Trek Experience Part-2

Day2-(30^th September) (Taluka- Osla)

Day started as usual at 5.30 am. We got up hurriedly( this has become a habit recently, We are now used to wake up early and do everything in as little time as possible. In one of the PT sessions, we have been told that, we need just 15 mins to do our daily rituals!!! i.e. 5 minutes each for brushing teeth, shaving and toilet. Off late I have observed that it is true to some extent. Probably I’ll be having six sigma type proficiency in doing those 3 things in 15 mins by the end of FC!!!!).

One toilet and 20 male(including 2 staffs)- which drove me out of the guest house to look for an alternative open air spot along the banks of river Suben which was flowing near the guest house. Me along with 3 other male OTs started for the same. We found a small tributary stream to the river which we considered apt for our morning rituals. It has been almost over a decade when I last did something like this. We moved in 4 different directions in 90 degree out of phase to each other. I found a decent place behind a tree. It was basically a good feeling doing something raw like this, one can feel the morning breeze healing every inch of body, it also makes the whole process lot easier as the posture gives extra pressure to the abdomen- some body told, it was divine experience!!! Hmnnn… why not, we were anyways in devbhumi!!!

By the time we were back from the stream, people were having their breakfast at the dhaba. We got ready soon- shoes, cap, sunscreen, waist belt- everything was done. I was handed over some medicines by our group doctor- Shena( She was the treasurer too. Academy wala knows who are all the responsible OTs...). We were the priviledged goup of having the all India topper with us. But frankly speaking she is lot more than that- sweet, pretty, down to earth girl without any air.  Our GL(Malik saab) was busy negotiating with the khachhar(mules) walas. In the trek briefing at academy, we have been given instruction for not taking service of porter or khachhar. But it was an unanimous decision in the group to take khachhar with us. Our heavy rucksacks were tied to the back of the animals. We were never this much happy seeing an animal before. Comments like  ‘ÓMG’ and ‘they are so cute’ were heard coming from the female OTs.

We left Taluka at around 8.15 pm. It was a 14 kms trek to Osla. The group was full of energy. We have been given 2 codless phones to communicate with each other. People with ham radio as their extra curricular module(ECM) were assigned the job i.e. Shiv and Tiwari ji (Abhisek -as we had 2 Tiwaris in our group).

We came across beautiful landscape and fields. People kept on clicking pics.We met some locals on the way. They asked us for medicines. This thing continued till the end of trek!!!. We got a first hand experience of reach of healthcare facilities in rural India. Shena gave medicines and I was doing the job of compounder!!! I thought why didn’t the academy tell about this and they should have given us more medicines so that we could have distributed or held a health camp as we had 2 doctors in our group!!!

Anyways, by this time, some informal groupism started. Some people (who were inherently capable of walking fast!!) led us. 23 nos of OTs is a quite big sample space. One can find different variety of people- some used to speak more and some less.

One of the OTs , Manish who is a very good friend of mine is an inherent sayar, became the star of the trek. We were probably the only trek group who did trekking listening to gazals and sayaris. For every situation , He used to quote Basir Bhadra ( We never heard this name before!!!). The funny part was that nobody could understand that fully. Initially people didn’t tell anything other than ‘wah wah’ but later people started teasing manish as Basir Bhadra. Now He is famous in LBS as Basir Bhadra. He was carrying an old fashioned nokia phone which had innumerable number of old tracks of kishore, lata and likes which according to him were meant to set ‘mahaul’ for evening party. One can imagine, in that almost no man’s land, we were accompanied by Kishore da. Kudos to manish, I mean Basir. Interestingly, battery of that nokia phone lasted for few days where our sleek smart phones were down in 1^st day itself.

We were supposed to reach Osla by 2pm but reached at around 4. Had our lunch at the nearby dhaba- roti,aaloo ki sabi and rajma chawal. During our 9 days of trek, this menu was common for both lunch and dinner at all places. We got into the guest house at ‘ Seema’- place where we had our lunch. We were fortunate to get a bed for each one of us with razai. This is something what you say luxury in hills that too during trekking. We had evening nap. By the time we woke up bonfire was ready( credit goes to GL and Gaurang bhai who made sure we get bonfire everywhere we go). We had tea and slowly it became dark. There was no electricity in that place. Moon was bright. Colourful bottles came out of bags for the ‘mahaul’ part.

We decided to play antaskhari. Plan was given by Gaurav Upadhaya- (the guy having awesome interpersonal skills - can be given credit for setting the mood of entire trek. I’ll write about him in some other posts). Antakshari was Girls vs Boys type. Our AGL(assistant group leader) Irina is a repository of hindi movie songs. So competition was hard fought. I observed one thing, girls were mostly singing the 90s wala yash chopra,barjatya and vanshali type and guys were the more vocal who sang varieties starting from ‘mere sajan hai us paar’to ‘yahoo- koi mujhe jungle kahe’ to the gazals!!! Antakshari ended in a tie. We forgot the pain of walking for around 15 kms in hills for 8 odd hours. The group started to gel.... We had dinner(again rajma chawal!!) and went to sleep.