Climbing in Dhanaulti, Uttarakhand

 Date: April 30, 2023.

Place: Dhanaulti, Uttarakhand.

Route type: Top rope, sport (bolted), fun bouldering and multipitch too. 

Best season: All year around except monsoon.

Climbing level: Suitable for climbers with experience (have done 5-6 months of climbing).

Accommodation: Resorts in Dhanaulti.

Contact person: Yash (Beyond the wall, 74981--63805).

Misc: It is a beautiful place, you can trek to Surkunda devi, visit Kanatal, visit Tehri if you have an extra day.

This site is getting ready, it already has 5-6 routes, with an amazing 2 pitch route (see photos below). The location is pretty, there are lots of boulders in the area too, a day can also be spent on relaxed bouldering and exploring.

Not a site with easy access, it was found and developed by Beyond the Wall group at Dehradun. They arranged our stay and food too, and made it a memorable trip.

There is a small hike (around 30 mins) to reach the climbing site. The hike to the 2 pitch route is longer and slightly difficult. The group is developing more routes there. There are a lot of boulders and you can explore and find lot of interesting bouldering routes.

The present routes are from 5a-6c types, ideal for intermediate climbers. All of them can be toproped too. 

My suggestion would be to make it a 2-3 day trip. One day for climbing, one for bouldering and if possible, a third day for roaming around Dhanaulti. 

Climbing in Mumbai

Date: June 4, 2022.

Place: CBD Belapur, Mumbai.

Route type: Top rope, sport (bolted) as well as trad possibilities. 

Best season: Preferably winter (Oct-Mar), summer is hot but possible.

Climbing level: Suitable for all levels.

Accommodation: Lot of places in Navi Mumbai.

Contact person: Franco (Basalt project, 98699--89542).

Misc: You are in Mumbai city; there are climbing gyms, food and many other attractions.

One of the easiest to access and active climbing site in India; here, you get a great climbing experience as well as get to hang out with a lot of cool and inspired climbers.

The best thing about this area is, it is accessible using public transportation. From CBD Belapur station, you can take a 5 minute auto ride or walk to the climbing area. There are two different crags for climbing, depending on the direction of sun, only one area is suitable to climb. 

We explored the morning area (right side crag), it has routes of varying difficulty. I strongly recommend trying the Grigri and the Crack route. In summers, it was very hot to climb after 12 pm. My advice is to go early (before 8 am) and have a 3-4 hour session (keep around 2 litres of water). The other area (left side crag) is better to climb after lunch, but we didn't explore it.

This is one of the oldest climbing areas in India, the group of Bong da (Abhijeet Burman) and Franco has been climbing in this area for decades and best suited to introduce you to this area. They were a gracious host and I really enjoyed my trip.

Few lessons I learnt (got reinforced) from this trip:

1. Always keep your belay device, prussik and personal anchor system on your harness when going to climb outdoors :).
2. Don't just look at the rating of the climb, sometimes easier routes are more beautiful.
3. Enjoy your climb and make sure that it has no (minimal) impact on surroundings.

Climbing in Nainital, Uttarakhand

Date: 21st May 2022.

Place: Kilbury road, Nainital, Uttarakhand.

Route type: Top rope, sport (bolted) as well as trad possibilities. 

Best season: Around the year, sunny days in winter.

Climbing level: Suitable for all, more routes for intermediate and advanced climbers.

Accommodation: Youth hostel Nainital, homestays and hotels in Kilbury area.

Contact person: Anil Belwal (Tony Da) and Vinod (TCS, 89796--48412).

Misc: Good spots for birding around the area.

One of the beautiful sites to climb in India, the weather is perfect and you can enjoy climbing whole day. I have pointed to Kishan Da's store for location because of two reasons:

1. The crag is very close to the shop, go from the main road to the store and stay left, the crag is at 100 meters from the shop.
2. The aloo paratha, chai and samosa at Kishan Da is great, it is a perfect lunch break in a day full of climbing.

There are other areas in Nainital for climbing too, we explored only this area for this trip. Tony climbing school (Anil Ji and Vinod) are perfect people to introduce and guide you to the area. Anil ji is a legend in Nainital climbing scene and has bolted/opened many routes. We were guided by Vinod, he is an amazing climber and a great teacher. I strongly suggest contacting them, if you are planning to climb in this area. 

