Wild or messed up? – A look back into life after wanderlust happened

Written by Prachi Shrivastava

When I turned 25 in August last year I promised myself a five-year life plan to “play the big hand” without bogging myself down with aims for the “winnings” I collect or “losses” I make out of said hand. I resolved to go for the kill in every possible way and live life queen size without worrying about the actual “queenly” possessions I amass in the process.

And boom exactly two weeks later the universe picked me up and dropped me at the smoothest gateway to accomplish this life plan. Out of the blue I was put on a hike through a strange jungle, in the company of chronic wanderers, and the universe said: “Here child, I give you one ground to learn how to go for the kill. Go fulfil your resolve!”

I was gifted the jungle and I was gifted the company of the chronic wanderer and today, a little over nine months and countless literal “into the wild” excursions later, my heart has been cut open to receive risks and unseen possibilities like never before.

Through several beautiful yet painful scars on my heart, mind and body from these last few months I have learnt important lessons of spontaneity, adaptability and letting go. But the most important lesson of all that I have learnt is to honour myself before honouring those who teach me new lessons.

In the wanderers I met since August I befriended, loved and shared intimate and exclusive corners of life with a certain species of living organism which likes to call itself the “Not a tourist but a traveller and an explorer” (NTTE). By repeatedly throwing ourselves into the wild, I believe, we gradually become the wild. Now since the NTTE and I both pride ourselves on this innate “wildness”, it was but natural that I very quickly grew an inspired awe for the NTTE and felt a deep connection to the NTTE.

Consequent to this deep connect with the NTTE I learnt new ways of life, and consequent to getting to observe the NTTE so closely I learnt how much I value certain age-old things about myself.

The NTTE has a remarkable ability to “move on”. I have a remarkable ability to “add on”. While NTTE men and women shed friendships and relationships like snakeskin as they move ahead in life, my life is one big never ending Ferris Wheel where the party keeps on growing in size! I have learnt from the NTTE how to bid adieu with a smile instead of blood tears, but I have also learnt how much I value “deep attachments” moving on the highway to “deeper”.

In my travels, I collect souvenirs, and bring them back and decorate my home and hearth with them and carry them with me in suitcases to new homes, where I again take them out and decorate them and watch them rust beautifully, lovingly adoring their age.

The NTTE implores me to “think less” and “question less” in life. I am impressed by the number of places thinking less takes him or her to, and the variety of things questioning less has helped him or her try. Sometimes shutting my eyelids and numbing my brain to looming questions has helped me let go and experiment, even when there was no hand to hold in case I fell.

However, I’ve learnt that in seeking the truth experiments are only the allergens that help uncover the most optimal atmosphere required for us to survive. It is not the mountain peak which changed my life. It was my perception of the climb up that mountain that I carried home.

Also had I not deployed my “habit of thinking and questioning” to understand a different kind of intellect, the NTTE and I would never have become friends in the first place! Travel has taught me to open my heart and mind to different tribes’ ideologies, instead of just sticking to my own.

I think therefore I am.

The NTTE is brazen about his or her sexual pleasures, I, on the other hand, am brazen about wearing my heart on my sleeve! To the NTTE, nights of passion are possible keeping one’s flow of emotions gated and restrained. I applaud the NTTE for unapologetically connecting purely from the body with people who watch the moon from the other side of the planet. But I contrast this with my own bravado to take an emotional chance on people who watch the moon from the other side, and I give myself a pat on the back.

I trust, and I trust again, and I paint and I paint a beautiful picture again, of that scenery which shook me and scarred me and almost demolished me – because I am wild enough to!

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too.Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” 

.... Terry Pratchett

Just because - Prachi Shrivastava

Someone recently asked me about my one main personal reason to trek. He said that for him it was the mental piece that trekking up a hill brought. I said that for me it was the motivation to fill the empty pages of my travel Moleskine with helpful notes and bizarre nomad tales. But then this weekend happened. And what has actually driven me to trek regularly all along revealed itself – somewhere near Kareri village.

Kareri village is a Gaddi village an hour (22km) out of Dharamshala (by motorable road) featuring vast fertile lands lush with wheat, icy gushing streams, Sherpas herding sheep, a few huts, about a hundred village folk and a poultry farm. If one ventures on a 16km trek up the green undulating slopes upward from this village, one crosses some breath taking meadows and a number of impressively crafted shelter caves to reach the Dal lake – a pristine lake situated at a height of 4700m up the Dhauladhars.

