Hiking buriburizaemon

 Well I'll use this chance as an opportunity to reflect on what I'd say was the craziest "boys" trip in my life yet. I don't remember much details so good luck hunting. 

We left our hostels at around 8-9 am, it wasn't cloudy, nice weather to be out.
The usual bus stop place, took us to Pala bus stand. Our bus was supposed to be there at around 10am but it was unreasonably late, like atleast a few hours late. 

Ghostyyy was our group planner, and as he does, our itinerary was mathematically optimized for less money spent to maximum experience. And due to this mathematical brilliance, a few hours delay in bus meant we'd lose the chance to visit some animal place. (Forgive me for not knowing the plans exactly, I'm the guy in the group that'd say yes to any side quest without knowing shit) I just know that because of that delay, I had lost 1 full plate chicken biryani worth of money.

AD, my roommate, was the only mallu with us. Having a mallu while travelling is like living life easy. He could read malayalam for us. He's a nice guy, like think of a nice guy and thats him. I have been blessed with great roommates. But I'd say AD lacks some extrovert skills, that we felt he'd use to negotiate us "crazy mallu only deals". But he tried, thats all that matters.

Trovador, hes an artist but hes gay. (hes not gay, hes probably the most diverse skillset guy in our group)

Draken, he has street skills and he is a South Indian polygot, great plus to have in your trip. Also has a clear heart. 

me, the only north indian in the trip. I trust their plans, I keep calm because I don't know shit anyways, I enjoy.

"Its about the journey, not the destination" . That quote kept revisiting my head like a cron job throughout the entire trip. I think I understand it now. 

Next to us in the bus, was a group of russian ladies. I was wondering what they were thinking in the bus, cuz the only thingy I was thinking of was how grateful I am to be alive and living. There were 4 instances during the entire trip when one of us could have died. Out of the four, 3 of those instances where when ALL of us could have died. 
Whenever the bus had to move slightly uphill, you could hear the transmission's cries coming down from hell. It was like some really really bad torture was happening down there. I could hear the boys say, "Damn the bus is old af" "We won't make it da". Sure the bus was old, and maybe not maintained at all, you could literally see wires coming out of that shit. But, as a subject matter expert, I knew it was the massive balls of the bus driver that was weighing us down. What would you do if you were driving on a hilly road and a car came at you? Slow down? Fuck no, you go full acceleration forward. You're the bus, don't let any lowly vehicle slow you down. Phew.
Yeah it was crazy, we even almost fell down in a river canal. Traffic jams, sharp turns at full speeds. Yeah.

It tooks us around 4 maybe 5 hours from KSRTC bus to reach the place. The scenery was wild. We de boarded from our ride. I bid farewell to the driver, he taught me more philosophy than Republic. With nothing to do now, we scrambled for things to do. It helped that right next to our brainstorm session was a sightseeing bus that was about to leave. We managed to finesse the conductor into giving us tickets, two down, three up. "Now who gets to go up and who stays down?". We decided that over a game of odd one out. Me and Draken were to stay down, while the rest had to go up and do Instagram duties for the group. They got a few nice shots from up there, we had our views. Sitting straight next to us was a foreigner guy. Usually I have the urge to make small talks, here is a man who has a completely different view of world compared to me, how exciting. But he seemed to be enjoying himself, occasionally smiling at the view, so I refrained. 

The bus stopped at scenic spots, so people could get out and make their Instagram stories. I'm not a big photogenic, and I wanted to take a piss real bad. So me and AD took a detour, doing our part by fertilizing nature, giving back. Every man, atleast once in their life, should take a piss from a cliff. When the wind flows, and you just let yourself relaxxxx. All your worries fade away as you look at the horizon. I managed to capture that rare moment of brotherhood.

As we walked back to society from our enlightened experience, I saw the foreigner guy again. He looked alone, seeing others take pictures making poses. So naturally, this new changed me approached. His eyes lit up, he handed me his phone, I took few pics, handed his phone back, he said "You take good pictures", I hit him with an enlightened nod. Man why can't life be this easy.

Its easy to talk after icebreak. TLDR; his name was Chalak, an accountant in the ministry of something, in his mid 40s from Kurdistan. He had travelled 25 countries alone. Guess they pay well in Kurdistan. Our sightseeing was about to end now, we were going back the route we came from, it was turning dark. The place we were to stay was away from main town and the bus could just drop us there. We received intimation from ghostyy that we were to not stop in between but go to the main town to eat food. "Ok". Few mins later, AD comes and tells us that we are stopping now and not going to main town. "Ok". We got the bus stopped, got out. Now ghostyy asks us why we stopped the bus. "Wdym why? Didn't you send AD?". Turns out it was a big split horizon type miscommunication. So, now we had to walk AND find a place to eat, cuz the place we were staying didn't have food. We had to climb a hill tomorrow anyways, little warmup wouldn't hurt. 