My other suggestion is to take accommodation in Kilbury area (instead of the main Naini Lake/Mallital area). That will keep the need for car redundant, you will be in a walking distance from crag and restaurants. More importantly, you will be away from the painful weekend crowd in Nainital.

Climbing in Dhauj, Haryana (near Delhi)

Date: 20th March 2021.

Place: The Crashpad, Dhauj, Haryana (around 1:30 hrs from Delhi).

Route type: Trad or top rope, single pitch, multiple areas. 

Best season: October to March (too hot in summers)

Climbing level: Suitable for all, beginner as well as advanced climbers.

Accommodation: Camp at "The Crashpad" or day trip from Delhi.

Contact person: Jammy (Jamyang) and Sandeep Maity (Delhi climbs).

Misc: For detailed route guide, refer to the Book by Mohit Oberoi.

One of the best places to climb outdoors close to Delhi, Dhauj, has been developed by delhi climbers for a long time. Fortunately, Delhi climbs has a small area there and provide a great facility for any level of climber to experience rock climbing in an outdoor environment.

We were a group of five climbers from Kanpur. All of us, except one, knew how to lead and had decent experience on climbing walls. Two of us had climbed outdoors too. So, we were looking for a place to climb and some help regarding where to put the ropes, what routes to climb etc. 

We had a great experience with Sandeep and others. They not only showed us (and set up) routes, but also taught some knots and anchors. We camped at the same place and shared meals. Overall, a great outdoor climbing experience.

Trip to Gothics, Adirondack Mountains.

The trip to Gothics had been cancelled twice. Once because it was tough for people to find two continuous days to spare on a long weekend. Other time we had a more stupid reason, but I don't remember now.This time, for the sake of Gothics, we decided to drop those who were not "free" enough. Still we had 9 people in our group, 4-5 more than the optimal size. It is not optimal because, you run a fatal risk of having everyone who reads your Facebook status message, with you right there. Actually this didn't deter some of us from updating their status from the top of the mountain. I hope they got lots of "likes" and "+1's" for their additional effort after climbing the mountain.

Coming back to the trip, in preparation for these 9 people, we booked lean-to at JBL (John's Brook Lodge) for Saturday night's stay. It can be reserved beforehand (all the state owned ones are first come first served) and was wild enough for our taste (thankfully not wild enough for the bear's taste that day). On Friday night we stayed at a motel in Glen Falls. In the morning, after having a little too much of the breakfast, we left for the garden parking lot. Because of the frequent download breaks, we reached late and couldn't find a spot. A word of advice, be there before 7 on long weekends. Since we didn't follow this advice, we parked in a close by parking lot and took a shuttle to garden (that took almost half hour extra).

We started the hike around 8:30 and reached JBL at around 10:30. In preparation of a long hike ahead, we had lunch. At this point I discovered that our zealous friends have packed some avocados, "boondi ke ladoo" and around half the BJ's for the 2 day trip.
With a heavy stomach and without avocados we started the hike to Gothics. The area around JBL is filled with trails and it is advisable to have a clear picture/map/idea of what trail you want to take. We went towards Lower Wolfjaw from the registration post. After around 2 hrs we reached the fork, where we changed our direction to go towards Upper Wolfjaw. The other direction leads to Lower Wolfjaw. It was an intelligent decision to skip the round trip to it and it will be soon clear why.

The ascent to Upper Wolfjaw was really tough, but that was just the beginning. The views from the top were decent, but the climbing ordeal forced us to take a long break. From there we went to Armstrong. The view of Gothics from there was awesome and intimidating at the same time. That was one of the moments when you say to yourself " How the hell am I planning to climb this thing ?". Few people had told us that Gothics is the real prize. But according to me the views from Armstrong were also quite good, except that from Gothics you get a 360 view.


From Armstrong to Gothics was not very difficult and we reached at the top at around 5. Gothics was worth the wait and had amazing views. In the immediate neighbourhood, it is the tallest peak, so give you 360 views. Also you can look at Marcy and Algonquin (the highest peaks in Adirondack) from a distance and appreciate the scene.

The toughest part of Gothics hike is supposed to be the chained part which takes you towards Saddleback mountain. You have to go down a bare rock face with a 45 degree slope. It is more scary than dangerous. Except few casualties, we had no major incident. Actually all of us were able to come down injury free, but it took almost two hours to cover that section (all because of the able guidance of few pro hikers in our group).

