#teadom

[travellingteadom]

Padum

Padum is the where phase I of our trek ends. Here we take a bit of a breather, stock up on stuff, get rid of facial hair (Rohit), go to the health centre (me), take baths (all) and wash clothes (all). 

Halfway report is that we are all a bit more tired mentally than physically. The relentless, ceaseless and featureless (not technically because there are lots of mountains, but if mountain after mountain looks the same, does this term not apply?) landscape does take a toll on motivations. I can’t explain it, we wanted to do it, we did it, we really cursed it then, but I don’t think it was so bad now. 

I truly do love walking, memories get etched easily when I am going slow. But for how long can the mind etch the same brown mountain? Note to mind: 8 more days till the browns would make way for the greens of Kashmir valley. 

[travellingteadom]

Testa

On this trek, all camps came with little streams of fresh water. Since by the end of every walk we were always covered in sweat and caked in dust, we used to really look forward to those streams and our mini-baths in them. In Testa though, since we had a good few hours of sunshine left, we washed our clothes too. And by the end of all the washing, not a single branch was free. 

[travellingteadom]

Manali

Taking into consideration the kind of long journey one needs to take to get to Manali I have always hoped to see lesser number of people there. But not only is that not so, the commercialisation of the beautiful hill town is reaching sad proportions. Sunshine Guest house, pretty much in the midst of it is a great place to stay and introspect in peace. It makes you forget the Manali outside and little by little takes you back to the Manali it was, maybe 50 years back.

We introspected the 3 weeks of trekking ahead of us, full of walking up, and down, of crossing rivers, zipping tents and being on the trail.