The Yellow Mountains, Mount HuangShan, China

Oh well, certainly it has been ages before I wrote up anything on my blog. Well, the easier explanation would be that in China the blogs don’t work because the government blocks it. But the real reason would be that I din’t really feel like coming up with anything. After moving to China, life is just too comfortable (read lazy) and all the thoughts hover around where to party, where to travel, which movie to watch and above all, what to eat!

Talking of food, I have gone completely non vegetarian. After spending almost my first 10 hungry hours in this country, I had the following options in the Hongkong-Shanghai flight: Beef Rice, Pork Rice and Fish Rice. Vegan food? Sorry what’s that. Oh well, easy to choose for me. Fish- Rice it had to be. I have had fish twice in my life, I never really liked it but I was too hungry to give any thought about my Brahmin genes.So I get back to my Fish Rice, open it, greeted by a strong odor, just short of pungent, and I don’t understand why they call Pasta as rice. My hunger did not leave me any option apart from eating it. A bite of the fish and immediately i am done. I cannot express my discomfort in words folks. But it forced me to limit my meal to the yoghurt. I later on found out from some people that what we just had Eel (Oh yeah, that same fish you saw in the Discovery Channel which gives electric shocks and looks frighteningly clo se to a snake). Well, this short introduction does not mean that in China people only eat cockroaches and crocs. It’s a beautiful country with very friendly, hospitable people. I was in a big dilemma before coming here and the though I decided to skip my skepticism and jump over the Himalayas on this side of the world, today I don’t regret it. It gave me an opportunity to see new people, new places & new culture and yes, new food. I found good company here and 4 months into China, with friends, I have explored almost all of Dalian, the beautiful city I live in. They call it the romantic city of China and I can see why it is called so. It’s a charming experience.

Well, recently I travelled to Mount HuangShan which is also called as the Yellow Mountains. It is a UNESCO world heritage site, speaking of which means that the UNESCO recognizes and preserves sites of outstanding cultural or natural importance to the common heritage of Humanity. I could see these mountains had all the grandeur and natural splendor to be listed as one.

Yellow Mountain is one of the biggest mountains in China, the second largest to be accurate. We started on a Friday night with a night flight to the city of Hangzhou. Well, talking of flights, I never like them and even a small turbulence makes me feel terrible. I hate them. Anyways, I rapped most of my work fast, came back home, packed the bag real quick, realized that my trekking shoes were not in the best of their shape, but somehow I did not go for a new pair.

In the midst of whole lot of evening traffic in the Dalian software Park, we managed to get 2 taxis and reached the airport fairly on time. Met KP there and finally we were a group, 6 in total. Me, KP, Sam, SK, VJ and A. Well, the pangs of excitement started almost instantaneously with one of the airport staff telling us that the flight we booked does not exist. There was no flight with the number we booked. Some confusion lingering for sometime, it turned out that our flight has a

different number. All’s well. In the middle on all this Sam and SK had a small discussion if they can put SK’s RMB 2 cigarette lighter in Sams bag, but somehow Sam got very confused if its allowed and did not put the lighter in his bag. With a heavy heart, SK gave me lighter to dump in a bin nearby. Did that, perfect throw, straight in the bin hole in the first go.

We reached Hangzhou at around 11 PM. VJ & KP took lot of pains to make the taxi driver understand the place where our hotel was, its difficult getting around here without Chinese, my only solace was English Chinese dictionary I bought last week at the bookstore. However, I dint have to use it, thanks to KP and VJ. We finally reached the hotel at around 1 with two very shy and “smiling all the time” receptionists greeting us with welcomes. KP somehow tried conversing in English but go a no for almost everything. No Internet, no drinking water in rooms and no business card for the hotel. Welcome to the three star hotel. Arun bought a few cans of beer which tasted like Honey. It took me about 10 minutes to change my opinion, from good to bad. Then I could drink it anymore. Finally, dozed off at around 2, we had to take an early bus to Mount HuangShan in the morning.

The first day of the trip!!!