That delay ensured that we traveled last two hours in darkness and last one hour without knowing what was 1 meter away from us. Ultimately we ended in the lean to at around 10:30, completely battle wounded. Some point before that we realized that the one bottle of water-purifier we had given to some hikers was the only bottle we had. The other one had just cotton. So we had fresh untreated Adirondack water, and till now everyone is alive (at least till one week back).

The food tasted really good. But surprisingly we were not able to finish avocados and around 50% of the food we got. Then without further ado, we went to sleep and no bear or snake was able to disturb us. In the morning, after having Maggi (the best breakfast), we came out to Garden parking lot. Few of us came back to NJ and few visited Lake Placid etc. close by.

Overall the trip was fun and made possible by the help of this website. They have detailed topographic maps and lot of information in general about the Adirondacks.
http://www.adirondackjourney.com/
The trip we did is mentioned as "Lower Range" but traveled in opposite direction.

Python

The day has finally arrived. The blog post which nobody thought will happen, has happened. I had planned to work in theoretical computer science even before entering computer science department. As an ardent believer in the sanctity of mathematics, I avoided programming at all cost. As a wannabe cool dude, never showed any traits of a geek. But today I will shed all the inhibitions and write about a programming language, called "Python".

Few days back, my friend "Bandar-hair" convinced me to learn Python. His name is being changed because of the privacy issues (I like to believe that many people read my blog, in spite of the evidence for the contrary). Many thanks to him, for the wonderful advice.

The reason why it is awesome is because of the intelligence in the structure and design. To start with there are NO DECLARATIONS. Sometimes I also don't know whether the variable is integer, double or single; but the language knows:). The amazing thing is it has almost all operations for every data type. So a string can be added or multiplied, all with the usual symbols. So just name a variable and let the program take care of data type. Another brilliant thing, You don't need to put semicolon or dot after every sentence. In effect, saves at least 1 compilation error every 5 lines you write.

Lets come to more substantial points. It has extensive libraries which cover Matlab, Maple and Mathematica. So you get all the functionality without the rigid and painful syntax. And like scheme, you can pass functions as arguments. That give the programmer immense power, which I don't know how to use :P. A small point, if you write "if i=10", the interpreter shows you an error, and does not assume it to be always true. See, a very intelligent language.

This fills up my quota of talking about a programming language intelligently (or in a partially intelligent way). I knew this entry was going to be short, but still I underestimated my coolness (or overestimated my geekiness). It all started with a small tutorial "Learn Python the hard way", available on net, and finished before the tutorial was not over.

Given that I have finished the blog entry before the tutorial, probably should look into alternate career path :P. On this thought, let me say good bye and leave you wondering about your career path.

NYC eatathon

There are few people in this world who eat to live. They have the liberty to stop reading now. This post is for people who live to eat. Yeah, we are going to talk about a food filled day in New York city.

My quest for finding a good lunch place in "The Big Apple" for a recent trip made me realize the potential of NYC. So we (party of 5) decided that just a lunch can't do justice to this place. Only a complete day devoted to exploring street food will satisfy us. So below you will find the list of places we tried and "non useless" information about them.

1. NYDosas : Washington Square , Sullivan st. Probably the only vegetarian place to get best street food prize. We included this place so that the only veg guy in our group couldn't complain later (but didn't help :( ). The Samosa was excellent, Uttapam was good but we didn't like dosas. One of us really liked the Rava Masala Dosa (but he also thinks "boiled plain lentils" is a delicacy:P)

2. Mamoun's Falafel: 119 Macdougal st, Greenwich village. They don't just taste good when you are drunk. We had veg falafel and chicken kebab, both were awesome. One of the best places we tried that day, not a small compliment :).

3. Meat on a stick Chinese kebabs (Xinjiang Kebabs) : Divison st at Forsyth st. This is the place in Chinatown where you get 1$ chicken, lamb or beef kebabs. We ate at one of the cart and still not sure if that is the famous one. The kebabs were decent but slightly sweet. For the first time tasted cumin powder in Chinese cuisine.

4. Margon Cuban sandwich : 46th st between 6th and 7th avenue. Great lunch and breakfast place. Things to try are roast chicken, Cuban sandwich and roast pork. This place was the motivation for the entire eatathon.

