Scaled upto 5000m as part of Kun
Expedition. In all there were three basic base camps and three advance
base camps. I could go upto first advance base camp 1. Post that it was
all mountaineering minus trekking. The two boots, helmet, harness, ice
axe, jumaar, descender, crampons ec. were feeling like a heavy space
suit on me. It was difficult to climb over big slippery dangerous rocks
comfortably with it.
To top it I had the bag whose weight was close to 10-15 kilos (3 kilos of food alone). The rocks were very slippery, the sun was very hot, I was feeling weak with the kind of diet I was maintaining. The snow was all over. A journey to advance base camp 2 meant an 8 to 10 hours journey with 200 m 70 degree climb and a lot of weight on your back. It would get deadly cold if we stayed still. Additionally my crampons were sharp, rusted and would take half an hour to just to get them on my huge heavy snow boots with my bare shivering fingers. My helmet had already fallen once but my team mate help me salvage it. Losing these basic equipment was dangerous. Think about it, a huge lump of hard snow ice falling on the head in the midst of a vertical climb in a white washed chilling freezing deadly atmosphere with not a single person in sight. All the more, I would have been left behind for more than 2 hours. Sherpas would not be around to help me one-on-one all the time.
This is the first time in my life where
I decided to give up. I was not physically strong, mentally drained and
had zero percent experience in mountaineering. I realized this is where
mountaineering becomes different from trekking. If I move ahead towards
base camp two, I will get stuck mid way with no idea how to proceed
ahead and turn back. I will die. My other friend from Malaysia was
mentally disturbed, drained and lost, as he took the decision to go
ahead. He was stuck in mid way sitting in bitter cold for three hours
with no one around. All he could see was whiteness. He is not a family
man but upon his return I saw death in his eyes and all he wanted to do
was visit his mother in Tamil Nadu
I am happy I tried though. On my way
back I stayed at Kargil and Srinagar. The Ladakh part of Kashmir is very
innocent. At Kargil, I bought a Quran, visited a madrassa, met some
children studying, met a high cleric Shia and even got invited for a cup
of tea and a chat at a small house of a JK Bank manager.
At Srinagar I reached tired and the guides killed my experience to an extent. The guide I had was nice to me but he extracted 3 times more money from me. With three and half weeks behind, no internet, poor facilities around Rajbaugh area of Srinagar, I was a scapegoat in the hands of a guide.
I started feeling sick and had to break
my vacation trip and return. I am back home and had to cancel lot of
hotel bookings, lost quiet bit of money there. Kashmir has lot of
mountains, lakes. While I stayed there I visited different places in
Srinagar, Gulmarg and Manasbal lake. In Srinagar I visited some mosques
including the controversial one where Jesus is laid in a tomb. The
shrine is enclosed and its almost impossible and very dangerous to be
around the shrine.
\
I met a lot of interesting people during the journey. My expedition team had five in all. I had a NASA engineer on myteam who worked on New Horizons for a
decade and it is now orbiting the Pluto planet clicking pictures. If you
follow Space Science, you would have known by now that New Horizons
probe sattelite has clicked some new pictures revealing more clearly
about the terrain structure of Pluto. I had a lady senior cop officer
from Telangana who narrated me interesting crime stories, the best one
being how she solved a 1 crore robbery case within 48 hours. She was a
Asst SP, very influential as she had friends at every check post, police
station, airport and claimed that she had friends in Interpol as well.
But without her pistol, she was very gentle, pious and more scared than a
civilian if she was left alone with strangers for few hours. I had a
senior Air force Liason officer who was on duty to be with the NASA
engineer. The other two were from software, one of them working in
Malaysia and the other from IIT. The team behind us were from Navy. I
met a few Navy people and a little interesting conversation. There was a
commando in the Navy team. I was told that they can fight like an army,
air force and navy. A look at this guy did not make me feel that he is a
commando but he was. As a part of training, they are left hungry for
days enclosed in four walls with a ferocious dog. They are even asked to
be submerged under water for 8 mins. But this is just a tip of what all
they really are and what they really do.
I always felt more relieved with army people being around. I found women of Ladakh to be extremely beautiful and always covered in their neat Hijabs. They rarely speak except when required such as a shop keeper. They speak a different language and have a different culture from Kashmiris.
I am not able to judge the Kashmiris but something is missing. There are no private sectors in city. People mostly seem to work for the government job in cities. There are no beggars and to an extent the city is clean and seems like its poor yet self sustained.
There are cheats who say Inshallah, Bismillah all the time in vain, then there are sincere Muslims. I was told that there is a lot of Islamphobia. Muslims are divided into two as one section wants to remain with old practices and the one section wants to practically get revived with modern times. The Shia community seems to be heavily spread out and many follow Khomeini just like Catholics follow Pope.
I expressed to many good Muslims in Kargil as to how I really loved my Muslim friends in the world and how hurt I feel when someone uses harsh words against Islam. Somewhere my peaceful and welcoming Muslim friends and family get hurt in the process.
The few radicals, top political brass and the news have only talks of terror. But the truth is 98% part of Kashmir is peaceful, welcoming, unexplored, pure, vast, beautiful and safe and no news on this Earth will tell you.
Our country has 1.25 billion people and only they can heal Kashmir by visiting them, mingling with them. Kashmir is heavily Islamic and they have a culture, they have a practice and people visiting Kashmir should ensure we respect it. You must have heard of a saying 'In Rome, Be a Roman'. For the last three weeks and more, I was a Roman Kashmiri.