DAY 1 : Mount Huangshan, Yellow Mountain

I woke up early with a bad stomach, it might be the honey beer and at around 7 am all six of us were there at the bus station. Some guys were already eating eggs, some had corn, some had noodles. Well, I was hungry but the thought of eating something and then rushing off to the loo kept me away from trying anything. Arun suggested eating bread helps, and so I had that. Lot of it. So, there we were in the bus finally all set to explore, everyone bustling with energy, liking the city, all the roads, all the greenery, all the infra China has built up. And nagging about the pathetic state we have got ourselves into in India. Well, that’s for real. These guys have really built up massive highways, even I could not help fretting about the incompetence of India. More on that some other time.

The trip from Hangzhou to the base of Mount Hunagshan takes you through lush green hills, some very dense hills filled up with Bamboo, occasional small towns with strangely enough, completely white houses. I could not find the reason but almost all the houses we saw along the way were painted white. There must be numerous tunnels we would have crossed before reaching the mountain base. The longest one I could remember was almost 4 kms long. The cameras had already started clicking, did I mention that out of the 6 people, four were loaded completely with their SLRs, tripods, extra batteries. No I wasn’t one of them because photography is not my thing, but I am trying to force it onto me.

After around 4 hours we reached the mountain base, this gigantic piece of rock looking down at us with all its might. The small hills all along the bus trip had gradually turned bigger and bigger. It was a good feeling to be between mountains after so long. The last time I could remember seeing this might was when I was in Bhutan, but anyways those are the Himalayas, a different and grand story altogether. As soon as we got out of the bus, we made a kind of bargain and got some maps. As soon as we were out of the bus, we were greeted by a small Chinese man

here, who was wearing a bit oversized suit but was elegantly dressed, and who could amazingly and unbelievably speak very good English. Meet Mr. Hu ( or Who), but its pronounced “Mr. Who”. A small man who made our trip just so fulfilling and easier. The reason being two very simple yet important ones, because the awesome Mr. Hu:

• could understand what we were saying, give us directions in English, happily keep our luggage overnight when we went up the mountain. Arrange free car to drop us to the bus station.
• Give us some very good food, very spicy and very close to being Indian. You have to try out the fish, scrambled egg with tomato. Noodles, fried rice.

If you want to get adventurous try some Snake, Squirrel or Deer meat. Its available. Mr. Hu is a man of taste. He is unique in HuangShan. As a foreigner, you just cannot miss his place.

I read a lot of testimonials people wrote about him in his small diaries, came to know that he has been running this restaurant business since 10 years, extended into a kind-of-hotel, you get beds here for 50 RMB each (the rooms are very good). He has been featured in the Lonely Planet Mag, and I had all the reasons to believe that he deserved to be there. He was just so helpful, very hospitable and happily arranged lot of things for us.

At Mr. Hu’s restaurant we were joined by two of our other friends travelling from Shanghai. Nirmal and Mani. According to Mani, Nirms was carrying a ton of luggage, I couldn’t help but I noticed it. It was a lot of luggage, let’s say about 500 Kgs, if not 1000. Earlier we decided we will keep our luggage at Mr. Hu’s place because the weather was warm, and we could do with a jacket each for the night. It was just a matter of spending night in the mountain, it couldn’t be that cold. At least that’s what we thought. Nirmals one ton of luggage too left there. Left for the cable car to top of the mountain, me and Saurabh bought a grandfather stick to walk along. Saurabh wanted it as a souvenir, well he had started collecting them before even the trip got started completely. Sam got some hi tech foldable stick which could be folded and all. He got in the bus and he spent a lot of time finding out how to actually fold it. Since he couldn’t do it, KP steps in and tries to do it. What a nice gesture. But KP applied too much of his man power and it came off! Sameer’s star trek stick gone! Sameer got a small heart attack, KP smiled with confusion, I laughed hysterically, Saurabh asked what happened. Anyways, the disappointed Sameer somehow got back at fixing it.