5. Biryani Cart : 46th st and 6th avenue: Best Bombay spicy chicken biryani ever , better than the one you get in Mumbai :). Previously decided to leave it because one friend said "not another desi place man". Not listening to him was an intelligent decision. There were no kebabs that day, they should be good also.

6. Ben ash : cheesecake place . I am not giving the address because don't want anyone else to waste the money. Lesson: Don't listen to people who only eat sweets and are vegetarian :P.

7. Burger joint at Le Parker Meridian : 56th st between 6th and 7th avenue. Yeah, this is the name of the place. It is "in" Le Parker Meridian and it is not expensive. To reach this place, go inside Le Parker, ask the receptionist and follow his pointers exactly. Great burgers (cheeseburger and hamburger only), and nice milk-shake. Definitely worth it for its location. Oh and for its burgers also.

8. Creperie NYC : 112 Macdougal st in Greenwich village. Good place to try Crepe, if you know how to pronounciate "Crepe".

9. Joe's Pizza : 7 Carmime st (at Bleecker st). Heard that they have the best pizza in NY. Huge disappointment, probably because they didn't have many toppings. We made every effort to like it, went there after Backfence, but still.

10. Backfence : 155 Bleecker st in village. The pub was just legen ...... dary. It had live music, both the bands were really good. Lot of beer on tap and free peanut. To top it, you can throw them on the ground:). Really great atmosphere and enjoyed throughly.

If you are taking so many advices, take one more. Don't listen to anyone else, go to NYC and try these places yourself:).

Inspite of the Gods

It is a hard task for a foreigner to write about India. There are already many books which praise India without any limit (Shantaram, Maximum city). On the contrary author should be really brave to write something critical, just because we are too many and we are everywhere :P. That is why "inspite of the gods" is such a wonderful book. It is very critical but does not demean India by any means, because it is honest.

The author, Mr. Edward Luce reported for Financial Times from 2001 to 2005. It is merely a collection of his observations about Indian Society. He talks about multiple things in very different dimensions which affect our country. Given that he is a journalist, there is not much of a flow to the book:P and that is going to be my only crib about this book.

You expect that this will be a book review. But just to make you go through the entire blog post, I am going to claim that it is about problems faced by past, present and "most probably but hopefully not" future India. The book will only provide the motivation, facts and ideas; rest everything is mine. You can safely conclude that book is a great read and well worth spending time on (specially if you are also living outside India and want to feel that you give a damn).

Before reading this book I used to blame education (lack of) and population (by no means lack of) for almost all the problems in India. Rest would have been blamed on issues which arise because of education and population :). Half of you already disagree with me, because you think that population is a strength and not weakness. It is because skilled (most cases educated) population, and not just population, is a strength according to me. Since both education and population are tied in a vicious circle, where one affects the other, breaking this circle might greatly help India.

But after reading this book, the finger can be pointed to another major culprit, caste system. There is a saying in India \ref~{In spite of the gods} "we don't cast our vote, we vote our caste". The side effect is having leaders, who think, making their giant statues everywhere is going to improve the condition of poor people "drastically". People are chosen because they belong to certain caste and not because they are qualified. Given that prime minister is a hereditary title in our country (almost), this leaves very few places where qualification counts.

The discrimination on the basis of caste is still very prominent. Ironically it seems people can't escape from this prejudice after changing their religion also. The book states that most of the clergymen in India are from upper caste, and there are places of worship in most of the religions still not accessible to lower caste converts. Probably this intolerance motivates people from lower caste to adapt practices like dowry and discrimination against "lowerer" classes, so as to show that they belong to higher caste. The removal of caste system will help Indian society and specially unmarried youth who can't find partner in their caste.

Coming back to the book, another appeal is its honest criticism. It talks about how "Khadi" was important for freedom movement, but its continued love affair with government was a deterrent to fabric industry. The other fascination, socialism, motivated by Nehru and Indira Gandhi, inhibited the progress of Indian economy and still does. This is open to discussion, but it is high time that we privatize at least some of the industries (at least Air India).

One of the interesting fact which I was not aware of pertains to Aryan Invasion Theory. The author states that there was definitely a migration from central Asia. The point where historian differ is that whether it was invasion or not. So the contention is about "Invasion" and not the "Migration" part. The idea that Aryans were indigenous is the creation of Hindu nationalist. I tried to confirm this from various sources and author's opinion seems true. But more information about this will be really helpful.

