Amazing Andamans !

It is that time of the year when one tends to sit back and reflect on the year gone by. Some wishes fulfilled, some others carried forward to the future. These become resolutions for the next year.

For me, one of the highlights of the year gone by was undoubtedly a visit to the Andaman Islands. A completely chance meeting over the internet with a long lost friend who is now in Port Blair, and the next week I had landed there, wife and kids in tow, for a trip he said ‘you will never forget in your life’.

Little did I know how true these words would be. After all, how much excitement can you pack in a single week? 

Stunningly beautiful islands with water as clear as mineral water. 

Thick tropical rain forest with trees towering tens of meters above ground. 

Limestone caves standing still since the beginning of time. 

An aboriginal race that takes you back to the origins of Homo Sapiens. 

Snorkeling, undersea corals and a glimpse of the exceptionally beautiful marine life. 

Amazing mangroves and strange trees like you have never seen before. 

First hand stories of the Tsunami. 

A luxury boat cruise. 

Japanese bunkers dating back to World War II. 

A British era jail where conditions were so harsh that its inmates wished for death. 

And much more, Andaman even has India's only live volcano.

Andaman has so much to offer. It turned out to be a place like no other I have ever visited.

Andaman has things you will not find elsewhere

Grub Island, one of the 572 Islands that form the Andaman & Nicobar Group of  Islands

Rhizophora Mangle roots grow up from the ground and reach the tree  top !

Trees such as the Andaman Padauk grow taller than a ten-storied building

The Limestone caves takes you back to the origins of the Earth

The Cellular Jail is the harshest chapter of India's freedom struggle. Don't miss the Sound & Light show here.

Sikkim and me

An earthquake of magnitude 6.9 on the Richter scale hit Sikkim this month, bringing back memories of my visit to Sikkim in this same season last year. Reports suggest hundreds of people have died, with inaccessibility of the region and difficult terrain hampering rescue operations. In several cases, entire villages have been obliterated, leaving no one around even to count the dead.

“Inaccessible” is a gross understatement. Sikkim has no Airport, though one is currently under construction. The state has no railway, not even of the “toy train” variety that the British built in places like Darjeeling and Simla more than a century ago. There is only one road – the NH 31A – which connects Sikkim to the Indian mainland. This road is a two lane ‘highway’ that winds its way along the Teesta river, giving you breathtaking views of mountains & valleys at the foothills of Himalayas. Even at the best of times, there are frequent landslides that block the road and bring traffic to a halt. People then wait for the Army to arrive and clear the road, so that the traffic can resume. Monsoons are, of course, worse. At times, you may have to spend the whole night in your car till the road clears, but no one complains. People have resigned themselves to their fate.

The epicenter of this quake was said to be near Mangan, a small town north of Gangtok. I passed through Mangan on my way to the magnificent Yumthang Valley, on the Indo – Tibet (now China) border. Yumthang lies at a height of more than 14,000 feet above sea level. The entire region is controlled by the military; you need a permit to enter the district. As you go higher and higher, civilization becomes more and more sparse. At one stage, we were more than 25 km away from the nearest village.

I traveled to Yumthang with 7 other strangers in a hired jeep. The road was dotted with extra-ordinary sights - thick green forest, deep valleys and stunning waterfalls. At several places, the road was ‘broken’ (monsoon hai!) and descended into a kachcha road of mud or stones (see the attached video which I took from my car for the condition of the roads there). At times, we suddenly encountered steep ascents, so steep that the car would not climb. The driver would then ask all passengers to get down and walk up the climb, while he would just about somehow manage to take the car up, sans the weight of its passengers! At several places, we made way THROUGH the flowing waterfalls – water falling down from several meters above us on one side of the vehicle, crossing the road in front of us and the falling down to the other side, hundreds of feet below into the deep valley! It felt as if any moment the car would be thrown away, down the deep valley on the other side. It was a frightening experience, and yet a memorable one! At one place, our car got stuck deep in the mud and all of us had to get down and push it out to get going! All this, in a desolate forest, several miles away from civilization at a height of several thousand feet.

On the day of my return from Gangtok, I almost missed my flight. All exit routes going out of Gangtok were closed as it had rained the previous night and there were landslides everywhere! We spent four hours searching for ‘a way out’ of Gangtok. I started ten hours in advance for a five hour journey, and reached the check in counter five minutes before it closed!

