Hikes on Hikes on Hikes – 9/10/14

                I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the amount of hiking that our group has been doing since we’ve been in India. We do at least a 3 hour hike every day up and down incredibly steep paths – sometimes it feels more like we’re climbing ladders than following trails. We’ve done three especially long treks thus far – one from Sona Pani to Mukteshwar Temple, one from Sona Pani to a temple by the river, and one from Binsar to Jageshwar.

                It’s hard to judge the comparative length of all these hikes because we’ve all been getting stronger and more accustomed to the thin air, but I felt that the hardest one we’ve done was the hike from Sona Pani to Mukteshwar Temple. Sona Pani rests on the north side of a ridge (hence the stunning views of the Himalayas), but on this particular journey we hiked (skidded?) down the south side of the ridge, crossed the small river at the bottom, and then hiked to the top of the next ridge. The entire hike was really steep and really slippery because of the on-and-off rain/cloud mist. The worst thing about this hike was the abundance of leeches. Almost everyone got them at some point during the climb (I was spared, but I’m sure at some point I’ll get one) and we had forgotten to bring Band-Aids so there was an insane amount of blood on people’s clothing (leeches inject an anti-coagulant into the puncture site so that the blood doesn’t clot).  Thankfully the blood came out of the clothes when we washed them. Unfortunately, we all had random articles of clothing stained by our kurtas, kameez, and dupattas from sweating so much.

                A couple of days later we hiked down the north side of the ridge down to the river, following that until we arrived at a Shiva temple (almost all the temples are Shiva Temples). We hiked through an adorable village on the way down and got wonderful sweeping views of the valley and forest near Sona Pani. At the river a lot of the guys stopped to swim and cool off and the rest of us skipped stones. The stones were perfectly flat and round and amazing for skipping. Even though the trek back up the mountain was a long one, I didn’t feel like I was straining that much and could definitely tell that I’ve been getting stronger as we’ve hiked more the past week.

                We completed the longest trek to-date today, an 18 kilometer traverse from Binsar to Jageshwar. Even though it was long, the hike was not as steep as the other ones we have done and actually felt relatively easy. On the way we picked up and petted baby goats (kids?), Ben P. fell into a bush of nettles, and Alex got a gnarly leech on his arm. We told lots of jokes and riddles on the way and had some great group bonding. Sorry the quality of this blog post is slowly diminishing, but it’s getting late and I’m pretty tired. Can’t wait to have internet to post these!