Presenting Laldeen & Bolu

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Presenting Laldeen & Bolu
Hiking in Kashmir!
Google today announced Trips, a new app that serves as a trip planner and travel guide for anyone who is exploring a new place. The free app, which is available on Android and iOS, will organize...
Shepherd’s Gear List
At the start the trail life was a little uncomfortable. Friends make liberal use of the word “brave” when they hear of the PCT, but some of my fears were the same as most of us have when we think of life on the trail. And at the start nowhere did they manifest themselves more than when choosing campspots. “Ah this one’s too much in the brush.” Or the gallant “This one’s too far from trail. Noone will know if I get fucked.” Or even the more understandable ”There’s a couple of holes in the ground there. Rattlesnakes?”.
After skipping a popular campspot because I heard a few people say they were going there, I finally found something just past Mile 11. I picked the rock base because there wouldn’t be a danger of burrowed snakes. Then later in the evening I wondered if those pile of rocks you can see in the background would make the ideal mountain lion cave. Would it? I still don’t know. While walking around camp a little later I froze because I heard a snarl. I stood up and shouted back to see if I heard anything back. Turns out it was a hummingbird- when you’re paranoid they can sound like a feline snarl.
About thirty minutes after I had stopped a guy rushed from behind, “Are you Arjun?” WTF! How did you know? Turns out he was using the same site to GPS track his thruhike and saw this blip on the map a little ahead of him. Wilderness indeed! :)
At the start trying to guess daily mileage is a complete crapshoot. On my previous backpacking trips, if I’d manage 6-7 miles I’d be pretty tired by end of day. So I tentatively aimed for 5 miles the first day just to allow myself to ease in. Now I found myself at mile 5 by noon, and there was no way I was going to stop.
Also take a look at that pack- it’s HUGE! When I weighed it at the monument I could barely lift it with one hand- turned out it was 62lbs(28kg). When the scale showed the weight my face grew red and warm- I was embarrassed for myself and for everyone who was supporting me. I sheepishly shrugged my shoulders at Charlie. On the trail hardcoreness is calculated by how light your pack is, and the scale showed me up as a lightweight- till the end I heard of only one other guy with a heavier pack. To give you an idea, my base weight(not including food/water) was about 35lbs- a lot of the proper thruhikers had that at about 15. The thing that I was yet to realize was that backpacking and thruhiking were two completely different sports.
Wah Wah Geetika!
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So cool to see! I've spoken about Geetika earlier, her experience with Remote Year and it culminating with her founding...
Posted by The Open Source Journey on Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Stop. Reset
A couple of days ago a friend and fellow hiker on the PCT, “Super Classy” posed a few questions to other thruhikers on her page. One question among them was “What did you gain on the PCT”. That question instantly transported me back to when I arrived at mile 766 on the PCT- Crabtree Meadows. I was tired, outhiked by seemingly everyone and their mother, my hips were chewed by the backpack and on the granite staircase leading to the meadows each foot landing radiated pain that made me arch backwards pushing my head to the skies. After about 310 miles of hiking I had finally entered the Sierras and expected myself to be a lean mean hiking machine. That wasn’t so at all. I was miserable and seriously asked myself what I was doing out there.