It is shocking when someone questions your beliefs, so deeply rooted in you because of your upbringing in a certain environment. The following self-inspection gives rise to clarifications, more confusion and a new blog post :). So go on, give it a try and you might have something to write about.

Trip to the lone star

This story unfolds as all the usual ones with parents coming to visit their child/ren in America. And yeah the first trip was to Niagara by default. Since I have already qualified to be a "desi" by visiting Niagara twice ( once with friends, other with parents), now I should only look for a girl whose parents have already visited Niagara. Anyway I expressed my astonishment at the gigantic waterfall, "again", and condemned myself never to go back there. Definitely not from the US side.

Luckily that was not the only trip this fall. After much deliberation, I decided to go ahead with the Texas trip. There was a certain anxiety about landing in an airport named after George Bush, probably because of all the viewings of the "Daily Show" when he was the president. You have to concede that the show was a lot funnier under his presidential term.

Now you would expect a detailed account of all the hot spots in Texas. Let me hamper your hopes already. We are only going to talk about social and political differences, somewhat shocking, between north (NJ) and the south (Texas). Given the democratic values (the party ones) instilled in every NJ resident, it was really hard not to be surprised at the stark contrast between two states. So here goes the list.

The first thing "you get tired of" is how frequently you hear "god bless Texas". It seems impossible even for all the innumerable gods of our religion to give away blessings at that rate. Probably I landed at religious/political places most of the time there, but my ears have never heard "god bless New Jersey" from someone in NJ, although occasional "god bless New York" can definitely be heard.

I was equally amazed to see monuments for Southern Confederacy in the Capitol Building at Austin. It made me go back to history books again and read about the civil war. This was my first visit to any Confederacy state and never thought of their perspective on the civil war. There should be a discussion about there reasons for going to the war, but wait, that will be the topic of another blog entry:P.

Lets not talk about only the controversial political topics and shift the focus to a delicious point. Yeah, that is food ... fried food. Luckily we were able to sneak into one of the county fairs. That earned me an opportunity to see all the celebrated food stuff which I had only heard about. Fried butter, fried cheese and fried ice cream were still palatable, but the cherry on the cake was
fried coke. As it turned out later, fried coke had won the "most creative" food in one of the state fairs.

To conclude, the trip was entertaining to say the least. The malls were really big and saw hockey game inside a mall for the first time. The vegetables and fruits were XXL too. But was unluckily enough so as not to go on those long highways with no cars, or to meet our ex-president, whose name was given to so many of the public places (It helps to have the same name as your father).

Maa "Indus"

Before people discard this blog as a travelogue, I will give them a better reason to ignore it. So today we (actually just me) will discuss about this book I read some time ago. It is called Empires of the Indus: etc. etc. ,and is written by Alice Albinia. At some point she had enough time (must be during her phd) to travel from the mouth of Indus to the origin. So she did it ...... also wrote this beautiful book not just about the travel but also about the historical civilizations which have flourished in this area.

Perhaps the most impressive part of this book is that she was able to align the chronological order of historical events with the length of Indus. So she starts from the delta of Indus and talks about the present day Sindh. After that partition and Mughal rule in Punjab, then describes the invasion of Alexander. She finishes her journey in Mount Kailash (Kailash Parbat) and is somehow able to relate it with Neandarthals or an era close to them.

To make it more alluring for you lazy buggers, let me share some of the interesting facts from it. After the partition, untouchable Hindus were not allowed to move from Sindh to India, because no one else would be ready to clean the toilets and sewerage system. They have what we don't, job security. Moving on, Great Alexander had a really hard time crossing Indus and that contributed in his failure to expand his empire to the east of Indus. On the other hand it made the land fertile and rich, in effect attracting invaders from the north. Coming back to present Fundamentalists have destroyed some Buddhist temples (in Afghanistan) which were only accessible to shepherds before. Somehow man's innate tendency to demolish pleasing things takes them far (literally) in their political ambition.

But yeah life is not perfect, and neither is this book. In spite of the book being a great read, it seemed at some places things were little more dramatized and more emotional. I guess the things which third world is fine with are not considered right in developed nations. Hopefully things will change soon and in the right direction :). Since she is a British historian, that justifies her firm believe in Aryan invasion theory. But I like to believe in united India, so her implications drawn from this theory didn't travel much inside my brain. There might be a medical reason for this also, so just to keep you brain sharp, here is a puzzle for the budding politicians and normal people;).

