Sliding on my side and gaining momentum, I clawed into the porridge of mud and stones. My brain had decided to emulate the telltale signs of a fusing light bulb at that point. As I careened downwards, my heart began banging into my chest in a last-ditch effort to keep my brain from shutting shop entirely. In between threatening flickers, it managed to nominate a spot that might be willing to be my saving grace. A tiny projection, sticking out like a door handles in the wall of mud, about 8 feet below. Within a couple of seconds, I had my fingers straining around the rounded edge of that little rock. But I couldn’t find a place for my feet. After a minute of kicking and flailing, I realised the trick to getting a proper foothold was to dig into the mud. Somewhat stable, I looked around.

I usually quite enjoy gravity’s company. It keeps me grounded when I’m threatening to float into space, keeps me alive with a nice ambiance of oxygenated air, and is usually the reason apples tend to fall toward the ground instead of just drifting about aimlessly. But boy can it be a real bother when the only thing separating you and 50 meters of sliding drop is a tiny rock that has already begun bobbing around a bit.

Finding myself astray, in the midst of rain and hail had become a recurring theme during my time in Ladakh. Nature tried to compensate for it, as it did now, with a handsome backdrop that seemed to have been plagiarised from a John Constable painting. In hindsight, it might have been the perfect place to die.

To my left, about 10 feet away, streaked a vertical fissure all the way down. It divided the face of the slope perfectly. On one side was the gentle gradient of a pristine white glaciated mantle, and on the other side, the side on which I was floundering like a graceless mantis, was a steep wall of mud and rubble. It felt like I was crawling on the disfigured half of Harvey Dent’s nose.

The incessant drops of precipitation that seemed to miss me or the patch of space I occupied, crawled off to join forces with glacial melt that ran down through the fissure.

Below, uncouth boulders huddled together menacingly like a pack of crocodiles waiting to shred my sweet flesh.

But I wasn’t going to give up was I? Of course not. So I did what every dignified hiker would do when confronted with a slippery situation. I sat down and scooted my sorry bottom sideways, carefully, a couple of inches at a time, towards the fissure, and then into it. The rocks inside were fairly steady, but that did not concern me much. It was the wretched cold from the wretched water that bothered me. The cold permeated through the seat of my pants and shriveled everything in its path. But it wasn’t the time to investigate the damage. I would have to check on myself later…

I think it is safe to assume that I made it out alive. I came out of that incident with a fashionable hole in my pants. I would venture as far as to say I got lucky; a point some of my outlandishly snobbish friends seemed to recite when I happened to deliver this story to them.

I set up camp very late that evening. While I sat in my tent marinating in my own stench, I began to ponder over why anyone would want to prefer the solo route…

Must Read: Ladakh Dairies! How To Sight An Elusive Snow Leopard? by Riccha Arora

The Essence

There are a few things that you tend to notice as your hair starts turning grey at a relatively young age. The first thing that crosses your mind is, maybe the girls will like you more now. They like older men and nothing spells senile like a bit of salt and pepper action. Secondly, your opinions start to hold a bit more weight with the folks. Somehow, at first sight, they develop the idea that you have your stuff in order. Until they finally get to know you a little better and realize they are better off hanging out with a toolshed. Third, the few friends that you do have, who have acclimatized to your subtleties, begin to lose their sovereignty to wives and babies, and to those vile things they call careers and jobs.

But what about those trips and treks that you had planned? Are you going to let those fantasies gather dust in the bathroom cabinet with the other could-have-beens? Of course not! You’re a man and you are independent.

So you call your friends and tell them explicitly how they have castrated themselves with the sodden lives they have chosen and that you are the one true remaining exemplar of truly independent men in the group and that you are going to go on a hike by yourself. But in case they are in the mood to resuscitate their manhood they could still come. What? No? They have in-laws to entertain this weekend? Ok fine! You’ll go by yourself then! And you hang up.

So you book your ticket and after several hours of stomach lurching, putrid smelling bus ride you end up in a town, which according to the internet had “splendid” some things and “magnificent” other things. As the bus shudders to a halt and you step out of its rancid chamber, you look around to lap up the “splendid” Xs and the “magnificent” Ys. But what you are greeted with is a leaden greyness that stretches like a lumpy canvas, stern to stern. As a tiny drop melts on your head, you curse the internet for omitting to disclose anything about the weather. Gravely unsettled by this betrayal, you go find a cheap hotel, which is really not all that hard to find. Because as it turns out, the place is crawling with stingy tourists like yourself.