To get a glimpse of the beauty of Sikkim, click here.

Tailpiece: There are no petrol pumps anywhere in North Sikkim. Fuel is sold in grocery and general stores. On enquiring about this strange thing with our driver, I was told that fuel from military vehicles is sold by the personnel to these shopkeepers at a discounted price. The shop owners then add their own margin and sell to others. So much for tax payer’s money!

Trekking the Himalayas

Recently, I met a couple who have mountaineering as their passion.

Divyesh Muni is a Chartered Accountant by profession. But instead of getting lost in numbers, he would rather prefer to loose himself in the deep ravines of the Himalayas. One month every year, Divyesh takes time off from his busy schedule and heads off to the Himalayas for a dose of trekking and mountain climbing. He has trekked extensively in Garhwal, Kumaon and Ladakh, even going further up north to the Siachen Glacier. Till date, Divyesh has participated in 19 Himalayan expeditions and climbed 25 peaks, several of them more than 20,000 feet above sea level. Not surprisingly, he is a winner of several awards, such as Best Mountaineering Expedition of the year 2005 and the Best Mountaineer of the Year 2009-10.

Trekking is not an easy hobby. You need an extraordinary amount of mental and physical fitness to undertake such treks. Only one who is very passionate about it can do it. The trekking gear is heavy and expensive. You need to learn atleast the basics of first aid. And yes, you need to learn to cook as well! Be ready to trek for days at a stretch, with a loadful of necessities on your back, in a hostile environment.  The climate can change suddenly, and without a warning. Last year when there was a cloudburst at Ladakh, Divyesh was there. Hundreds were killed. Anything can happen. You may lose your way in the middle of nowhere. Or after trekking for days, you may face a peak that seems almost impossible to surmount. How do you respond? You need an extraordinary amount of mental and physical fitness to overcome the situation.

 But the returns are awesome! At times, you are literally at the top of the world. You get to see the true beauty of this planet – stunning mountains, astonishing peaks, breathtaking views from the top. See sights that no tourist has seen before!

A trip begins when you start planning for it. You ready the gear. Plan the route. Often, there are permits to be taken, as peaks in the Himalayas are under military control. Proper maps are either not available, or not shared due to security reasons. Many a times, you have to take local villagers as guides and they become a part of your trekking entourage. Incidentally, Divyesh says, some of the best peaks for mountain climbing are available closer home in the Sahyadris. Here, the trips are easier to plan and execute, and yet all the challenges are still there. On one such trip, Divyesh met Vineeta, and in an instant, they knew they were made for each other.

Vineeta is an accomplished mountain climber in her own right, and has several Himalayan expeditions to her credit. She was one of the first women in the world to have trekked the entire length of the Himalayas in 1997.  She walked over 4500 kms. across the Himalayas, crossing 39 passes over 10000 ft in altitude, covering the entire Himalayas from Arunachal Pradesh in the East to Jammu & Kashmir in the West, going across Bhutan, Sikkim, Nepal, Garhwal, Kumaon, Spiti and Ladakh. The trip took more than a year to plan, and seven months to complete! She has also visited the Siachen Glacier and trekked its entire length (72 kms. in all!) to the head of the glacier and reached “Indira Saddle”, at the Northern most point of India. Closer home, Vineeta has been trekking & rock climbing in the Sahyadris for more than 30 years, and has visited almost every Fort in Maharashtra.

When the Munis are not climbing mountains, they are busy doing other good things. Divyesh conducts adventure camps for the children, and has been an instructor for rock climbing. He has given several presentations on various Himalayan expeditions, conducted seminars & workshops. Vineeta has been an award winning painter and a long distance swimmer too! She guides groups to the Manasarovar and Kailash, and is currently writing a book on her experiences in the Himalayas.

The Munis are excellent photographers too, something that seems almost a ‘sine qua non’ for someone with such a passion! Thankfully, their love for the planet and its people doesn’t end with their treks. They are active with The Himalayan Club, an 83 years old organization that has adopted two villages in the Ladakh region which were destroyed in last year’s cloudburst. The villages are being rebuilt with funds collected from charity. As part of this, Vineeta and Divyesh organized a photography exhibition recently at NCPA in Mumbai. Funds collected from the sale of photographs would go to rebuild the houses of the villages adopted by them and to a children’s hostel that was destroyed in the calamity. Those of you who may be interested in buying their photographs can get in touch with me for their contact details.