Given that Indus flows from India to Pakistan, India can control the water flow. Then why is "Indus water treaty" still intact after three wars and Kargil ?

Kudremukh national park / Thirumaleguppi

Waking up at 4 am in the morning for a trip is only "right", when you are organizing it;). Otherwise you are allowed to sling abuses at your dear organizer friend, who woke up early so that you can sleep for precious 30 more mins. So you can guess that my recent trip to Chikmagalur was really helpful in enlightening my soul or whatever equivalent part I have. We went for 2 days to this absolutely beautiful resort called Eagle Eye . The prices were really reasonable (coming from a marwadi, you better believe it), and the service was perfect. Hopefully one day I will get money to put all these advertisements in my blog.

Anyhow this post is not about the Chikmagalur trip :P , it is about a trek in Kudremukh National Park. Because of the Chikmagalur trip I realized that instead of watching western ghats from a distance, actually trekking on them will give me an excellent opportunity to have nice Facebook profile photos. So once again I looked at BMC calendar and found one more way to waste a weekend.

We left from Bangalore at around 10 in the night and reached "Samshe" village at 6 am, where this board confirmed that we were not lost. Kudremukh means "mouth of horse" in Kannada. Before we could memorize the name, Krishna told us that we are not going to climb Kudremukh but the peak named Thirumaleguppi (Krishna is the name of our guide:)). Instead of learning the new name, now I am content enough to copy-paste it from the BMC website.

From there we had a 5 km jeep ride to Mullodi which fulfilled all my fantasies about Essel world and Fun Kingdom. Below there are some photos to give you an idea. We had breakfast and left our excess luggage at the base camp ( Satish's house in Mullodi village). The trek started at 9:30 in the morning and it didn't even took us an hour to commend our choice for the weekend. We had an additional guide Raghunath from the village. His specific job was to eradicate any doubt that we have completed significant part of the trek. We climbed four peaks one after another having steep slope, with constant rain, wet grass and slippery rocks helping us all the way. The views were absolutely breathtaking with clouds and green mountains fighting for our attention.

One of the main attractions is the special ecosystem there. There are huge meadows interspersed with "rainforest" of very small width. It seems that harsh monsoon winds don't let anything grow over the open faces except grass, but the valleys hidden from these wind
s having abundant water behave like rainforests. Passing these weird natural creations we reached the peak "Thirumaleguppi" at around 1:00. Amid constant rain, wind and tiredness; simple rice tasted much better than all the Shahi Paneer and Dal Bati :). We returned to the base camp at around 5 in the evening.

We were greeted by tea and hot bhajji (hot in every sense). By the way there is a restaurant "R.R." in bangalore famous for its birayani, also called "Roaring Rectum" :). Since constant rain extinguished (literally) any chance of campfire, we decided to play DumbC. We were clearly losing until one of our teammate gave the movie
The Assasination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford
Our team never looked back, and scored a comfortable win ( lets say atleast a draw). The time before dinner was filled with customary Antakshari, where a single guy "Gopala" won against all of us:P.

Since there was only one toilet for 20 of us, so we decided to go to waterfall ... for taking bath. As a small puzzle try to find the 4 people in the photo on the left. Anyway after having breakfast we had the same adventure ride again. Our stay in Mullodi village was pretty pleasant. The food was simple but nice at Satish's house in Mullodi, and the place was well kept andclean. His phone number is 08263-249595/9481074530. This is another blog about trek in the same area.

Gabbar, Ramnagar and Hrithik Roshan

I watched "Lakshya" few weeks ago and decided to emulate Hrithik Roshan. Not the "main aisa kyon hoon" part (has been through that phase lot of times), but the intense rock climbing bit shown in the end. There is a nice organization by the name "Bangalore Mountaineering Club", which organizes lot of outdoor trips every week. The prices are pretty reasonable and a great way to go out as soon as your friends start ignoring you.