The bus took us to the cable car station from where we bought the tickets to Cable car and reach the peak. We were the only guys going up the mountain and I had never been on a cable car (somehow I always kept calling it a trolley). I have fear of heights, I don’t like flights and this thing was no exception. I imagined falling from the cable car into this very very deep gorge, and tried to make plans how to keep alive if we fall down. Thankfully, we din’t fall down. But this cable car went up at almost 60 degrees, a 15 minutes ride and we were already 1800 metres above from where we started. It was as beautiful as the cold outside, a quick headcount here, 8 people, 5 SLRs, as soon as we are out, click, click, click. Let me tell you, that from this peak, the mountain looked very beautiful. There were peaks all around us, as far as we could see there were mountain peaks comprising of nothing but bare rocks with Pine trees growing on the tops, some on the sides. The thing which makes this place unique are the rocky cliffs which are completely bare except for a few pine trees growing here and there. I was a bit disappointed to see a multitude of people on the mountain. I was not astounded but I had not witnessed such type of rocky formations till today. I have travelled mostly in the Himalayas which have a grandeour and might of their own. I am not going to compare them because the Himalayas are a piligrimage, there is a reverence associated with it eveytime you see them and you cannot help but bow to me nature in its silence and purity. But nature is mystical, it always hold a uniqueness of its own in different forms.

We trekked all the way up to the highest peak, and moved to see the Sunset at the Weather station. The sunset was beautiful but I was more concerned about my hands getting number by the minute. It was getting really very cold as the sun set. Remember we had left most of our things at Mr. Hu’s place before coming up. Everyone wanted to find the guy who suggested this, but well, it was a collective decision. So everyone cursed themselves. Nirmal was fretting about his one ton luggage, it had mufflars, jacket even gloves to keep him warm. And now he got screwed like all of us. Which is not bad. Collective decision, collective suffering you see.

Somehow Mani had this very typical thing of walking always in the front, I noticed it that’s ok but then i had to change my mind, coz there he was, walking alone in the dark, on the top of a mountain on the stairs and Bum! A thud, he falls down, a torch light finds him, he notices that, gets up and starts walking as if nothing happened. I fell, so what! Did it hurt? No, its steel. Couldn’t help a laugh there. Absolutely no comments from Mani. Well, that’s Mani for you.We reached the Hotel, ate eggs, yes again.

Checked into our rooms. It was very cold, but the hotel we stayed in was very comfortable. Here, on the top there are very few rooms and you should make your booking well in advance in winters. In summers, you might use the option of renting a tent under the stars. But you need to keep warm. One tent fits two. Go Figure. Well, we had rooms, no tents for us.

A quick hot water shower made us comfortable and we had a good dinner at the hotel restaurant. It was freezing cold outside but the clear sky with almost a full moon and stars made it irresistible to move into the rooms. We stayed out, it had been long since I saw such a clear sky undiluted by the yellow hue of city lights.

We took a few pictures, some had local neat whiskeys. In just 30 minutes, some 5 bottles got finished, neat. It was just too cold. We played some music on my cell, some guys danced a bit. A group of French people joined in the fun. Some more came later. At the end of it, we spent almost 3 hours outside in the freezing cold, some smoking weed, others cigarettes and neat whiskeys, singing, dancing (no love making, because that’s what follows lot of times you see). But had a great time. It was the Moonlight Club, the hottest club on the mountain. Free weed, smoke, cheap drinks. I figured its time to sleep because the sunrise is not be missed as they say and I was already feeling to tired. Next day we trek down the mountain and move to a 1000 year old village, Hongchun, the next stop on our trip. A beautiful days ends.

Hangzhou to HuangShan: Take a bus from bus station, 100 RMB for the ticket.

Eat : Go straight to Mr. Hus restaurant it is at, phone number (Chances are he will be waiting just outside the bus stand at Huangshan). If you plan that way, you can stay at his hotel overnight.

Reach the Mountain: take shuttle bus from HuangShan bus stop to Cable car station, 250 RMB(mountain passes) + 20 RMB (bus tickets). Cable Car ticket: 80 RMB extra.

Stay on Top: Important to book these hotels in advance, if not, try your luck at tents. PS: you might freeze in the winters. Hotel BeiHai : 900 RMB per room, double. Eat in the restaurant here, its good.

SLOW DANCE

Most of my stuff still remains unopened even though almost a month has passed since i moved to Pune from Mumbai. However, i take time to take things out of the boxes as and when i need them. This is not the best way of unpacking yet a comfortable one.

