Be Careful what you wish for Part III - How I ended up in Sar Pass?

Since how I got to Sarpass is a story by itself, I didn’t want to mix it up with my experience in SarPass story. In the beginning of the year I was contemplating a 15 day break in the himalyas, with project transitions and several other things at work, I didn’t know how to plan for it, but my optimistic self, went ahead and booked the spicejet tickets in the flash sale for some random dates to Delhi when I thought tickets were the cheapest. 

Sar Pass

What to do there then is the next question? Although I don’t bother myself with details much, I needed an ultimate destination in the Himalayas. YHAI was an obvious and first choice due to my prior experience with it – hassle free planning, budget friendly and very safe for a lone women traveller. There was Sarpass Trek with base camp in Kasol, a place I so wanted to stop by in my last trip, and then there was chanderkahni, also in himachal and another trek in Kashmir. I was partial to the Sarpass Trek, due to the snowcapped mountains in its high altitude camps and the breath taking Kasol,which was the base camp. After numerous attempts at trying to book it online, which got me nowhere, I called the Delhi YHAI office, and they told me “Madam, you are too late. All dates are booked for Sarpass many months back.” I was not overtly surprised, but very disappointed, thinking beggars can’t be choosers, I asked “What about any other trek, anywhere in Himalayas” (Talk about desperation!!) and they said “Everything booked”. Sad, shocked, desperate, I hung up the call and thought to myself “I need to go to Sarpass this time somehow!! But how!!”

Days rolled by and it became obvious to me, I was going to take a longer break from work, a recuperation effort and stay away from the work radar until I decide to come back. This truly was going to be the break I had been dreaming of for years together!! I decided to sign up for volunteering in a small town called Gushaini, which I did not existed till then. By then,  I also found out the random day of departure I had chosen to leave was ‘Buddha Purnima’. The realization was very stark and overwhelming as I considered the journey to be an inner journey for my realization as much as an outer journey it was. As the full moon seeped into the window seat of my Volvo Bus, when the bus was climbing up the ghat roads of the himalayas, I could not help thinking of the phrase ’Buddha is smiling’ (Apparently, a code word, used to indicate India’s successful nuclear mission conducted on the same day some years back).

Kasol Base Camp

So there in Gushaini, working with Stephan Marchal, I also met some wonderful people across the country, who had come to do their internship with the friends of the Great Himalayan National Park. I was still keeping my eye out for the Sar Pass trek in YHAI updates in FB, and found a number of teams returning without summiting due to the excessive snowfall (I was secretly and sinisterly happy about it !!). I was hoping against hope that some miracle takes me there and that my batch completes the trek. And it so happened, that Arush who was interning for his BA Philosophy (Getting philosophical in the Himalayas is pretty natural you see!!) in the Great Himalayan National Park told me about his YHAI treks and that his uncle who is a member helped with his bookings. Wow!! Here comes my Miracle!!

The rest of things quickly followed as Arush put me in touch with his uncle, who followed up and confirmed that there are last minute drop outs and I may meet a camp leader he mentioned for a booking. I rushed next day to get a Demand Draft, medical certificate printed, checked out of my home stay, and with a warm and hurried hug bid adieu to Gushaini and went off to Kasol. I reached later than the reporting time, and they were surprised to see a harried woman all the way from Chennai with a Demand Draft with the hope to get through a trek that got filled many months earlier.

So that was how I gate crashed YHAI’s most popular trek of the year which they have been running for almost 45 years now. I of course had a great time there and that experience will follow soon J

Be Careful what you wish for - Part II - How to name it ?

This is an exact replica from one of my maimed blogs that I wrote in July 2007. I am reproducing it here to show to myself 'Oh my god!!! I have been this scary for this long!!!'...and to see 'How while some things in life change and how something don't "..
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Every body has strange experiences in life occasionally. And despite a thousand explanations you find it impossible to dismiss it has a coincidence.

On a very ordinary weekend when I was all alone at my home, I went for a shower after choosing my favourite play list in my mobile and ensuring maximum volume. At almost the end of the second or third song I had a fleeting wish that ‘how I wish I could listen to the same first three songs again over and over, not having to listen to the comparatively lesser favorites, considering my inability to go out and change it that way.’

A few minutes later, something happened that really amazed me, of the 15 songs in my play list, my mobile started playing the first song again. When this happened the second time I was surprised, third time intrigued, fourth time frightened. Oh…god…what’s happening…

The moment I was out of the shower, I tried to observe the pattern. It happened the same way. Then I tried playing the other songs and I realized they had some how got deleted….even more intriguing. I thought “Be careful what you wish for, you may end up getting it”)

I remember showing my friend the songs last night and the next day morn its not there. Did not as much disturb my mobile mean time except for switching off the alarm (and go back to sleep of course)

Although troubled by the fact I have to collect the rest of missing 50 songs, when USB access of my laptop had been disabled and the blue tooth of my mobile not is detecting my laptop’s, my invincible optimism was thrilled about the opportunity to reconstruct the list.

