Guinea Pig Tale

Continued from Part I It was a leisurely walk for me. I found entertaining company in 20-something former engineers from Hyderabad, who labored to explain to me how train wheels are built, and how they steer differently (I don’t remember why we got onto that topic). After several years of being around arts college students at Xavier’s, or former arts college students at my workplace Star India, I was happy to meet people whose everyday conversations included science. A part of me still wants to be a scientist, but sadly the only current relation between me and science is that my hair is like Einstein’s. Finally, we reached the Har ki Doon valley. I admired the view for a while   –   the Supin river sped past our tent and there were snow-capped mountains in every direction. Far away, a part of the Jaundhar glacier was visible too. Within minutes, the cold had hit. The highest temperature at that altitude was 9°C, dropping to -9°C in the night. At 3500 metres, even Uttarakhand’s

Are you a sea person or a mountain person? I was first asked this question sometime in college, and at the time, the answer had been clear to me – I was a staunch sea person. I had been living near the coast all my life, I could tolerate heat much better than people I knew, and I love swimming. Every time an Imtiaz Ali film came out, I would fall in love with the songs in it – with at least one picturised on the hills – and this would make me waver a bit, but never for too long. So it was with some trepidation that I packed and set out for my first ever Himalayan trek, to the Har ki Doon valley in Uttarakhand. The list of things to carry itself seemed intimidating – winter clothes, and more winter clothes. The last time I had been to a really cold place was more than a decade ago, to Dalhousie. I remember little from it – a few stunning views, and lots of motion sickness.  The name's Bond, Ruskin Bond We were to leave from Dehradun by road to Taluka, some 250 kms a

This is a repost of an older post (from May 2016) that somehow got deleted. You know how every city has those quintessential things associated with it - like crowds, sea and vada pav in Mumbai, beaches and sweating in Chennai, etc. I had a pretty long checklist of things I associated with Delhi and I managed to check off all of them in a single day. The 7 things you can't miss when you're in Delhi are: 1. Get ripped off by an auto-wala  This happens in a lot of cities, I admit, but I had been specifically warned against it before going to Delhi. It happened anyway. I had to go somewhere close and before getting in, I asked the auto-wala, "Minimum fare, na?" and he said yes. It turned out to be a little farther than I expected, but definitely a lot less than 3kms. After I get down, he blithely says, "100 rupaiya hua". The argument ended with me shouting at him about how at least one auto-wala has to fool you once you land in Delhi and how he had had