Anyway, you have waited long enough. The sky hasn’t cleared up much in the last couple of days. But for the occasional drizzle, there hasn’t been much rain. And there is this other thing that has increasingly alarmed you. The manly fire which has brought you this far has been found wanting at times. You have caught it entertaining second thoughts while you waited for lunch at that “five-star hotel” which was really just a shack that sold bread and omelettes, and some chai. And just this morning, as you stepped out of the shower, you found it hunched over in the corner of the room staring listlessly out the window. This wouldn’t do, you thought and administered a swift kick to its bottom and bought it some beer and chips. You decide, no matter what happens, you leave tomorrow at the break of dawn.

At 10 am, you wake up with a jerk that shakes the foundation of your brain. Or is it the hangover from the 3 beers that you had chugged while watching Youtube tutorials on how to build your life around travel? It is hard to tell. But your manly spirit is found wavering again. You revive it with some coffee and gently convince it with a cuddle that the decree demands an immediate discharge. So, at around noon, you step out. The weather hasn’t changed much but you convince yourself that floundering in the rain is always better than being dry-roasted in the sun.

After several hours of flolloping about in the forest, which was really just a lot of resting mixed with several minutes of strenuous walking, you have decided to break for lunch. In town, there had been a lot of noise about that corner departmental store that, apparently, stocked everything one could ever need on a hike. But you had everything that you would need on your sojourn, besides the obvious, food. So after a lot of asking for directions, and cursing at misleading fingers, you reach this mythical store, which was actually just a shack that sold bread, cheese, and some questionable eggs. In fact, it was the same shack that sold you lunch. Anyhow, you take the bread and some cubes of cheese and decide this is exactly what a traveling wanderer could use. But you also found another store that sold you some chocolates and peanut fritters, just in case. Lunch goes well. It doesn’t take long and you don’t like to cook much anyway. After a brief nap on a wonderful bed of twigs and red ants, you dust yourself off and continue.

As the sun coughs up its last rays of light from a crack in the cloud, you find an empty patch of land where you would set up camp for the night, and swivel the map on your phone. As per your estimate, and your estimate is usually wrong, it will take you another day to reach the end.

Anyway, it has been an exhausting six hours and you could do with some rest.

The internet is a monumental design. It has brought vast cascades of knowledge to the tips of our fingers, is what they teach us in school. And it would have very likely been true, had it not been for the humungous sea of useless content that one needs to carefully sieve through to reach that useful bit. But through all that hubris about the right way to hide your flatulence in public, and how one could consume eggs and still call themselves vegan, there appears a knowledgeable lady who seems to have her face in order.

She says it’s absolutely imperative for a hiker to know where the water sources are and to always carry a filter. So you did. She also happens to give her advice on what else to bring on this trek; a tent kit, a sleeping bag, a sleeping mat, some toiletries, some water bottles, extra socks, a pair of boots, a jacket, and an extra shirt and pants which one might want to change into while at camp. You’ve followed most of it, but you knew and probably she did too, that those extra pair of clothes would never smell the fresh air of camp. There’s no one to see or judge and you’d rather just sleep draped in your own funk.

Anyway, after a good game of chase-the-tent with your new friend, the wind, you remember how you ought to secure it with pegs before you address your toilet duties. And then you settle in for the night.

Lying there and waiting for sleep to invite you into her domain, you recall how someone had once told you that hiking solo is a good exercise in becoming acquainted with solitude. They had expressed with a seasoned air that being by yourself lets the thoughts run free and that you will get to mull over life’s more pressing questions and get to know yourself better. Well apparently, it’s all just hogwash. As you had witnessed yourself, there are no thoughts creeping into your mind while hiking, except for how that one rock looks especially dubious and that it wouldn’t really be a good idea to step on it, and how long after you’ve run out of water should you start drinking your own urine. But, as it turns out, the thoughts do come, only that, as always, they come when you’re about to sleep. Nevertheless, you sleep off soon enough. Even that lump of rock that has made it its mission to ceaselessly poke you from under the mat can’t keep you awake tonight.

