c u on top - satyabrata dam

I have seen perhaps thousands of avalanches, big and small, of all sorts all over the world in the span of my life so far. I have rescued buried people, or dug out dead bodies, while being buried myself on dozens of occasions. I teach people wilderness survival and a substantial part of my mountain travel workshop is dedicated to avalanches. I have written scores of articles on the phenomenon and must have contributed to at least fifty research projects on the issue. There’s little or nothing at all to add to what I have already said on the topic or to the vast data and information available in today’s public domain at your literal fingertip. Yet, the point is that avalanches are the biggest killers on the mountains and they kill not only novices but also seasoned hikers, climbers and skiers with a shocking regularity every year, every season. The reasons can be two: either we are not heeding to the information or warnings or we don’t think that it is a real danger, until it hits us or...

This was the toughest list to come up with since the choices were countless and I could include 100 treks of equal merit. But limitations are good since it then narrows down the field to something manageable. To be absolutely unbiased and fair to the entire world, I have therefore selected an odd number like 18 treks. This would represent three treks for each of the six continents, leaving Antarctica out of the field since even a walk of few hundred meters anywhere in this continent ranks among the best. Since I have a list of top ten treks in the Indian Himalaya, my real backyard, no treks from Indian Himalaya is included in this list, though there are a few that would definitely rank among the top treks in the world. Asia is a vast continent with magnificent mountain landscape and innumerable hikes through them and to offer a wider selection I have included only one trek from the Himalaya (which is most unfair).  Even I had a hard time reconciling to this self-imposed restrictio...

I get innumerable requests to feature global warming (GW) issues in my blog. While it is heartening to know that so many of my readers and friends are aware of GW it is also a difficult task to write about this complex phenomenon along with its vast and highly debatable data for normal readers. Any GW expert is more likely to use jargons and scientific formulas, historical data, pie-charts, etc to drive his point home, to the complete befuddlement of his audience at large notwithstanding. My idea here is to break it down into digestible and delectable morsels for all of you, any of you in a manner that even a child who is not a prodigy can grasp and understand and act upon in any manner possible. GW issues are vast and involve each of us, including the mute animals, insects, fishes, all our geological features, landscapes… anything and everything that resides within the geo-magnetic influence of the Earth and in the cryosphere in particular. Which could tantamount to say that even you ...

Hi friends after three days of seeking inputs regarding what kind of posts would you wish me to write, I have collected nearly two dozen requests and suggestions through FB and email. To summarize all of them of which many were similar though differently worded, I would write the following posts in the coming days: (a) my top 10 climbs of South America (b) how can a beginner plan, prepare, train and start going into the mountains (c) wild life encounters (d) my extreme adventures from lesser known spots on Earth Of those that I cannot encompass in a post I would like to mention the one from Nadya who wanted me to write about an experience that I would want to be the base of a documentary. There’s only one experience of mine that can justify this and that’s my walk across the entire length of Africa at the age of 18. It is too vast and mindboggling an experience to be put in a post. I would be coming out with a book on that and it can surely be made into a Hollywood thriller. As for Kar...

I am a fellow at TED this year and a well meaning friend suggested that I must talk about it. In a lark I wrote the following address of mine at the TED which would happen only in November 2009. I have no idea if I would be speaking there at all or if I do what I would be saying, but the following piece pretty much sums up my thoughts and here it is. Hence this is a speech that has not happened yet and may never happen. Enjoy... Good morning friends! I am 45 and for the last 34 years I have been climbing and traveling around the globe seeking new challenges and methods to kill myself. It’s a wonder that I am still here while more than 70% of my friends are not. During my global gallivanting I managed to climb Mt Everest and some of the highest peaks in the world along with the highest summits of all the seven continents and countless others. Horizontally I skied to the North and the South Pole and across the world’s longest and biggest glaciers and ice caps. I have been mostly traversi...

I make a distinct distinction between fate and destiny. We do not shape our fate but we can and do design our destiny. When we do nothing at all and just go with the flow of life, then whatever happens to us is fate but when we act, to the best of our abilities and judgment or sense and sensibilities; and then whatever happens is our destiny. This post is a feeble attempt to sum up my thoughts on one of my closest calls to eternity, which I fail to explain even today that how I lived and my friend did not, though we both had shaped our destiny due to our stubbornness to do one more crazy act just to prove that it could be done. This post might also lead you to appreciate that what is more agonizing and terrifying than death itself is its approach, its proximity and the slow and steady certitude that you are going to die. Period: Circa 2001, December. Location: somewhere in the Patagonian Mountains within the fuzzy borderland between Chile and Argentina. Actors: Four strapping and caref...