When you talk of moving to a new place , the best thing about is that you come across things which were really important at some point in time but now are completely lost. It is not waste but is almost treated like one. Like old albums of the time when digital cameras hadn't really caught up, the old stamp books or the old diaries where you had scribbled something which sounds so weird to read now. But i am not writing anything weird in this note but just wanted to share a poem which my younger brother Manish had preserved from one of the Hindustan Times edition somewhere in the December of '96. In 2001, i had the same cutting of the newspaper which i found pasted in an old diary. It was in tatters so i had written the whole thing down again in a '01 diary which well, i read after almost 10 years when i found it looking for a book between loads of engineering books and older junk. It is really a beautiful poem which means so much more because it was written by a terminally ill 15 year old girl suffering with cancer. So i am going to reproduce the exact text which was published in Hindustan Times in December 1996.

HINDUSTAN TIMES, December '96

This poem is written by a terminally ill girl in a New York Hospital. It was her dying to wish to send everyone a letter telling them to live their lives to the fullest, which she never did.

SLOW DANCE

Have you ever watched kids on a merry go round?

Or listened to rain slapping on the ground?

Or ever followed a butterfly's flight?

Or gazed at the sun into the fading light?

You better slow down

Don't dance so fast.

Time is short,

The music won't last.


Do you ever run through each day on the fly?

When you ask "How are you?"

Do you hear the reply?

When the day is done, do you lie in your bed

With the next hundred chores running through your head?

You'd better slow down

Don't dance so fast.

Time is short.

Don't dance, the music wont last.



Ever told you child, we'll do it tomorrow?

And in your haste, not see his sorrow?

Ever lost touch, let a good friendship die?

'cause you never had time, To call and say "Hi",

You'd better slow down

Don't dance so fast.

Time is short.

The music won't last.



When you run so fast to get somewhere,

You miss half the fun of getting there.

When you worry or hurry through your day,

It's like an unopened gift....thrown away.

Do take it slower,

Hear the music, before the song is over.

The weekend Trip: Tungareshwar, Vasai

It was just another Friday of a week filled with work and office hooplah, when we decided to have a small day trip somewhere around Mumbai. With a lot of ideas generated by some of my friends, the decided place was Tungareshwar, which happens to be at Vasai, a village on the outskirts of Mumbai. Its very well connected by Local trains to Mumbai. Its hardly a 45 minute ride by road or through the ever glorified local train if you start from Andheri. Since Mr.B in our group supposedly worked out the car from his sister, we had no problems reaching Vasai by 10 a.m. Thanks to Mr. B's driving skills. The only pain which i suffered was that i had to getup at 8 on a Saturday and meet the other guys on the Mumbai-Ahemdabad highway near Borivali.

Well, all set we reached Vasai at around 10, had some tea with hot Samosas. It had been raining quite heavily since the last night and my newly bought windcheeter dint help me a lot in keeping myself dry. I was soaked to the bone and a quick change helped me feel comfortable. Its so good to be dry... man! At around 10:30 we started walking from the village, the road was quite good upto a certain area after which the tar started to fade out into the mud and we entered the area which could be safely called as a forest area(This is a part of Sanay Gandhi National Park by the way). Well, the trek or walk, whatever you call it(i would hardly call it a trek, its more like walking on a kuccha road) was accompanied by heavy rains. It didn't seem to be the perfect weather to actually walk the way. I later on found out that vehicles actually go upto Tungareshwar, but a few metres of walk and i found out that the vehicles couldn't cross the river due to the swelling of river by the heavy downpour. To continue the trek further, we had to cross this same river which looked dangerously swift and somewhere in the middle of this rain, forest and a cautious" cross mat karna" warning by the bhutta wala, my adventerous streak to cross it faded out. However, there was this adjoining track(lets call it loser's track.who cares!) which we finally took. It allowed us to reach where we wanted to without getting into the water. What followed was a beautiful walk admist the forest area, wild flowers to be seen, numerous pics to be taken collectively by Mr. S, V, Su, B and well, me. We would have walked for around an hour before we reached this place where lot of aunties(a.k.a. devotes) were chilling out in, lets say..ankle deep water. Keeping the fantasies for the later part, we moved on and reached the temple. The temple is quite well maintained with things like Chips, Tea, Gola, Bhutta and what not in this whole damn world available in the adjoining shops. Quite a decent place to have tea, and thats what we did.