Before we get to the weekend’s revelation – my personal reason to trek – let me get into its contextual setting. 25 of us from Delhi and Chandigarh set about to trek up to the lake and camp for the night by it, this Saturday. We parked our tempo traveller by the village, picked up our tents, sleeping bags, ready to eat and ready to cook food, water and rucksacks, and began stepping up the trail. However, the sight of the lake was not to be for 20 out of the 25 trekkers.

The 20 who did not make it, did not suffer any casualties on the trail – far from that, they lived a gala adventure. From tracking down the half of the group which initially lost the trail, to trekking almost the entire way up in heavy rain, to crossing a fiercely heavy stream in the dark, taking inadvertent ice baths in it and continuing up the trail in the darkness. Finally again losing the trail, splitting from the group and climbing a 70 degree incline to pitch tents on a hill at 1:30am and surviving on the insufficient food and water left with their part of the group. However exertion and a time constraint got the better of their will to reach the lake the next day.

The five, including me, who meanwhile made it up to the lake the next morning did it on 4 hours of sleep and empty stomachs – but oh the beauty of the lake, the meadows and the homey shelters on the way made up for the toll the two hour climb took on us, and how!

But over the weekend all 25 of us gained something in common, regardless of reaching the lake or not reaching it, crossing a stream expertly or slipping into it, managing to lose the trail or not losing it. The common gain was –  a fabulous weekend on the road less travelled, in its preserved and unexplored trenches, in the company of people who do not say die when they have to climb a mountain.

And that is, and has always been, the actual reason which drives me to trek so often. 

The unmatched joy of landing a cave in the lap of nature, previously hit by a select few on the power of their physical and mental endurance, and clinking mugs of Old Monk with similarly privileged buddies. I am in love with the echo that our laughter creates in dark valleys at such heights the prospect of climbing which does not charm every other tourist. The wait for another weekend of gossiping until the fire dies down at another newly discovered nature marvel, is too long for me.

In this weekend’s life-sized film, my heroes were: the debutante trekker in our group who jumped into the middle of the river-crossing action to help others despite his inexperience, the experienced one who didn’t let his energy die until the very end despite skipping several meals and lifting several rucksacks, the ones who kept the smile on and the chatter and jokes coming even at the prospect of having to continue uphill way past bedtime and in never-ending rain, the group leader who literally bulldozed an entire tempo traveller out of damp muddy pits with his one tiny body – instead of resigning to wait until the wet road becomes motorable again, and then the five of us with a one track mind focussed on reaching the lake instead of on our own weary bodies.

Why do we climb up a hill? Just because! And life is too short to create enough memories on caves and ridges and streams and in forests with all my “just because” buddies. Which is why I am already up planning my next one, and so are some of them from what I hear!

Same Difference: Hiking the February Triund - By Prachi Shrivastava

I have been trekking and adventuring with Fireballs for six months now and during this time I have grown up from having a mere eagerness to adventure, to adventure becoming an extension of me.

I have been on long marshy trails full of waterfalls in the darkness of the night, been on boulders like the jaws of death in an oxygen- less 14,000 feet height, been hunched for silent meditative hours by a mirror-like glacial lake in knife blade-like chilly dawn.

I have been hunched over damp firewood in a fiercely windy cave yet cooked steaming hot delicious dinner over fire from the same damp wood, been on a day-long relentless and breathless climb up straight inclines to sleep in a meadow beneath the milky way, been at a wedding which I attended in trekking gear ornamented with a dry-fruit garland around my neck and a flowery traditional topi on my head, and been at a bonfire in a lodge surrounded by majestic snowy hills that turned the lodge’s water supply to ice.

                                                                *************

What I had not been on until this February end weekend was a trek in knee deep, sometimes waist deep snow for the entire length of the trail.

                                                                *************

Triund (5km climb up from Bhagsu Nag in Dharamkot, Himachal Pradesh) offered itself up as the setting for me to get a taste of climbing up a snow-packed trail.

I had been to Triund in October when the rocky trail leading up to it was free of the slightest trace of snow or ice, and therefore this time my mind’s eye was exclusively focussed on the hypnotic breath taking valleys of clouds that change colours, that will greet us in a panorama at the end of the hike. The trail itself did not capture much anticipation. Until we began the trek, that is.

                                                                 *************

It is not that I didn’t know that the trail would be snowy. Fireballs had graphically warned me of the knee-deep snow lining it. But hearing that there’ll be snow and actually stepping on soft dense white layers for the first time, and realising that this is what every step is going to be like for miles ahead – both sets of knowledge differ in their impact on the curious newbie adventurer.

