getting better of me. So, the last line I wrote on this blog talked about writing about Delhi elections and Galaxy'15. To begin with, I lost some bucks on Delhi elections. Sometime in late December or very early January, I had bet against AAP with a couple of my wingies. I was pretty sure I would win comfortably but BJP pulled out a Kiran Bedi out of nowhere and my chances went for a toss. Just hours before elections, I scouted for a bhakt to rationalize my risks. I found one, again in my wing. I brought in a loophole in one of the deals I was losing and eventually I am down by just 40 bucks.

Regarding Galaxy'15, well, Hall 3 won it again. Not that I harbor any hall feelings, but that does make up for a good case study. As far as I recall, they have won last 6 editions. And with a big margin almost everytime. And this is achieved mostly by the efforts of a set of chaps who were selected to reside in Hall 3 randomly. I do remember hypothesizing some theories and also explaining India's world cup record against Pakistan with some of them. But I fail to recall even one right now. Perils of not being regular with my blog.

Jumping to the main topic for this post - the Brahmatal trek. Or what happened of it. So we (Aditya, Bansal, Paul & I) left with overflowing enthusiasm in a rather uncomfortable bus to Kathgodam from Delhi. Sometime later, a co-passenger struck up a conversation with me which would remain memorable for various reasons. We already had a bumpy ride to Delhi with some train derailing and we had to get down at Chandra Vihar station (some 15 kms from NDLS). Anyways, we reached Kathgodam around 7:30 and within 30 minutes packed ourselves into a tempo traveller for a 10 hour journey to our base camp. I personally had no complains for this part. In fact, I rather enjoyed it. Also, it is during this journey that I started conversing with this another set of trekkers who would eventually turn out to be great friends over next few days.

DAY 1:

Rains washed out our expectations. Our trek was called off for the day. We were asked to buy ponchos and were given free time till lunch. So we switched on our exploratory mode and started moving towards Wan. We spotted a trail and diverted towards it. It felt just like a monsoon trek in the Sahyadris. Just 15 degrees colder. But it was fun.

Lunch followed and then we decided to explore Eigen Top very close to the village. It was a very easy 3ish kilometer trail. On our way, we also came across the first patch of snow for the trip. Though it wasn't my first snow experience, its always fascinating for folks residing below Tropic of Cancer. Weather was turning beautiful and colder with every passing minute which in turn led to amazing photographs. 

DAY 2:

It had poured all night. All my hopes of ascending to Brahmatal were dashed. But we decided we should at least do a day trek to Maling (9350 ft). And it was on this trek that I experienced my first snow fall. We returned to Lohajung by 15:00 and a completely different sight awaited us. The green/brown surroundings were acquiring a layer of white. 

Post-lunch Lohajung

 We spent our evening by the fire playing dumb charades and sipping steamy soup. Also, we awakened our nocturnal selves and initiated Mafia/Judgement sessions well past midnight.

DAY 3:

And for the third consecutive day I wake up to open our door for tea, a beverage I avoid by all possible means. All 3 assholes in my room conveniently pass on this responsibility to me. And I wake up to see a bright sun over Lohajung for the first time during our trip. The shimmer of snow from all around all the more brightens the ambiance. Post-breakfast, we start our journey on the Lord Curzon trail towards Kuling. It was a gentle trail with a steep climb in the end. Comfortable, except that rain emerged with flirting appearances about an hour after we left. 

  

Moderate sprinkles greeted us back at Lohajung. The white had completely disappeared from the local scenery. And we continued our bulla/mafia sessions right until early hours of morning. 

DAY 4:

The final day of the trek started with an insatiable reluctance to get out of the bed. It was only after I heard we would be proceeding to Bekhaltal (~11000 ft) for the day did I make a move out of my bed. This was undoubtedly the high-point of our trip and also relatively more challenging than other days. We packed our lunch packets and embarked on our trail. Just past the halfway mark, we cross the snowline. There also might be a little snowfall, but I can't recall for sure. As we keep moving skywards, sights keep getting prettier (Sadly, I can't think of any comparative word of pristine. That would have been technically correct.) It was impossible to be not spellbound by nature. And the soft snow effortlessly seduced every human soul on the trek. We crisscrossed over a feet deep snow in the final stretch to reach Bekhaltal in about 3 hours.

A camp-fire awaited us back at the base-camp. But we found it more interesting to gather back in a room and hold our own session there. All sort of randomness happened and we finally tucked into our beds out of necessity. 

Next morning we scurried around to pack our bags. Goodbyes were announced. And the usual farewell pleasantries followed. But events din't end there. We reached the cab owner's village in an hour or so. And he came along with a gulaal packet to greet us for Holi. Ideas picked pace and soon, we were having our own session there. Some local sweets were also brought in. Some home-made gujiyas were gifted by Shahji (the cab owner). 

We reached Kathgodam the same evening. Boarded a train and reached campus next morning. I have been sleeping more than 10 hours daily since then. 

PS: Indihikes guys have this awesome policy wherein we get to do a free trek in one year period as we couldn't complete ours because of unfavorable weather. 

Group Snap