Returning to the nice lady. Had you not abruptly cut her short out of boredom, you would have heard her mention something about wild animals and how it’d be nice if you could read up on what to expect in the area. Had you done that, you wouldn’t have had your bones jump out of your skin, when you spotted that bow-horned yak casually nibbling at your tent early in the morning. It looks mean, but you thank your lucky stars it’s not a bear, and wait for the cud-munching beast to take its leave.

Come afternoon, your legs have taken to emanating the vibrational frequencies of a tuning fork, and your bones have taken up the consistency of homemade custard. But you are almost there now. You can see the peak and sooner or later you’ll reach there. You heave that boulder of a rucksack onto your shoulders and tell yourself you’ll summit with this final push, which is effectively just a fantasy because after 20 steps or so, you collapse in a bundle of breathless disappointment with the peak barely closer than an inch. But, you persist. After 42 final pushes or so, by which time you’re basically just paddling through the rubble with your eyelashes, the crest of the mountain floats like a hallucination about a foot away. You’ve made it, you think, and collapse like you’ve just heard gunfire.

After a long couple of minutes, you catch your breath and stagger onto your feet.

From here you have the view of a very moist green landscape, something old Shelley would have been proud to wax lyrics about had he ever had the patience and the moxy to make the trip through time and space to be wherever you are. But he did not, and the landscape has to settle for whatever dull interpretation you would bestow upon it. This is a source of great sadness to the landscape because it really did try. It had taken great effort to painstakingly pile tons of rock and rubble and soil, one heap at a time, over countless years. Then it went out of its way to sprout a great plumage of motley green trees which budded a delectable assortment of purple, white and yellow flowers, on the correct side of winter. As if that wasn’t enough, it had roped in a few misty balls of cotton wool from the sky to give itself that aura of fantasy. What a waste, it thought.

But it doesn’t really know you, does it?

Your nose starts to twitch and you blink uncontrollably in an effort to suppress that little wave of water that is forming in the corner of your eye. A sentiment had reared its ugly head a handful of times on this trip. But you were able to repress its uninvited emergence with a few ill-framed photographs and videos. You can’t run from it now, though. You haven’t seen anything so beautiful in a long time, you think. But every time you have thought of turning around to express these intimate emotions to someone, you’ve realized there’s nobody beside you to share them with. The only other object that has accompanied you on this journey is your backpack. And although it is a colourful companion to have, it is a bit of a mute.

You had thought you’d learn quite a bit about yourself along the way in this journey. And you have. You’ve learnt how simple it is to take care of yourself. You have learnt that, had it not been for your family and that dreadfully seminal need for affection that wells up in you once in a while, you are perfectly capable of living the life of a tramp. But there is a cost to solitude.

Anyway, you learn to keep your chin up. The final leg beckons and time doesn’t entertain misty-eyed sentiments.

After a bit more of the same, by this time the next day, you see the vestiges of a path. A few brick and cement structures have erected themselves here and there. It seems you are at the end of your journey. You feel relieved as you sit down at a shop run by an uncle, his daughter, and a dog. He seems to have perfectly executed your dream of lolling around all day with a good friend and family for company. He tells you some buses do leave for town, but those only run on Thursdays. You’d rather ride to town on that goat that is tied in uncle’s front yard than wait till Thursday, you think. So you wait out on the road for a quick lift.

About twenty cars rear their heads from that blind bend, but they race you by to some unknown urgency. You know you are not at your most presentable but these people just lack heart. Had it been you, you would have definitely made some space for a grubby, smelly stranger. You are ready to give up and start walking again when a massive truck comes to halt at the wave of your hand. You can’t figure out who is at the back but apparently, there are quite a few of them. You climb on to realize there’s not much to sit on but a pile of debris. Construction workers! With an apprehensive smile, you find a spot on someone’s outstretched legs and sit. He yanks it out from underneath you and you apologize profusely in embarrassment. He says it’s alright and offers you something you’ve been hankering for since the day you started. A beedi. What jubilation!

That night, back in your cozy little bed in the hotel, you reminisce over your little adventure. You flip through your phone and find that photograph from the summit you’d clicked. You are reminded of the loneliness that had your emotions in a vice. But that view offers you succor from all the heartache and you conclude that you’d rather be up there alone than not be up there at all.