Soon we reached Kubhi Phata and we embarked on our long walk to the base village for Kireshwar. We had our rounds of jokes, wise cracks under a clouded sky. But Miss K got an admirer on the way. Well, I stopped to talk to a local and check whether we were on the right path and as soon as I turned back, there was this dog, running around the team and Miss K was going berserk. The dog joined us for some distance, but when his territory was over, he went his way.


But it was just the starters, the main course was the view. We were walking towards a huge hill and by the side of a beautiful but large lake. The sun was hidden behind the dark clouds and the cool wind never stopped blowing. I felt like walking to heaven(especially with a chick on ma side! lol).

Very soon, after some phone calls and return calls over mobiles with no networks Miss K friends came, picked her up and went their way. We had a long walk to the starting point and the walk was awesome to say the least, there were these beautiful green covered hills with small water falls here and there far ahead, a big lake on our right and beautiful green fields on the left.

Omkar and Anand got tired a bit quickly, they were lagging quite behind. But for me, the surprise package was my uncle. I was prepared to race the guyz to the start point but not him. He just bet me hands down, especially with the wind blowing down the rain hard on to our faces. We reached our starting point in about half an hour, had a late breakfast and were on our way up hill.


Thick green bushes and trees, small ups and downs, giggles of local women coming back from the field, all just added to the intensity. Slowly we started taking the blind turns by the side of thorny bushes, and started seeing the rocks of these lovely hills up close. Getting to cross small streams overflowing was really unexpected but lovely. I was exited, some people would say over-exited, or even crazy. But its just me with mother nature.


Then we got our first of the series of shockers. We reach the first set of rocks we had to climb. Well that was not difficult, but they were wet, slippery with algae and water was flowing down on them. I have 3 inexperience people and a elder person on my side. I took the lead, was kinda afraid (did not tell that to my team mates because I was sure somebody would have popped the idea of turning back). I was too exited to turn back now.

The rocks were really wet and slippery, and those one leg at a time tracks were not the ones that were actually causing my concerns. Its the depth on the other side that was really scary. If u fall, its 100-200 ft straight down (that's at the beginning of the trek). I was even more scared about the team that was with me. Most of them had very little of this kind of trek experience if any, and I had never trekked with the rains coming down so hard. There were points also were the rocks were cut to make foot and hand holdings. Holy cow, guess what? At one point I had a big back pack and with 2 legs and 2 hands in the rock cuts I did the unthinkable. I looked down......