c u on top - satyabrata dam

Any climber, however intrepid, insane and outrageous he or she may be who says has never felt fear of death is bullshitting. On return while laying our aching limbs next to a lumbering fire with a pint in our hand we may be pouring out boisterous songs and ‘devil-may-care’ attitude, but mark my words friends, up there when the elements were trying their best to nip our lives, we had forgotten all our cockiness and had only a silent prayer on your lips and thought only of surviving through the day and through the moment. It’s not so much as the fear of death as the familiar world of the living that we don’t wish to give up yet. Do we ever actually fail or it is the pre-eminence of a failure that puts us in a quandary! Why is it that we can walk comfortably on a thin line of 6 inch in width on ground, without ever stepping out of it, whereas put a similar sized and equally sturdy plank 10 ft above ground and we would perhaps not find it that easy. Take that plank 100 ft up and perhaps on...

In order to begin our journey onwards along the TOCAP, I felt it would be nice to recap a bit and then go forward. So let’s just return back to the Atlantic Coast when we hit the desolate beach in the Namib-Nauklaft National Park in Namibia. We already know about the skeleton coast and how really rugged, arid and spectacular the landscape is. For the very reasons that normally drive away people, many diehard adventurers from across the world flock here each year to try their hand at something exciting. Going ahead we also make a stop at Swakopmund, Namibia’s second city, a place with strong German connections, where Mein Kampf and photos of Hitler are still on sale in the local curio shop. Namibia used to be a German colony and the country has a dark past: German colonizers killed tens of thousands of locals in a forgotten genocide, in German ‘concentration camps’ in Namibia. We would try to watch pack of Cheetahs who often roam around the Namibian wilderness in search of food and if p...

As soon as we leave Paraguay, we enter an area generally called the Brazilian Highland. Funnily enough, despite its vast size and neighboring Bolivia and Argentina and every country in Latin America except Chile and Ecuador, Brazil doesn’t have any high mountains and the highland ranges rarely exceed that of 1000 m. So in terms of climbing I never did find Brazil exciting though in terms of natural diversities and people it’s a wonderful place. I have few very good Brazilian climbing friends. We first go through Parana province that is a major agriculture area of Brazil. We can make a short day / night halt at Londrina thereafter. Actually the route along TOCAP through Brazil is rather boring and flat till we hit Sao Paulo and that’s we are headed exactly. Soon enough we enter the great metropolis of Sao Paulo. This is not only the largest city in all of South America but is also the largest city in the world that falls exactly on TOCAP. My friends Paulo and Helena live here. Paulo i...

Well my navigational tables and sun fix tells me that we are somewhere close to N 23 deg 30 min & E 112 deg (wherever that is – LOL) and after having braved the maddening seas of the Pacific we are nearing our Easter Isles, the island of legends and mysteries. So it is time for us to set course to true 125, now let’s get our boat in that course using the steering wheel. We now put the wheel to starboard 20 and watch the tilt as our boat cuts across the blue ocean like a dolphin. Well, by now we are only two days away from the Easter Isles and the dolphins have started following our wake that cuts a white foamy trail across the waves. As we approach Easter Isles after our long journey, we start seeing the distant volcanoes that jut out like a gigantic trio out of the misty horizon. As we come closer they become bigger and more overwhelming. Now we enter the official territorial waters of Chile. Easter Isles of Rapa Nui as it is called is a whopping 3700 km away from Chilean mainland...

To imagine that Tonga is actually an independent nation by its own right is nearly unbelievable since it is so tiny and is actually a collection of miniscule islands, with Tongatapu Group, of which Eua is the southernmost, being the largest of all. I wonder why it isn’t under any other countries occupation or sovereignty! Landfall means the first sighting of land and as the lookout with a telescope stuck to your eyes, you are supposed to scream from the crow’s nest at the top of your voice ‘Land ahoy!’ and then the all-knowing captain would come down, snatch the telescope from the novice’s hand and shrug, ‘Hmmm, you just got lucky, I would have seen it if I wasn’t drowning in wine.’ So we make ground in the bay of Tufurai. This postage stamp sized island measures only around 12 miles at its longest and 4 miles at its widest. Despite that it remains one of the least explored islands of Polynesia. Almost all of it falls under the national park and is hilly and covered with volcano ash, t...

This is the first of an odd series of posts woven around, within and about the Tropic of Capricorn. Odd since I have not personally done all that I am going to chronicle in these posts though a vast tract of it have I traversed and also odd as to the genesis of these posts. They arise out of a chain of correspondence I did a while ago with a very dear friend who is born under the sign of Capricorn. She is an armchair traveler, till now, and a dreamer like me and when I wrote these mails to her, dedicating them to her zodiac, I had intended to fill her up about some of the remotest and prettiest locations on Earth. So I took her on a whirlwind trip around the world staying near the circle of Tropic of Capricorn. After our virtual trip ended, I felt that this needs to be shared with a wider readership since we all dream of such wonderful places and incredible voyages that I have been fortunate enough to have undertaken. So here it is, for all of you, whether or not you are a Capricorn. R...