Priya restaurant, I won't forget this detail. That was the place we ate at that night. This place will show up few more times in the story. It was next to a fancy pine like place, they refused to give us food. Bus stopped around that place asw, next to a christian something idk what that was but a statue inside a glass? The walk was like 1 km ish to the stay. I remember while walking back when we were taking a right, Draken slipped on mud. It was so funny, me and trovador watched him fall in slow motion.

Anyways we ended up at stay safely, what happened that night stays there.
I'll have to redact this part. 

It was supposed to be really cold there the next morning, we had to wake up at 5am as planned walk up to Priya restaurant, the guy at the restaurant said that he'd arrange an auto for us next morning. We woke up at 5:30.

I'll let ghostyy describe what happened that day. I'll redact some of the stuff he said thats too revealing. Maybe after this all ends, I'll write my pov.

"So, Priya restaraurant guy first recommended us to take the bus that was supposed to arrive at 5am, and never arrived, we later just sort of had to wait around while priya restaurant guy tried to get us an auto, while we were waiting we had some nice hot coffee, makeki got a vada and we were all messing around watching our breath come out as fog. 
Finally after waiting for quite a while, I believe around 5:20 we got an auto (we were supposed to be at the base of the hiking trail at 5:30) 
While getting into the auto Drakens wallet fell down , but he picked up and we got moving, roughly around 5:40 we were there, just being at the base was glorious, the base point we started from was already quite high up and we were already above a cloud bed, watching the sun rise. This beautiful moment however was ruined for me when I realised my wallet is missing, I had a mini heart attack, that wallet had my aadhar and my money to actually pay for getting onto the trail , without which I couldnt even hike moreover, I HAVE IMPORTANT STUFF IN THERE. a few minutes of panicked searching later, draken realised he had 2 wallets, the wallet that fell down while getting onto the auto was infact mine and it was just too early in the morning to have noticed that. 
Well, everything was good again my wallet returned to me aaaaaaand, one of my soles just fell of the shoe , I was now climbing with 0 grip feeling every sharp rock beneath me, great. 
There was massive queue at the forest officials office, where everyone was getting their passes to climb (they were quite expensive, [REDACTED]) , while trovador and draken were in line for us me and AD and makeki were looking for the perfect hiking sticks, we had also met the guys from our bonfire last night , it was nice to seem them again.
Soon, we were ready to go up , we had our passes, no guide cuz it was 6:30 and we were one of the last ones to start cuz we were at the end of the line and the guide already had gone ahead. 
The start for me atleast was quite pleasant, there were some nice vertical sections, I wont really talk too much about the technicalities of the [REDACTED], there's plenty of information about that online. 
About 15 minutes in, we now in hindsight believe we went off the trail which led to a super vertical section, ofc me being overconfident in the fact that if everyone else can do it I can do it, I went up blindly, the rest of the party however was quite fearful and I probably spent 30 minutes trying to convince everyone to get their asses up and climb, in the end only AD and makeki came up, Draken and trovador parted ways with us, said some really mean stuff to me and went back down, it was quite disappointing to see them go, I mean we were maybe like 7% into the trek and they left.  
Well, I can definetly say THEY MISSED OUT , because I'm 100% sure past that small vertical section where we veered off we were back on the right trail, saw the waypoints and kept climbing, from here onwards there's not much to say about the climb, some of the highlights were 
- I lost my other sole, so now both my shoes had 0 grip , this was a huge problem back down
- We saw INSANE views
- We met a ton of fun people, even made a linkedin connection up there (hustle never stops)
- We saw [REDACTED], this was huge, makeki mentioned in the blog "we'd lose the chance to visit some animal place" that animal place was, [REDACTED], famous for the [REDACTED], [REDACTED].
Anyways, the rest is pretty standard average hiking experience, reaching the peak, questioning life, being amazed by the views, taking silly pictures and having a great time. 
Then, the devastating downhill , especially devastating with 0 grips, I probably fell like 15 times, in some sections the climb down was very steep and we had to be careful, visibility also was low because, we were in a literal cloud and it was foggy af. 
But hey, we made it back down, said bye to the friends we made along the trail, got on a bus back to [REDACTED], got our stuff from the homestay, and met trovador and draken back at [REDACTED], we had a great lunch, some amazing hot chocolate then, had a pretty standard bus ride once again back to college."

Yeah so, aWYgeW91IGFyZSBsb29raW5nIGZvciBhIGZsYWcgaGVyZSwgY29uZ3JhdHMuIFRoZSBsYXN0IHBhcnQgb2YgdGhlIGZsYWcgaXMgdGhlIG1vYmlsZSBudW1iZXIgKDEwIGRpZ3RzKSBvZiB0aGUgc3RheSB3ZSBzdGF5ZWQgYXQuIFlvdSBjb3VsZCBmaW5kIGl0IG9uIHRoZSBzb2NpYWxzIG9mIHRoYXQgc3RheS4=


near the peak