c u on top - satyabrata dam

  As the sun shines brightly into the last afternoon of 2021, and I am packing my bag to go climbing (for there is no better place to bid someone goodbye then from the mountains), I am penning this post as my last one of 2021. Actually when I woke up this morning I wondered where did the year go, how did it go, when did it go. Looking back I realize that I couldn’t even recall the year gone by with any kind of clarity but only through a series of gobbled up hazy images. I think I have clarity of only this month. Am I losing it, is my mind heading into a black hole of anonymity! Or have I now become such an adapt at selective memory (something I have practised all my life) that anything more remote than the past 30 days, my mind automatically deletes from conscious memory. Perhaps that’s the reason why I seem to be getting happier, more excited and optimistic day by day. Without a memory of the past there’s actually nothing to regret about, and that is a blissful state to...

  Right from our childhood, through adolescent into our adulthood and even into our golden twilight, it is constantly and consistently drilled within our psyche that it is bad to fail and that we must not fail. That to fail proves we are worthless. The society, including our parents, educators, peers, etc forbid us to fail. We are not challenged to fail. In such a world how can we excel when we are not allowed to fail!   I have always labeled my so called failures in mountaineering (failing to reach the summit of a mountain) as the highlights of my climbing bio. My so called fails are actually my best climbs. Since through them, due to my inability to reach the summit, I always learned something new, refreshing and worth learning about myself, about the mountain, about the weather, and certainly about life in general. When we fail we continue to learn. Success often kills our willingness to learn.   To quote one of the greatest geniuses and inspiring persona of al...

  As our last pre-winter Dhauladhar trek of 2021, Ravinder and I chose the rarely visited high pass of Kundli. At 4550m it is mostly used by the shepherds returning from Chamba to Kangra during autumn. Seldom by trekkers. It is a difficult pass with unclear trail marking above Shindi Maata temple (last camping ground of shepherds) on the Kangra side and hardly any trail at all on the Chamba side till you are well clear of the cliffs and reach the tree line. Please do this trek only if you are physically fit and with a guide who knows the trail well. During our 4 days trek in the final week of October, water was difficult to find. I recommend you finish this trek as any other Dhauladhar trek, positively before mid October. Our team comprised of four: Ravinder, Arun Khanna , Akshu (a young local boy) and self. We packed food for five days since the trek is of 4 days.   Day 1 – Tangroti Khas – Kharota (1600m) by taxi. Kharota – Thatarna – Hoddi (2800m) trek. Total hi...

I strongly recommend that you find / discover / create a truly IMPOSSIBLE dream for yourself. Impossible (yes) but not improbable. An impossible dream is possible to pursue but impossible to realize and achieve. While an improbable dream does not have any probability therefore is not even a source of motivation.   My impossible dream took shape when at the age of 10 I climbed my first major Himalayan peak. And it was: to travel the world and climb every mountain. I was young, naïve, completely ignorant to the vast scale and impossibility of my dream. There’s no way on earth any human could climb every mountain in the world or travel the complete world. Achievable perhaps in a thousand life time, but absolutely impossible in one. Today at 57 I still have the same dream: to travel the world and climb every mountain. After all it was and is still an impossible dream so I will never achieve it in totality and this dream will last his life time for sure.   Whereas if I had ...

UN lists 193 countries as official member states. Of these I have been to 191, the two exceptions being Pakistan (where they won’t let me go) and North Korea (where I don’t want to go). Then there is Vatican City and State of Palestine, which are not UN members but have the status of a country nevertheless in the form of non-member observer state. I have been to both. That leaves Kosovo, which has a funny fluid state in terms of a sovereign state. Around 100 countries recognize it as an independent country, but others don’t. Geographically it is still a part of Serbia but has its own international borders that are recognized by most EU states. I have been to Kosovo too, twice, since it is a beautiful place, whether it’s a country or not.   Now as you all know, one of the primary reasons for me to visit any new country is to get to the top of it and in most of the cases I have succeeded in this endeavor. As far as memory serves there might be around two dozen countries whose sum...

  Brief Introduction:     Chobia Pass offers a passage from Chamba to Lahaul that has been used by the shepherds for ages in their migration season, ideally from mid/end June when they travel to the higher pastures of Lahaul, mostly into Miyar Valley. They begin to return to Chamba around mid to end of September with their well-fed flocks. The ideal season for trekking to this pass is during the shepherd migrations, mid June up till end October or even first half of November. For the rest of the year the pass is covered in deep snow with frequent bad weather and should be crossed only by experienced hikers with proper gear. The trek from Chamba side begins from Kao Village and ends at Triloknath road head on the Lahaul side or vice versa. It is easier from the Lahaul side if you begin from Triloknath and descend into Chamba side. The approach is easier, and the climb to the pass is gentler.   Ideally this trek from Kao to Trilokinath takes 3 nights and 4...

  When I consciously started climbing, just around my tenth birthday, I hadn’t really given it a thought that how cool it would be to reach the top of the mountain, far less climbing to the top of every country I would visit in future. The former consolidated in my mind when I reached my first summit atop Mt Kolahoi and witnessed the world from above. It was indescribable and absolutely divine. That climb, my first real summit, definitely sowed within me the seed of a summit - to reach there and to be able to look higher and beyond. In effect summits to me became a place from where I could see how many more summits awaited my arrival.   Through an extraordinary series of events when I first stepped out of India to another country, and on my first visit climbed the highest point of that country (France / Mt Blanc) it gave me another purpose for my travels, not only to discover, explore and befriend diverse people and witness glorious vistas of nature from all sorts of pl...