c u on top - satyabrata dam

  I know I am guilty of not summing up the year 2016 and some of you might have missed that annual ritual in my blog so here I am back to sum up 2017. As always I would begin with some interesting statistics and then go on to some elaborations. Countries visited (in chronological order) – Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Norway, Greece, Germany, Nepal, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, Slovenia, Italy, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. Total 17 countries including 3 first time (Montenegro, Kosovo, Laos), which has now taken the number of countries visited to 178. This leaves me around 18 more to chalk up during the rest of my life.  Unless UN adds more recognized nations to its list. Total distance covered (approximately) – I travelled to three continents, crossing the Atlantic and several seas couple of times, and as per my guesstimate during 2017 I had covered around 148,000.00 km. Of this, around 100,000.00 by air, 40,000.00 by road and water, and 800...

Nearly a week ago I returned from a climb, which under normal conditions should have been no more than a walk in the park; yet I returned with first degree frost bite in my digits, the last two fingers of my right palm numb and black in particular. How did that happen is the gist of this story. With daily dousing of digits in warm water, constant rubbing and sunning them, the worst is over and I can type now albeit phlegmatically, so today I will take you all back up into my world; a world from where I had been absent for quite some time. The area and the trail that I am about to reveal here are places I don’t want people to go, at least not those who litter mountain wilderness with plastic and rubbish and who play loud music or go in herds; so no names will be given, or fictitiously when given. Those who know me well and have read my earlier stories would perhaps be able to guess anyway. Now to begin with how the seed of this trip came along… Over the entire October followed by ...

What’s a ‘moment’ to you? I am sure you have been asked many times: what was your moment, what was or is the most memorable moment of your life? Etc. etc. Someone had once remarked, and which is now widely quoted: Measure not life by the number of breaths you take but by the number of moments that take your breath away. But this description is only suggestive; while it could mean a really long life for an unfit individual who lives on the fifth floor of a building that doesn’t have a lift; and to another it could mean the life-lifting or elated moments of one’s life. Such moments are supposedly rare and are thrust upon us when we expect them least. But then if we are so oft advised to live every moment then shouldn’t each moment of our lives be that ‘moment’! But then what is a ‘moment’? Should we define it by a temporal tape of perhaps a minute, seconds or a millisecond perhaps! If you are inordinately excitable then to you may be the moment can last beyond a minute. But the peak or t...

Like any other sport or field of science, climbing and mountaineering is replete with jargons or terminologies that we often use to indicate objects, climbing scenarios etc. It is imperative to understand these terminologies without ambiguity or confusion for you to climb or to read climbing technical books. In my blog I use these terms frequently. Many of you have asked me to put down a climbing lexicon for common usage. Here is the first part. If there are any climbing jargon you have come across or heard and I have not covered in this list (including in part 2) then do leave a comment on that and I will explain it later. Unless you are a regular climber and climb often with people from different nationalities, memorizing these jargons are not necessary though a general understanding will help you to grasp and enjoy the climbing nuances. Here they are alphabetically: - Abseil: German term (also employed by the British) for rappel; a method for descending a fixed rope by means of sl...