15Comments 13,800

Then we asked Sherpas "What are the names of these peaks?"

Sherpa said "These? These are not peaks.. These are hardly 14,000 - 15,000ft above sea level."

What? I knew the guy has climbed 26,000ft.. but still, kind of feeling embarrassed, I walked away from the group....

-------------------

This year I did Sar Pass trek. 

We started from 'Kasol' which is at 6,500ft and on first day climbed upto 8,000ft and camped at 'Guna Paani'. When we reached camp it started raining heavily. So heavy that we were actually scared if we could finish the trek or not. And we should turn back. But rain stopped after 4-5 hours. We came out of our tents in the morning and just looked around. It Was Beautiful...

This made us forget about turning back. And on second day we went forward to 'Funal Paani' which is at 9,500ft. This second day trek was pretty simple and weather was also very good. Tents were on slopes. We slept at one position n woke up at the end of slope :)

Third day trek was kind of difficult because of heavy rain. Path was very slippery. Me and one of my friend reached the third camp (Jirmi - 11,000ft) early and found this Glassy looking sky above us...

It was good that we reached a little early because then we found out the path became even more slippery and that people formed chains to climb up.
At night we gathered for campfire. We looked up and we were astonished to see thousands of stars that we never able to see in city. My eyes were my camera that time. No man-made camera can capture such a beauty.

We were around 60 when we started. But there were only 24 of us when we started for Tila- Lotni camp. Everybody else returned to base camp from Jirmi coz they had no extra cloths after two days rain.

Our group was smaller so we moved faster.. At around 12,000ft I saw these cows n oxen taking a break or something and I was like - "What?? How on earth they reached at this height?" I took the photograph.
I like the colours involved in this photo.

Tila-lotni. 12,500ft about sea level. You know, lot of my friends at US keep telling me how they hate snow and snow fall. But if you climbed for 3 days and then what you see is something like this (check below pic) then how can you even think of hating it..

We Just loved Tila-lotni Camp.. It was like heaven.. correction. It was heaven.. Pure white snow all around the camp area. and beautiful peaks like these.

We slept little early.. and woke up at 10 at night because of freaking cold... scary... but then again slept woke up at 2:30am and started packing. It was D-day. First ray of light and we started climbing up. Here we were companied by two trained Sherpas who had a lot of experience. climb was getting more n more difficult. firstly because there was no grip and secondly because there was lack of oxygen.

But when we reached top, we were at 13,800 feet. For the first time in my life. It was amazing. Like top of the world.
It was around 7:30 in the morning. Sun was just above the horizon. I faced the sun. Felt like I'm challenging the sun god. I guess he took the challenge n gave me a Sun-Burn :( But no matter.. It was waaay too awesome to think about this stuff.
I took the below pic of my friend at 13,800ft. I like it becase of Black shadow - White snow combination. This pic, I think, looks great.

We were 13,000+ feet for next two hours. There was Tea shop (tapri) at 13,800 ft. Imagine that!

And then there was this amazing snow slide. Sliding from 13,000ft to 12,000 was Crazy as hell.. We enjoyed it a lot. we reached Biskeri camp (which is at 11,000ft) at the end the day. We had a feeling like the trek is over now. So next day we descended to 6,500ft in one go skipping one day.

Trek was over. next almost a week we were travelling here n there. First Kasol then Chandhigad, Kalka n lastly Shimla. It was like another holiday after great trek.

On our first day at Shimla, I came across one guy with a telescope and stand.

That guy pointed finger to few mountain tops visible from shimla and asked me "Do you want to see these mountain peaks? Only for Rs. 10, sir" 

I said "These? I'm just coming from the top of one of these peaks."

and I walked away. And this time I was proud of myself...

-------------------

I wanted to write post about my trek for last two weeks but didn't get time. But its for good coz BlogAdda announced this Share your travel photos contest. So now this post also acts as my submission to the contest. Its sponsored by site PringOO which has collection of T-shirts/mugs like these -

9Comments Long time no c..

Some day.. yeah some day when someone says "long time no c" on IM, I wanna reply with -

Really? read this then.. #include "stdio.h"

But I can't.. I can't because of my own rules..

Lets go through our basics first. IM, Instant messaging is build in such a way that we can type only one line at a time...Well, there's a reason behind it.. humans can read only one f*kin line at a time... I hate when people copy paste something in IM. In my case, most of the times, this copy pasted thing is some huge snippet of code.. (huge snippet, is this a valid phrase?)