We were told that the waterfall is closeby to the temple & we headed straight to the waters. A few meters ahead there was another water channel which was quite a good place to actually take on water sports like trying to swim in knee deep water. Well, puns apart, the water is not deep at most places but its swift. We found a decent spot to have same water fun & we found one. The place was quite abuzz with some 10-15 family guys but as soon as we took on, the numbers started to reduce and in 30 minutes, all that was left in the wilderness were we guys. Quite an achievement, eh! It was almost 2 hours we were in the water before we planned to move on. The waterfall at Tungareshwar is quite amazing, but equally dangerous. We were not directly beneath the waterfall but further downstream. The rains had made the waterfall all the more large as we found out later. There are a lot a of rocks in this whole area and when mixed with swift currents, things do become a bit dangerous and you need to take care. Well, as we were moving up the waterfall, i realized a guy actually was taken away by the current. Well, lucky him that he din't hit a rock and ended up safe!

There is nothing more to explain about this trip as the water and the forest wilderness are the only things to look out for. We trekked down, drove back & ended up stuffing ourselves with chicken, mutton, veggies at one of the food joints on the highway.

Well, I had read a lot of things about Tungareshwar on the internet, I read in a few blogs things like "Heaven on Earth" or "Best places in India", I would rather not agree to them, as i saw for myself, its a nice place but there is nothing adventurous about it. It is a decent place where you can arrange a small day trip even with family members. If you are not going to the temple & looking out for fun, rains are the only time you can be there as thats the only time you will find water. Without it, there is nothing to look out for apart from the Lord Shiva temple.

The trip was what i wanted, a small no frills trip on a rainy day with good friends. The small trek admist the forest, which happens to be a part of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park is a beautiful one where one can forget the honking of vehicles or the chatter of the Mumbai crowd. Its an amazing getaway from the hustle-bustle of what Mumbai is. The best thing about the place is that it is so close to Mumbai that you can round up the trip replete with travel, trek, fun in just a day. Definitely suggested for a monsoon weekend trip!

Some things to take care:

1.Don't try to ride a bike on the alternate jungle route, you might end up breaking your mirrors as what happened with an idiot. Is it easy to ride bikes on slippery rocks(not roads...rocks)? Take the road, if you cant take it..simply trek!

2.Take a camera alongwith you, there are good things to be seen and remembered.

3.There are monkeys to be seen on the way, take care of your mobile & purse.

4. If it isn't the rainy season, avoid this place.

5. Avoid plastic. If you can't, then avoid littering, the forest area is clean, lets maintain it that way.

6. Most important..dont use a shoe in this rainy season(or use a waterproof one)! Ur feet would start smelling and you would make shrieking sounds while you walk once the water is inside them! Its damn uncomfortable!!

The New Look!

In my now old but three months back newfound interest of Adobe Photoshop, i had actually planned to make a picture for my blog. Three months later, all i could come up with is the picture you now see on my blog which i ineptly titled 'Of people & Places'. These are three different random pictures i took at some point in time.

Picture 1: Its a quaint structure in south Mumbai just opposite the fountain at Colaba.

Picture 2: A bull mystically dancing to the tunes of shehnai on a monday morning outside my building, with people treating it with all sorts of delicacies.

Picture 3: This is Dochula, one of the five mountain passes in the Himalayas very beautifully adorned with 108 buddhist temples called as "Chortens".

I don't really know why i am writing this. I do not have anything to write but i just logged in to write. Sitting alongside my guitar with a broken string, i tried hard to make it sound good even with a missing string but it just did not happen. Tuned to Firehouse, i have ordered my dinner and its lying on the table but i don't feel like eating it. Is it because tomorrow is a Monday or is it because today i was with myself for the whole day. My maid isn't coming since the last week, and my room was messed up. Taking this day off was meant to clear the mess. I did a bit of that.

I opened up my old bag to find the old file where i have kept all my certificates from school to college.I showed my roomie the old file in which i have kept all my old stamps, i found my old collection of coins and i savored the way i used to collect and keep them while i was as kid. I saw some old pictures which i hadn't seen since quite a long time. I received my promotion letter from office on Friday and added it to the file as a written testimony alongside the appreciation & awards i got in college. Getting promoted was a good thing to happen, but the question in my mind remains the same. I have been working here since the last two years, and i have been working hard. I have been trying a lot to make this work my passion. But it is not happening. Even after two long and eventful years that have gone by, inspite of the fact that i have been good at my job i am still trying to figure out what to do next with my life. Or is this because staying in Mumbai for the last two years has made me into a different person altogether. Or is it because i am realizing that i am finally out of the carefree and nothing can ever go wrong attitude and i see myself out in the open now?

