trek hangover

Here are some tit-bits:

Geography of Himachal Pradesh. It’s sooooo hilly, you won't even find a single plain place!! It’s very difficult to cultivate crops there. But the villagers are very hard-working. I guess they are born-tough to endure the pahaadi life-style.

There are only few types of trees there - mainly deodar, oak and pine. The jungles only with deodar trees near Kalatop area were just treat to look at!!

The discipline and time-sense all the camp leaders maintained. I felt like I was in some army-training camp; and of course enjoyed it!!

The batch members. There were people from Bangalore, Mumbai, Gujarat, Hyderabad, Bhopal, etc. Ours was a well-balanced group with lots of youth and few wise-and-nice uncles. It was indeed a nice opportunity to interact with people from different parts of the country.

The Bangalore crowd. The camp staff and participants from other places were heard telling "If you are from Bangalore, you need not mention your profession. We know that you are an IT professional".

The chat-sessions we girls used to have. Actually we got to know lots about different cultures, their wedding-rituals, the traditional dresses, etc. Thanks to Bangalore girl Niara who dug out all this information from others, she was very much interested in knowing all these stuff.

The difference between Bombay people and Bangalore people. I guess the software professionals tend to grow-up fast. Bangalore girls Niara & Bel were very wise and mature even though they were the younger ones. They are very sweet too. And I enjoyed Bel's songs..

The students. I particularly like to interact with students, and treks give me that opportunity. Talking to them makes you feel nostalgic about your school-college days. I liked Atul who is studying MA (Economics) in Mumbai, he was very sweet; he's is a Piscean too.

Mr. Ramesh from Bangalore. I guess everyone will remember what he said during camp-fire at Kalatop. He sang a song and then said "This song is for my wife. I miss her. I am wearing this shawl (and showed the shawl he was wearing) though I don’t need it now. But my wife gave me this shawl, that's why I am wearing it." So sweet of him.

I liked all my batch mates; and particularly liked Santosh, the horse rider from Hyderabad; Sameera, the fashion-designing teacher from Mumbai; Bindu, the child-counsellor-cum-teacher from Mumbai; and Raghunath Uncle.

The home-guards who accompanied us for the trek - Ajit Singh and Kartar Singh. Kartar was very smart, he liked to explore our digicams and happily volunteered to take our pictures.

I discovered something about myself. I could find out people's zodiac signs. I found out that Bel was a Piscean & Shailaja was a Scorpio; just by observing them. This is something I want to learn more about..