The shifting of layers of snow from underneath every step, to sit inside your now-drenched shoes and leggings and pinch your feet and legs to numbness after piercing them with daggers, makes one worship the dude who is leading the trail. This leader is creating easy craters for the followers to land their feet in. He or she would have to resign to keep leading and sinking first, because the followers would tend not to budge from pit stops until they see the next 20 minutes of feet craters ready to greet them!

The snow, on the other hand, is a blessing in disguise where speed is concerned.  Stepping into mostly level feet craters requires far less exertion than climbing up rocks one after another. Colder weather helps save energy too. Our group moved much faster on the trail than it did in October.

During the trek I repeatedly fantasised of the dry warm comfort that would’ve been inside a pair of gumboots, but looking at people in sneakers slip around me replenished my gratitude for the wonder grip of my North Face trekking boots. Though slipping hardly hurts on the cotton wool like soft snow (beware of slipping on ice though, that’s harsher) thanks to these boots I walked effortlessly with my palms in my jacket pockets!

                                                                 *************

The volume, density and thickness of snow on the trail changed for us at three points. For the first kilometre, until Café Best View, there was mostly slippery ice and wet boulders but not more than scraps of snow. Here we focussed on dodging the ice and stepping on rocky patches or the soft snow which was right at the outer edge of the trail. This gave crow’s feet to a friend afraid of heights, from the continuous wincing.

Next was the 2 ft thick snow, soft enough to shift from beneath steps but firm enough to not crumble all around us but hold the craters the group leader was forming with his steps. This continued until Café Magic View – the mid-point of the hike, and during this part of the trek we lifted our heads up carefree and soaked in the cloudy sights and the snowy majesty of the Dhauladhar ranges.

The route up from Magic View tested our limits with 5 ft thick snow that was too soft for the feet craters to be of much help. We exerted creating new craters of our own at some places, widening existing craters, sinking up to our waist in snow, and I particularly wanted to cut my feet off with an axe.

It is at cusps where you want to severe a limb off your body that you truly grow out of your little cocoon and stop being a caterpillar. It was once I was told to go back to base if the discomfort was too much to bear, that my motivations for adventuring came back to me. I do not wander into the wilderness for comfort or discomfort, or for everything that is expected. I wander to be a sport and make the best of all that is unexpected. I wander to surrender to and soak in the ferocious. This was it. I was right in the middle of the wild. How could I shirk it?

I stayed put, determined again to climb up. I flexed my toes inside my wet shoes and gradually they adjusted to the terrain and came back to life – part physically and part psychologically.

                                                                  *************

Café 22 Modh (named after the 22 deflections, after this point, in the straight trail leading up to Triund) was as far as we went this weekend. We ditched the last 80 metres (or 40 minutes, by non-snowy standard time) of the trail in favour of not getting completely lost in the area of the Dhauladhar where no route was visible.

An Austrian, used to trekking in the Alps, deigned to find his way up using the compass on his wrist as we watched safely from 22 Modh, with our shoes and socks removed and our feet basking in the intermittent sunlight. But he only deigned. And returned after half hour of hiking to nowhere.

Making snowmen and snow-ghosts, and taking swigs of our poison of choice to the beats of music, or gazing unblinkingly into the human forms made by clouds concluded the trek. It is less about the destination and more about the journey you say? Sure, I’ll take that! Goes with this weekend’s flavour!

                                                                  *************

Though every Fireballs trip is completely different from the previous one, some things never change.

The voice of perfect silence in our abode for the night, broken only by the cheer of the trekking group high from spending an evening in the company of identical wandering souls. The person with the crazy drunk stories, the one with tales of astonishingly generous fellow travellers, the one with a story for every biking scar, the one who loves himself for discovering new tricks to traverse the mountains, and the nightingale with the inebriating voice.

And then there’s the one who sews all of this together, single-handedly runs a brilliant show, and cheers-on the one person whose whereabouts he had to trace several miles back on the road in the dead of the night, by commenting: “It is but legitimate to get this drunk sometimes in life buddy!”

Getting lost in the mountains..

Written by: Prachi Shrivastava

Way up to Churdhar

I am sending a guardian angel – basically my present day self – to the three-day old me who got lost in the mountain jungles this Sunday when she hiked alone for the first time in her life. I hope the guardian angel is able to offer comfort to her when she starts feeling like a truly lost cause.

These are the things the guardian angel has to say to the “Me” of Sunday past:

This hour lost searching the forests for your trekking trail, is not really lost. It will add up. It will one day get you out of an “actual” life-threatening situation of course, but for today it will put into motion a sequence of mis-happenings that, eight hours from now, will lead you to the perfect bus.