Occasional rumblings

It has been very long since i last put something up on my blog. I don't know whay but writing just stopped being so enticing as it had been once to me. I think we all have some creative sprouts within us which just bloom up at some point in time. Thats the time you find yourself doing things you never thought you would be doing. I don't know if this statement relates to what i am thinking right now...which is to find a reason why i am not so interested in writing! But nonetheless, its a statement and i feel it is true.

Lot of changes happened since i last posted on my blog. The biggest being that i lost some hairs, i got a paranoia that i would be getting bald soon which also reminds me of an advertisement which carried out a research on girls and they ended up saying " Bald men are not sexy". Well, so i find myself using an anti hair fall shampoo which i never used in my life before and asking few people what to do to prevent my hair from falling. Suggestions varied, from silly to sensible. But all are total crap, reality is u can't stop your hair from falling. Stop thinking about it & they ill stop falling. Mine did.

I also got promoted which i came to know a few days earlier, thats the latest thing happening at the workplace. I don't know if it was any kind of achievement, maybe it was a small types. I am pretty glad to have been promoted in 2 years time, it generally takes 4 years. Good for a start i guess! But time passes fast...u don't realize it but there are times when life suddenly seems to be so small and you realize times running fast. So much to do, not so much of a time!

The idea of writing occurred to me again. Maybe it was because i came back pretty early, had a quick shower & made me some dinner. That left me sometime to listen to the good old billboard top of 2004 and write this.

Mumbai seems to be more crowded everyday, work seems to be getting more boring by the day. Friday take a lot of time to come & the weekend passes on fast. Thats how things are going right now. Need a change.

On the right...me with someone!

OF PEOPLE & PLACES : PART 1: RIDE TO TAWANG

These days there is a lot of word doing the rounds about Tawang, the small town in Arunachal Pradesh at the India-China border. I understand the fuss has been generated due to the visit of the Dalai Lama. China is staking claim over this place since the time India lost out on the war. Anyways, whose interested in politics here! Definitely not me.

In one of the newspapers today, there was an article about Tawang. My roommate got typically interested in this place on reading this article and since i have been there, i made sure i tell him things to get him more interested, maybe sometime he might take me along free of cost. I can be the guide!

Tawang is a small town in Arunachal Pradesh very close to the China border. It has always been in the news because when Dalai Lama escaped from Tibet, he had taken this very route to reach India. This place has Asia's second largest monastery for Buddhism. Now my dad was transferred to this place for around 2 years and i visited this place twice during that time. My dad at times has been transferred to very very obscure places and i have visited most of them in my holidays. But now when i look back and think, these places might not be the most talked about they have been a great experience. Now i will talk more about this Tawang!

