After what seems like ages, I finally begin to write about my first trek/travel blog of 2021 and hopefully not the last one for this year. With all the unpredictability, fear, what ifs, vaccine or no vaccine, blame game happening I thought why not write about my recent exhilarating journey to the Himalayas.

2020 went by in Lockdown, lots of hope, we all can overcome this like a magical pill miracle and when the country opened up in stages, most of them went about life as if ‘thouthatshallnotbenamed’ virus didn’t exist!

Now of course it exists heavily, deeply into our body and mind, a porous deep tissue feeling that one cannot rub/scrub/wash off. But before this mayhem was beginning of 2021 ushering in a normalcy we didn’t see for almost a year. Travels opened up, restaurants opened and yes my favourite, Himalayas beckoned with open arms.

This particular trek Deorital-Chandrashila is special to me. It was my first trek with Indiahikes. It was a trek I did with a very dear friend of mine Pankaj, to whom I owe a lot in many ways, it is he who introduced me to the Himalayas in 2016 and life has not been the same again.

So when 2021 came in, I thought why not do Deorital-Chandrashila again? It was just 3 days( we thought!) easy walk in the park trek( we thought!), seen it before(we thought!), this time hopefully we could summit which we couldn’t the last time because of a snowstorm, so why not?

And last but not the least, this is the trek where I met my friend, actually friend seems so boxed when I think of our relationship, Bhima. I do remember not interacting with him until the last two days of the trek in 2017 and our friendship grew over the years. Lots of conversations, soul searching journeys and explorations, watching sunrises and sunsets, comfortable silences, emotional lows and highs and so much more..

Laughter is the best medicine and laugh we did and continue to, over botched up travel plans, tumbling down a mountain and getting lost, minute to minute change of plans, jumping happily to a hot cup of chocolate in a barren landscape or dancing to the West Indies cricket anthem song ‘Champion’ in a truck heading deeper towards a side bordering Tibet. Here were two of us, equally crazy and downright spontaneous.

We walked in with a certain cockiness thinking we knew the trails. Well, as usual the Himalayas reminds you literally, puts your face down on the earth and rubs and dusts your ego so hard, you realise 2020,2021 or 2090 she will always be there to correct and rectify Human Nature.

So get ready to ride with me as I blog daily as a series on this Himalayan adventure with a bunch of equally crazy people. Until tomorrow! 😊