This perfect bus has every comfort your body deserves after this hike. It is heated, has cushioned seats, and goes straight to your end destination instead of first dropping you off at a connecting port. The bus is fully booked, but for one last seat which is coming to get you, but baby you’d have missed it had you been on your target schedule and reached base point without the lag of this hour.

-------

The dhaba-owner’s family at the base point today will fascinatedly listen to your tales of climbing down the mountain alone, and will ask, “Didn’t you feel scared being alone in the forest?”  Acting cool as a cat, you’ll lend the finishing stroke to your staged performance with a “Not at all guys! What is there to feel scared in these beautiful mountains?!”

So, why not be brave now girl, in order to stay true to your performance a few hours later. Have faith that you will rescue yourself, really try not to feel scared and overwhelmed!

-------

Stop. Freeze right there! Why do you think you will brilliantly succeed in finding the correct route through the middle of this forest when, in fact, you ended up losing sight of an ALREADY established trekking route an hour ago? Stop going forward, turn back immediately, and find the point from where you first took the wrong way.

I can feel your inertia, but honestly, is this the best time to be lazy about having to exert climbing uphill again? 25 minutes after you start tracing your steps back you will come across a stony trail that will rekindle your faith in your right to survive.

This stony trail, curved steeply down towards the left, is your track! The correct track you didn’t even notice existed. 

At the beginning of your trekking expedition you were prepared to analyse and choose carefully whenever two choices of paths presented themselves to you. But in your hurry to complete your time targets you failed to even notice when the choices appeared an hour ago!

-------

I know you are physically unable to control your gigantic sobs because you feel you have the thoughts of absolutely no one with you in this trying situation, but look at me! You’re not alone. I am still there with you and always will be. 

Infact come, let me tightly hug you to give you a tangible belief of never being caught alone.

Though let me be clear. My hug for you is not meant to stop you from crying from your belly. In fact I am grateful that this deep crisis situation has come as an excuse for you to let out all the tears that used to get stuck in your throat from all those years of growing up and hardening. 

Blocked emotions are not so conducive to enjoying life to its fullest, you know. It is great that the mountains heard your hearty sobs today!

-------

You are convinced this is the end and all you really want at the moment is a fragrant hug by mum’s belly one last time before you’re taken away by a wild jungle bear? That hug, which seems so out of reach now, is all you need to prepare you for slipping down and hitting your head on a tree trunk or to fall straight into the valley to put you out of your misery?

That is just the lack of proteins and carbs in you talking, and not your giving up on your will to live, believe me you! Do you remember when you last had a proper meal? 36 hours ago! And the last bite of any food? 18 hours ago! You’re extremely thirsty from drinking water judiciously on this bright sunlit trail that you’ve been climbing down at full speed without a break.

10 minutes from these thoughts now, you’ll throw your 10 kg backpack to the ground, sit down and drink lots of water, and try your phone and your laptop dongle internet connection to reach a friend and let them know you are lost. Your attempts at connecting would fail (The jungles don’t have network range), but the 15 minute break it will afford you will calm you down and get your brain working again.

10 minutes after that break, you’ll find the blessed correct track.

But do remember to take this intensity of your craving for mum’s hug, back with you. Never forget what it felt like to have your birth-right so out of your reach at a point in life.

------

The aesthetics of lostness

Finally, do take a moment to enjoy this hour. You’re going to terribly miss it when it is behind you. Miles of perfect crispy golden dried leaves beneath your feet, An opal shaped crystal ball of sun peeking out from between the fragrant tall pines and oaks that are all around you, your lungs are full of pure air that breathes so light and its chill is pinching your nose and flushing your cheeks red.  Tiny fiery orange alpine flowers make timid clusters in the brown barren wintery landscape one last time before the snow sets in.

Don’t you just enjoy being left alone with the sound of only your writing ideas for hours? Well, here you are! Relish this beautiful, beautiful setting for that luxury baby – gazing meditatively into the blue deep valley.

And look! Here comes a Monaal! And in a rare event, it is sitting quietly by your side, enjoying your vibe when infact all it does on sighting any human is run away!

Tell me now, how often and how many city journalists have this kind of weekend bliss? Lucky you!