To reach this place you need to catch a flight to Guwahati. You pick up a ride to this city in Assam called Tezpur which would take around 5 hours. From Tezpur, it would take you around 2 hours to reach the border of Assam & Arunachal Pradesh. This is where the journey starts. Winters is the time to be there & I promise that if you havent been there before each and evey mile is going to be the most awe inspiring. As soon as you enter the gate on the road which reads " Welcome to Arunachal Pradesh" and "OM MANE PADME HUM" in Tibetan script, the width of the road suddenly halves so that only one and a half vehicles can cross at a time. So if you see a vehicle coming from the opposite direction of the mountain you need to stop your vehicle where there is some space & let the opposite vehicle pass. Well as you enter this mountainous stretch you look out the window to see river Dirang flowing and if you are lucky enough on the opposite side you can see some elephants. I did't see them however. You see a waterfall running from a mountain high up and your driver tells you that we have to travel up this mountain. Its getting cold and you just close down the windows. They get instantly frosted.The nearest petrol pump would be around 150 kms away so it has to be taken care of. Forget a petrol pump, there would be no houses for long stretches. Here it is highly advised not to travel in the night. At every kilometre you see two or three signboards reading " To the loving memory of.........who lost life at this point". Its frightening. You realize this only when you look out of your window & see a wide open crevasse. For most part of the journey first time i was praying with my eyes closed. It gets colder as you move higher and you feel the cold Himalayan breeze which seeps open through that open jacket button and you are chilled to bones. The trees have gradually changed from the wide leaved ones to conifers and pines. It gets really foggy in the winters up there and i am not able to see my brother who is standing 10 feets away. We stop and i am having black tea in an unusually large mug. Feels warm! There is the only place till you reach Bomdilla where you can get good tea. Its a shop cum house made up of black wood, stones with black chairs. Inside a lady was making tea on firewood. Its been almost 5 hours since we started this journey climbing up the hills. My mom was staying at a place named Tenga Valley in the Army quarters with dad. We would be reaching there in about two hours. Its already evening, the sun is setting and now all i see is Army camps and very few shops. I can see local people in some really heavy dresses smiling everytime you look at them. The people here are really content, they have very few needs and they are always happy to help. After around two hours i reach home. This place looks like just another place with lots of people, a small market. There are no mobile phones available here and the only place where you can go and talk is the STD ISD PCO shop inside the campus. I had to call up a friend, so i went there. There the shop owner tells me that the telephone lines are down. Its because its raining, the telephone lines are down most if the times. You have to be really lucky if you need to make a phone call. Anyways, the mobiles started working there after 2 years & now people are seen walking & talking. The real personification of Walk when you talk!

Tawang is still 8 hours away from this place. My dad is already there for some work and i would be leaving for Tawang after a week with mom. It was after a week that me and my mom started the ride early morning at around 6 a.m. My mom had already made some tea, put in in a flask. She did so because most of the people eat beef here ans she wont even touch the glasses and cups from these people..forget drinking in them. Holy Cow! We had already booked a Tata Sumo. 30 minutes riding, there is a big bump and something shatters. What was it! The windows of the sumo look perfectly alright. However, as i had taken out the flask and out in the back seat, i am told my mom to check it. Well, i just shake it and a voice comes as if the tea has been crystallized into small pieces and they are jingling merrily. We ask the driver to stop and throw away the flask ..well, the tea goes with it too. I feel bad that because of me mom is not going to get any tea till the time we reach Tawang. As we ride along, it starts to get colder. The roads start getting wet and in a distance i see a mountain filled with snow. That is Tawang i am told. We move and move endlessly, now i am able to see some snow on the roadsides. As we move, the snow covers the roadsides, then the road. The vehicle gets slower and slower. I am told that you can easily skid on snow while driving. And skidding here meant only one thing! At times, whole vehicles with people have been untraceable. They are never found in these mountains. There are no trees to be seen now. Only white snow & deep gorges, the types which girls feel dizzy on seeing. There are huge rocks on the sides of the road. After sometime, it starts snowing and we have to stop due to a huge landslide. I hear people are working to get it cleared. Its cleared after an hour and we move ahead. The weather has become monstrous. Its snowing and the fog has made everything go invisible. I feel i am floating in the clouds in a Tata Sumo! The fog clears after sometime and we reach SELA pass. This is one of the five mountain passes India has. A pass is a very narrow road between two mountains. This place is probably the best i have ever seen. I saw a hollywood movie where the Branden Fraser asks " Is this Heaven". I repeated that line. There was a gate saying " Welcome to Sela Pass". Standing at 15,340 feet above sea level this is the highest i have ever been. I see two big mountain bases on both sides of where i am standing. The ground is fully flat. No more gorges, no more trees. Its like a snow desert. There are two lakes on my sides and they are fully frozen. First time i can see yaks eating snow to glory. Inside the snow there is frosted grass i am told. To picturize a yak, just wrap your woollen cardigan over a buffalo. Yak's milk is yuck! I will realize it in some days.

Sela pass is truly something you need to see in a lifetime. Ever wondered how a frozen waterfall will look like? Or how it would be if a drop of water falling from a leaf got crystallized midway? Its unbelievable right. This is the place to see that. Untouched by humans, this is real nature as god made it. Tourists do not come to this place just because they are unaware of it. Maybe thats also the reason for the worthiness of this place. Being in the North Eastern India, these places are considered to be some of the most backward and uninteresting. But the wonders they hold are something which cannot be described. In my consequent posts I am going to talk more about Tawang. Remember, i still have not reached Tawang!!