Title: Babas' hike Hiking Route: Chautara-Maidain-Chautara Date: August 15-August 16 2009 Duration: 11 hrs out of 13 hours. Distance: 6 Kms – 8 kms Altitude: 2450 meters Hike Coordinator: Vishnu Kshettri Participants: Rudra Pandey, Bhuwan Shrestha, Charan Pradhan, Surendra Adhikari, Nishchal Shrestha, Subash Devkota, Sharad Pokharel, Lava Kafle, Ganesh Thapa, Vishnu Kshetrri Photos: Nishchal Shrestha, Subash Devkota, Surendra Adhikari Caption: Vishnu Kshetrri Report By: Vishnu Kshettri Geolocation: Babas' hike - Vishnu Kshettri If we take some time out of this busy and hectic life style sometimes, we get an opportunity to peep into the insight of different meanings of life. I learnt this from the adversity that we faced on Saturday night stoppage at Maidan, many many miles away from home and from this busy, materialistic yet scintillating world. The stoppage let us share the commodities with equal mind and soul of ten different individuality. The whole journey is still lingering in my mind, and keeps poking out in my mind as one of the many mysteries of life. This was only possible because of the journey that compelled us to go through the equal hardships while we were measuring our inner empathy together last weekend. Chautara, the head quarter of Sindhupalchowk district was a starting point, where we reached in the midday on Saturday. With the starting altitude of 1420 metres we began to hike up. One hour of ascending, we reached at a place called Bench Pani. Another next one hour of stride took us to a place called Shyaule, where locals were curious about this bunch of urban dwellers. During the chit-o-chat, they offered us with a handful of pears. Some of them generously peeled off the skin of pears for us. In exchange, Rudra handed them some money.
pleasant air soothed our skin and mind, entered us into a pleasant state.
After having those freshly picked garden pears, we continued our journey. Next couple of hours of stiff climb, we arrived at Sano Okhreni. One small tea shop owner, a Sherpa family was keen to hold us for a while. But we still continued our half known journey. As we kept climbing, the pleasant air soothed our skin and mind, entered us into a pleasant state. But as the dusk approached us, it was clearly indicating the dark night that we had to go through. We kept pushing hard and got into a place all hovered with clouds. The walk through this village led to narrow jungle trail, with low visibility due to the cloud and upcoming darkness. The trail was really challenging for one and half hours of struggle, with the plenty of leeches’ to keep us busy, raining and slippery trail. With drained strength, the exhausted body finally happened to be at one of Sherpa house, the place called Maidan had only 3 houses of Shepa inhabited. They offered us with some corn pudding (dhido) and the raw radish which had come straight from the fields. They left us to celebrate our dinner. When we finished our dinner, they fitted us inside cattle shed with 6 small blankets for ten people and hay weaved mattresses. Our back pack, we used as pillow. On the way back to Kathmandu, we stopped at the Zero Kilo, had lunch with city taste. Deep down, a thought crossed my mind that the lunch of Zero Kilo let go the diversity in us with option it offered yet it missed the harmony and contentment and the magic unseen tie that held us together in Maidan. It is said that mind is like parachute which works well only when it is open. It became more apparent to me last Saturday with all those new experiences of its kind to last for days and days to come. Please click on the image to see its large version.