c u on top - satyabrata dam

  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...

  In general we human cannot live without making and engaging in appointments. In fact our lives begin with an appointment in a hospital (there are exceptions to this certainly) by our parents where we are delivered (like a postal package courier delivery). This is followed with a series of appointments with the pediatrician, nutrition and dietician (if your parents can afford) then the church or temple for baptism and such other things,   like schools, colleges, etc, etc. In fact the moment you step into adulthood, and even before, we start fixing and showing up for our appointments leading to our last appointment in a crematorium or a cemetery.   Appointments with friends and peers, with teachers, with God at holy places, with the boss or colleagues at work place, with your parents and children, with doctors when you are ill, or to go out for a meal in a restaurant, going out for a movie, with your house help, your gym instructor, with your girl/boy friend, with you...

  All through my climbing career, one of the most asked questions has been: which are the absolute essential knots and hitches that a climber must know and master.   In the world of climbing (rock, ice, mixed, alpine, high altitude, etc) there are knots and hitches galore as a rope is our essential tool of the trade. And wherever there’s a rope there would be a knot or a hitch. There are literally hundreds of such knots and hitches used widely not only in the fields of climbing and outdoors but also by the seafaring sailors, in the jungles and forests by forest dwellers and shepherds, hunters, and by anglers, even in the villages to tie up domestic animals. I have indulged in a bit of all such occupations, mostly as a climber and a seafarer and often that of a shepherd, very rarely as an angler and never as a hunter except accompanying one on a wild goose chase purely in the role of a dormant observer. If you add jungle-warfare and special-forces (not to mention BDSM) to m...

  Human settlements including cities, towns, villages and even countries have acquired names that are funny, quirky, at times downright offending, weird and even unpronounceable. Why these names were picked up by the city planners or the town council is a subject worthy of contemplation. The most common being that they wanted an uncommon name for their resident locality and with hope that merely an odd name would attract tourists. Alas, most such places are also among the least visited. As I traveled around the world in search of mountains to climb, I did visit many such places with uncommon names.   Here for the sake of this list and my English speaking readers I have only mentioned English sounding names, which has an English meaning (barring one exception that I couldn’t resist with good reason as you would discover). Therefore many weird names in local vernacular language got left out, for example Kala Kutta in India, which in English transliterates to Black Dog. Or...