Brahmtal, Part 3

I have a different mindset than most people I climb with. It brings me to odd with them, for example I don't really care about cleaning up the mountains as India Hikes wants you to do, sure I wont create a mess but cleaning trash is not on my priority, my priority is getting on top as fast as I can. I need to prove to myself I can do it and everything else is secondary.

This however had a number of unwanted concomitant, to start with I miss the beauty of the mountains, I further am annoyed on breaks and stops and worst of all I am unable to relax. I belong to a generation when our parents our schools and our friends made us highly competitive and relaxing was not an option.

So our morning started with the usual dog and pony show, it was a steep climb to start with and I wanted to be at the striking distance of summit as summit days have a habit of getting too cold or too rainy or too snowy.

We had our pack lunch and the night before we had reduced our load to the bare necessities of life.

I cant recall much about the climb except that I wanted to keep one foot in front of other and march on. I was mostly quiet on this journey as I was scared of the descent.

We reached the summit around lunch time and celebrated a birthday of one of our team members. We had some rice pudding and a group picture.

Nature is odd it can be beautiful and ugly and scary and inviting at the same time, It provides you with clarity in mind and yet fear of life. As an Indian I am able to manage contradictions and overloading of life and phenomena. However mountains leave me speechless and  with a sense of aww. I am unable to have enough command over the english language and nor do picture capture the complex perception one feels of standing on top.

We had a quick lunch on top as the weather deteriorated and started climbing down. It is then I made a critical mistake, in fear of a possible leg injury I ran down quickly and soon my knee started showing signs of discomfort.

My heart almost jumped out of as fear gripped me, but I slowed my pace and continued down.

Most of our journy back to Brhamtal was uneventful, except when we lost our way and almost shat in our pants.

Coming up the portrait of an anatomically correct snowman!