The next day I did unravel the mystery of the missing songs. My memory card had been displaced. With little idea where a memory card is, some random trouble shooting helped me get it back in place and I retrieved all the presumably lost data.

But then…

How is it those exact three songs I wanted to hear ended up being stored in my mobile?

How is it that it ended up being that way jus when I wished for it?

How did my memory card get displaced when I had given my mobile much less of a jerk?

Was this jus a series of coincidences…?

Be careful what you wish for – Part I (Assam and Arunachal Pradesh)

Even before I read the book ‘The Secret’ this was a concept I truly believed in because more often than not I keep seeing it happening in everyday life.  When I finally read ‘The Secret’, it was recognition of a truth rather than discovery of a new concept. I have come face to face with law of attraction every day but even more often in my travels, in ways that have completely bowled me over. 

Incident 1: My friend and I were on a backpacking trip in Tawang, the lazy next day morning in our hotel, standing just outside our room, my friend suggested we move into a home stay, as the city shuts down very early (by 5PM) and we might be spending a lot of time in the room. Of course we didn’t cross half of India to sit inside a hotel room and watch TV. While what my friend suggested made perfect sense, I wasn’t interested in spending the little time available to look out for a new room. While I was just looking around I saw a beautiful house located lone in a small hillock next to our Hotel, I turned around and told her ‘ If it’s a place like this, we can go’. She looked over my shoulder and said, ‘Nice place, but they don’t seem to have any board on it saying it’s a home stay or guest house’. I turned and looked at her and said “So What?’ She gave me ‘This gal must be mad’ kind of look.

Rinchin uncle in an Army Kitchen

So that day, after breakfast and a walk around the town, Taxi stand, Tawang Monastery, Museum and war memorial later, our good old taxi wala had invited us into his home and on a moment of madness we agreed. We checked out of the hotel, stopped for lunch and then we proceeded to his home. There on our way again we saw a house just like the one we saw in the morning situated alone in a small hillock, surrounded by their own beautiful home garden. Surprise Surprise!!! That was our taxi uncle’s house and that’s the home stay we moved into, and that too for free. The memories of the conversation in the morning looked surreal. There was never a dull moment in our short stay there and the couple became our favorite Buddhist Monpa Hosts.

Incident 2: While planning the same trip I was on the lookout for a stay options in Guwahati in couchsurfing.org. I was willing to try my first couch surfing experience as a guest and was looking for women hosts in the area. I came across the profile of Irani Sakia, who is a wildlife photographer and an adventurer and seemed to be a very popular host. We had a couple of conversations in CS messaging, and she was unable to confirm her availability during our tentative plan dates for Guwahati. I found another host Annjuu Singh who also happened to be a common friend of another traveler I had met through my brother. But Irani’s profile was so amazing, that I expressed my wish to meet her for a cup of Coffee if possible.

One of the coffee Breaks with Escorting Guwahati Friends

On our way back to Demaji, from Mechuka one of the bikers and a fellow traveler from Tamilnadu met with an accident in his bike. A family we met in Mechuka and were on their way back stopped to help him into our rescue vehicle and ensured we found our way around to the local hospital. The Assamese family was also kind enough to offer to escort us from Demaji to Guwahati for safety reasons. So we stopped by on the way for a tea break and were chit chatting with the family. They were actually two families who were family friends and became a very good friend of us. So we were introducing ourselves and guess what I found. One of the Women I met over coffee was Irani Sakia. I had casually mentioned in my email I’d be happy to meet her over coffee and there we were having chai together.

I almost freaked out…What…Irani Sakia… My face detection software hardly works, so no wonder I cannot recognize anyone from a pic.

Incident 3: Every time I travel for a few weeks, my first signs of missing home starts when I start yearning to have curd rice and my friend, Viji was hoping to have nice South Indian Filter coffee.  But we haven’t met one tamil person in the whole time, and of course this seemed like a distant reality that we had to wait to get to Chennai to quench our thirst. But luck was in our favor again, we met Bala da through Pratibu da, who was part of the Assamese family that escorted us to Guwahati. Bala da, was tamil family that had settled in Assam for over 30 years. 

With Bala da

As luck would have it Bala da’s mom played a wonderful host for us and we had a superb filter coffee and a perfect South Indian Dinner (including my favorite curd rice) in Assam.

But it truly was a ‘Be Careful what you wish for’ moment. Thankfully I wished for wonderful things in my life that brought so many wonderful people into my life and ya I sometimes freak myself out. More such moments to follow.