Lose yourself to find yourself

Written by: Prachi Shrivastava

I know that you began travelling to increase your level of endurance. For a long time you had been kicking hard against the ditch that was your everyday life, and frustrated of forever kicking in the damp darkness of the ditch, your energies were dying. So you decided to venture out to test your limits, push your limits, and view your spirit from the lens of The Great Outdoors to really check if you were made of steel. I know it takes high and mighty resolution to just pick up your bags and thrust yourself into faraway lands, instead of succumbing to the temptation of sinking into your own bed with your sorrows. I understand where you were coming from…

I know that when your first challenge presented itself to you on that first trip, as a debutante you were slightly scared of what would happen next, but you were more afraid of accepting the feeling of being scared. So you dove right into the test, ravenous for the next level of challenges. To begin with, you were on this trip for a sense of validation, since your everyday endeavours were failing you. People in your life were disappointing you. If you failed at this opportunity of The Great Outdoors too, god knows what you would turn to for validation. So you braved the challenge head on. I understand where you were coming from…

I know that when you surprised yourself on that first trip, everything else just stopped existing for you. The fact that you were the bottom-most in the food chain for far too long, the fact that others around you were now impressed with you, or the fact that you had scraped yourself blue with injuries and exhaustion in attaining this feat – nothing seemed to matter. You were numb to everyone else’s existence. It was just you and your potentialities – the only two energies that existed in the world. It was a rebirth moment. You were hooked. I totally understand why…

You now had the feeling of having found yourself. Little did you know, dear travelling child, that it was this very slope from where you were beginning to slip into losing yourself!

I know that from here onward The Great Outdoors became your sweet escape, the drug you were stoning on, running away from the drill of your life. Your travel was not so much about increasing your endurance now, as it was about running from the humdrum of life. This very life was out to grab you and polish you into who you truly deserve to become, but you were systematically cutting it out. You wanted to sink into the green grass and the blue skies to drown out the realities of your existence. Please don’t feel guilty, don’t feel bad. It’s okay to want escapism at some turns of this life. Life can be hard and unfair sometimes. I understand your motivations…

I know that in this new life of escape you began to look to be attached. When you started your pursuit of The Great Outdoors, all you wanted was to gain your independent stride, and to learn to hold yourself upright in life using your own independent force. But you conveniently forgot about that resolve. You began to look for a second soul who would whisk you away into this newly attractive dreamland that was so much at the tip of your fingers now, so close. And you found him or her. And with him or her it was exhilarating. I totally get the high you were experiencing, and I won’t deny you your right to be a child sometimes in this life baby…

I know how the green grassy ground slipped from beneath your feet, when that second perfect soul acted contrary to the role you had assigned him or her. He or she stepped out of The Great Outdoors’ painting you had drawn on your easel, and suddenly became a human. The Great Outdoors hadn’t prepared you yet for the fall. The fall hit you so hard you were desperately looking for an alternative, just any alternative, which would help you see beyond this dead-end of life. I understand the pain of the thud you must have experienced in falling from that kind of a high to this new low, I can totally imagine…

I know that when you began to pick up the pieces of your dream and turned to look back at the trail of footsteps you had left behind in The Great Outdoors, your free spirit looked you right back in the eye and smiled at you. On the route to finding yourself it was patiently waiting right where you had left it. You had left it midway on that trekking trail and had run off on your unguided search - your search for what would have eventually come to you by itself on that trail had you waited. As soon as you realised this and turned back on track, you found your spirit - your original trekking companion - waiting right there… that must’ve been a relief, isn’t it?

Everything you ever need was always within you. Your free spirit, your strength, and your passion to grab life by its sweetest centre – to live it thorough and through instead of half-heartedly and scared – and to dive right into where you find the greatest love, laughter, joy and communion. It was all within you always and that is why The Great Outdoors called you out to come and play in the first place.

Because The Great Outdoors, like your spirit, is full of eclectic colours, forever flowing rivers, dazzling sunsets and inspiring sunrises, breezes that promise to pamper to unhealthy levels, snow that chills you to the point of naughtily and lustily blowing your mind away, grounding muds and playful salty waves, juicy fruits and fuzzy animals…

The Great Outdoors is in perfect harmony, in perfect tandem with your very nature, and that is why you are able to hear its silent cry for you.

When the rest of the world sleeps under their plush blankets, you child, are meant to scale the heights of small and big peaks dressed in creamy glazing white snows that are too perfect to be more than a dream. You were born to have breakfast by glacial lakes that reflect sun-scorched golden mountain dusts, and dinner under the canopy of constellation-studded skies. Your eyes were meant to be nourished by devouring the sight of a fully lit cloud stuffed inside the open mouth of a gorge which is infact not a gorge but only a deceptively deep cave if one looked closely. 

Your senses were made to bathe in the miracles of nature.

I know that now you see the plan for you, and now you really found The Great Outdoors you had tried coming to, you found your spirit, and in the true sense your travels led you to finding yourself. I understand your journey.. you are my hero!