Awanish Ranjan
Title : 2007 Apr - D2Hawkeye Hiking from Sankhu to Nagarkot Participants : Prashanta, Manoj R, Bimal, Hitesh, Binaya A, Deepti K, Tejaswee S, Sashi A, Awanish R, Manindra, Keshav B Route :Sankhu to Nagarkot Time : 6hours 15 mins Distance : 25 km (Appx) Date : Sunday, April 22, 2007 Report : Awanish Ranjan Photos : BimalK , Sashi A Captions : Hitesh Creative Support: BinayaN, Dovan Finally, I could find myself free for the day which I was waiting for since I joined D2 and that is non-other than the HIKING DAY. As hiking and wandering around the untouched areas has been one of my charm since the days of my college, I am always excited rather than being skeptic about all such occasions and this hiking can not be an exception to it. And what a coincidence!! After a heavy shower of Saturday night which was looking threatening to our hiking plan, the weather became quite friendly the other day. With a lot of enthusiasm, I reached office (a bit later than what was specified) and found our hiking team quite ready for the mission. Some were making an adequate arrangement of water for the day while others were reminding Prashant about his wallet (as Prashant was the in charge that day). Picking up Binay on the way right in front of his home, we reached Sankhu by 8.00 am in the morning and started seeking the place where we could provide ourselves some initial dose for the day. This was actually called “One of the best part of Hiking” by Hitesh and must comprise of “Jeri Swari” according to him. We got one such place and fortunately with the same composition. In that sort period of time spent at Sankhu, we came to know that Sankhu has been one of the prominent suppliers of the Potatoes that we have in almost all part of our country. Also the locals talked about the greatness of the local temple and about the dreadful attack on the local Police Post some two years ago by Maoists. The actual trail began after that. The day’s talk began with the “Ping-Pong” issue by Bianay and Keshav and the day’s activity with snapping by Bimal . We were bit confused about the actual way so we decided to know about it from the local people. Asking the way to Nagarkot, the quite generous local people suggested us to follow the straight path to Nagarkot but we were in a different mood. So we opposed that suggestion and took a jungle and hilly course to our destination. The starting view of the forest just looked like a rare group of trees but as we went deeper into the forest, it started to give us its denser feel. Crawling, sliding, bending and doing a lot more physical adjustment, we made the way through the branches and bushes of the forest. Everybody of our group remarked this as very suitable and relatively more interesting trial for hiking and some even suggested that we should look for this route some next time too. After about three hours of jungle trip, we were exposed to the local village. The villagers were busy in unearthing the potatoes and in that situation, we also thought about buying some sacs of the newly unearthed vegetable. But…the actual feel of hiking was yet to begin which was going to take away all the thoughts from our mind. That final session of hiking was relatively bit difficult for us and the reason of this intricacy was the inclined slope. At this period of hiking, we were just beneath the direct observation of Mr. Sun which made our final session harder than other. But with the delightful team and the availability of plenty of water, this session was about to pass. We were a bit worried about this time as we were yet to distribute the academic materials to the students. Actually this sort of social work is also an inevitable part of our trip. Enough to our luck, we found a school of locality in the village located right below Nagarkot. The school named “Shree GadGade Lower Secondary School”. But at that moment, no students were in the school and asking the principle, we knew that it is due to the admission season. So we decided to hand the stationery materials over the principle and requested him to distribute it among the students. That was our last activity of the hiking prior to reaching our destination. At about 3:30 pm we reached Nagarkot. Then began the so called Post Hiking session in which different talks about previous hiking and some personal experiences were shared by the team members. And the hiking of the day ended with a very delicious lunch at Sahili didi’s Berg House Café, Nagarkot. The effect of Hiking was quite visible next day on me. It was not the ailment but the refreshing feeling to me. This was not my first ever hiking but of course first at D2. I am quite thankful to our pretty enthusiastic, hilarious and pleasant hiking team for making my first hiking such an exciting to me. I am really looking forward to the next similar sort of amusing hiking and much more.
