#theopensourcejourney

[opensourcedjourney]

Presenting Laldeen & Bolu

[opensourcedjourney]

Hiking in Kashmir!

[opensourcedjourney]

Google Trips is a killer travel app for the modern tourist

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...

[opensourcedjourney]

Shepherd’s Gear List

[opensourcedjourney]

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! :)

[opensourcedjourney]

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.

[opensourcedjourney]

Wah Wah Geetika!

(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));

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

[opensourcedjourney]

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. 

Crabtree Meadow is the fork on the PCT where most hikers will take a side trail that goes up Mount Whitney- the tallest peak in the lower 48. It is a nice peak to “bag" when you’re already so close and in that great shape. I didn’t want to do it though. I didn’t care a rats ass about it being the tallest mountain- in fact I was almost resentful that it was so close to the trail. If it was farther out I wouldn’t have been expected to do it at all. I chose a campsite away from most hikers and took a day off to nurse my feet. Look for the video blog from that time at the bottom of this post.

The next day I walked up to Guitar Lake and dozed off with the marmots looking over it’s infinity pool’esque edges over to the beautiful mountain landscape. It got me thinking though. How could I be so miserable amidst such beauty and doing exactly what I wanted. What did I hate about this? I hated being the slowest hiker out there. I hated that I felt it was dangerous for me to go up Whitney alone when everyone else were bludgeoning up and down. I hated that physically it seemed like I was getting beat down much more than everyone else. I hated that everyone else was so upbeat. As much as we’ve celebrated "Eric the Eel”, I didn’t want to be known for that on the PCT. I felt more broken spiritually than I’d felt at any point on the hike. The thing about being in such surroundings though was that unlike when I was working in a cubicle I couldn’t pretend that my problems lied in my circumstances anymore. If my feet hurt that bad all I had to do was to take a day off at the lake. If I hated that I was the slowest all I had to do was ignore other’s speeds and remember why I had started the hike in the first place. If I just focused on the fact that I didn’t really think Whitney was safe considering my faith in my own ice condition hiking, I could just mentally ignore Whitney was around. But I couldn’t do any of them back then- I didn’t feel the freedom to do those things. I knew I had to reclaim that freedom.

And it was a reminder- I already knew all those lessons intellectually, but every time I’d see a thruhiker overtake me or talk to me about a 25 mile day I’d internally cringe. Something inside made me feel like I was failing. And then secretly, as if doing it out of sight of my intellectual side, I’d unconsciously push the bar on my target for the day or that session. If earlier I was happy with a goal of 16 miles, I’d suddenly covertly start aiming for 24 and then feel bummed when I did an actually respectable 20 mile day. Why couldn’t I keep my picture of what I wanted for myself isolated and even protected from what others were doing? Why was I so afraid of losing at a game that I wasn’t even playing? 

I realized I needed to stop and reset. To become more conscious and reclaim the freedom to do my own thing. I spent the day hanging around camp forcing myself to talk to other hikers, to feel the excitement they felt for the impending Whitney summit and still be clear about what I wanted. I sat around, I cooked, walked a few miles, spoke to Mount Whitney and told her there was going to be one less hiker on her that year. After two "zeroes" at Crabtree Meadows I finally headed out. I intentionally walked slow, conscious of every step. I looked around and told myself I had the freedom to stop and marvel or read when I felt like it. I’m not sure if it was coincidence or if it was the heightened awareness just after you learn a lesson but that stretch from Crabtree onwards was the satisfactory of my PCT hike. I remember camping that evening- I had started at 11am, had walked very slowly and only stopped because of a storm and I’d still done about 10.5 miles. I made my new target for the Sierras about 12 miles. It wasn’t so much about having low expectations as not raising them while being disconnected with myself and influenced by external factors. That night two miles from the highest point on the PCT as I stepped outside my tent and looked out to the peaks and the moon in an almost Martian landscape(see picture above) I could feel my insides smiling back at me.