So we decided to go for rock climbing trip organized in Ramnagar, where Sholay was shot. Hence the trip was filled with numerous moments, where people hanging from the cliff, trying to look cool, praying to the god/guide, would shout "kitne aadmi the". All in all trip was real fun with four different activities. We started with rappelling down a cliff. Then moved on to Chimney Climbing, which was by far the most exciting part of the trip. The idea here is to climb two perfectly vertical parallel cliffs close to each other. It takes lot of shoulder and leg strength, courage and firm believe in Jackie Chan.

After lunch we went for river crossing on some meadows. The lack of river didn't curb our enthusiasm and we crossed the fictional river both on the upward as well as downward rope. The last part of trip was a small trek to board the bus back to Bangalore. The trip was fun, but would have been more interesting if it had some instructions about how to setup things and tie knots etc..

Also other thing which annoyed us was the garbage thrown around on trails. It seems we exemplify the parasite nature of human beings mentioned by Mr. Smith (popularly known as Agent Smith) in Matrix. I would like to point out few things here.

1. Don't throw polythene bags, instead if u see one, pick it up and use as a trash for yourself.
2. Inspite of the enormous amount of bacteria in this world, the "bio-degradable" stuff you throw doesn't decompose quickly and destroys the beauty of the place.
3. Do not pee ON THE trail. By now even animals can figure out that it is a special section. Given your belief that you belong to higher intelligence, you may as well try.
4. Don't write anything on the trees etc.. I understand that paper is made from trees , but that is not in anyway "going closer to the nature".

I hope to see some dramatic changes in junta's behaviour after this post :P.

Kick-ass route in Yosemite: 4mile + Panaroma trail

The awesomeness of the hike can be gauged from the fact that it made me start my own blog. Yeah, this is my first blogpost/blog where we talk about this kick ass hike in Yosemite valley.
This is the best way to explore Yosemite Valley in one day (you only miss out on Bridalveil Falls).

This hike makes you walk for around 14 miles, and has 4000 feet of elevation change. We took nearly 11 hours to finish this, so early start is recommended. The idea is to start from "4 mile" trail head and go to Glacier point, then come back via Panaroma trail to Yosemite Valley. This way you cover two famous hikes without the hassle of taking shuttle to reach one end of trailhead.
Very nice description of both these hikes is given on Yosemite hikes website.
1. 4 mile trail
2. Panorama-trail

After the technicalities, I will come straight to blatant advertisement. There is no better way to see Yosemite Falls then do 4 mile trail from bottom to top. We parked the car in Yosemite valley and walked to "4 mile" trailhead (10 mins walk, if el-capitan shuttle is running then it can also be used). The hike started at 6. In the first 2 hours we conquered numerous switchbacks, played hide and seek with a deer and watched glimpses of Yosemite fall. The best part is, as you go up, the view becomes more comprehensive and so more brilliant. Before you get tired of the waterfall, Half Dome gives its first appearance. There will always be thoughts as to why not climb the Half Dome instead, but the chains might not be put up yet and it is too late to worry about this question anyway :). After about 3 miles we passed through a gate which is closed in the winters. At approximately the same time, we were stuck by the demise of stamina/leg of our eldest hiker (Age : 30 years). But still he maintained a steady profile and at 11 we reached Glacier point.


The ice-creams were eaten for the incredible feat of finishing 1/3rd of the hike (there is a restaurant at Glacier point). One intelligent person (not me :P), has commented that after hiking Panaroma trail life will be divided into two parts, one before Panaroma, one after Panaroma. So with lots of hope, water and an injured friend we started on the second part of our life.
To say the least that intelligent person was actually intelligent. It is hard to find a hike which provides you yet another amazing view, even before you have finished lamenting about spending less time at the previous spot. This happens way too often and we realized that one day is too less to devote to this hike.

Intially there are amazing views of the valley as you go down. Before going to the bridge, there is a viewpoint for Illilouette Falls (100 feet from the trail). Pronunciation is just one of the fun parts of this fall. Then you reach the stream and the bridge (relaxed on the side of the stream before going over the bridge). That is when the god/trail makers cheat you. They made us gain the elevation which we had lost in last 1 hour. But they make up for it through Panaroma point, here we met our old friend (yosemite falls, not the injured one) again. The hike ends with Vernal and Nevada falls. The last part has few surprises, and I will keep them surprises.



One of the most interesting hikes I have done, and definitely the best in terms of scenery. The hike ends in Yosemite valley. We took the free bus to reach the place where we parked our car.