Hey, can you have a look at this ? DHAM!!
Hey, please check this. DHAM!!
Looks like there's something wrong in this. DHAM!!
Hey, any idea why this is not working? DHAM!!
.. and then I changed my function to this. DHAM!!

now replace DHAM with that "huge snippet" but keep the DHAM sound ringing in your ears.

Taking it to next level, some people write something in between..
//huge code
this is better or this is -
//again huge code.

I takes me like 5-10 mins to find the text in-between...

I really can't.. I won't use IM for debugging.. this is crazy.. one second you are looking at nice lil chat window with text that you know, next thing you have poor lil window cluttered with non-sense code..
Even a smallest bug looks like really crazy, creepy bug in IM. And yet, every time I try resizing my window to fit the length of that code and try to understand it. No need to say I don't understand a thing in it..

So people.. IM is not for sucha things.. may be you have wave for that (yey! found first use of google wave!)
Think about person on the other side... think about your children (huh?), think about poor lil IM window and stop pasting code in chat window...

[Else I'll start pasting wikipedia articles in that window]

6Comments The city that.... ohh forget it!

/* This is my first post in Marathi(मराठी)... n I guess the last :P coz m too lazy to convert the font :P */
/* १०/०७/२००८ */

आज सकाळी उठून बाहेर पडलो companyत जायला तेव्हा ८:३० वाजले होते. पाउस just सुरु झाला होता, so रिक्शा हवी होती. Gate No. 3 मधून बाहेर पडलो न लगेचच रिक्शा दिसली. म्हणल चला.. बर झाल..
त्याला विचारलं "Sion ला येणार का ?"
"गर्दी आहे. नाही येणार"
ठीके म्हणुन मी पुढे निघालो. Gate No. 1 च्या इथे कठड्यावर shoe lace बांधायला थांबलो तर तो रिक्शावाला परत आला अन माझ्या इथे थांबला. माला वाटलं साहेबांचा mood change झालेला दिसतोय. नेईल बहुतेक Sion ला.
"आत्ताच तिथून आलो. लै गर्दी आहे तिथे"
"असेल. पण मला तिथे जायलाच लागणारे"
"hmm.. ते आहेच.. पण १ तास लागेल जायला. दोन गाड्या बंद पडल्यात तिथे पाउसामुळे. "
"हाँ. ठीके.. मग ?" (इथे मला expected होता की मग नेणार का मला ?)
"मग काय. आता कोणीतरी फ़ोन करील पोलिसांना काढतील त्या बाजूला. मग पोहोचता येइल १५ मिनिटात"
"मग नेताय का sion ला ?"
"नाही हो. मला उजवीकडे जायचय"
(च्यायला मग थांबलाय कशाला @#$#)
मला कळल ह्या Man ला गप्पा मारण्याचा mood आलाय. so मी पटकन सटकलो. तरी मोठमोठ्यानी सांगत होता कशा बंद पडल्या गाड्या वगैरे.

पुढे गेलो washi नाक्याला पोहोचलो. लगेच रिक्शा मिळाली. तो हो पण म्हणला, कटकट न करता. बसलो २ मिनिटात गर्दी सुरु झाली.
"हे नेहमीचच चाललय"
(मला वाटला गर्दी बद्दल बोलतोय)
"hmm हो ना..."
"घटनेत आम्हाला काही जागाच नाहीये"
(what the hell ?) "काय ?"
"अरे शेतकर्यांना कर्ज माफ़ केलं पण कर्ज आता देणं पण बंद झालय... तरी काहीतरी केलय. माझ्यासाठी काही जागाच नाहीये घटनेत... मी म्हणजे कोण ? कामगार!!!"
(च्यायला हा पण सुरु झाला. ठीके निदान नेतोय तरी)
"दावा ठोकलाय मी. २५ वर्ष काम केलं अन ती mill बंद पडली. पण तरी ती चालू 'दाखवलीये'... अन मी काम करतोय असा दाखवून दुसर्याला देत होते पगार"
(याच्याशी घटनेचा काय संबंध आता...)
"५ september ला result आहे. ५ september म्हणजे माहित्ये ? 'शिक्षक दिन'"
(परत subject change का आता ?)
"आधी जे लोक company च्या बाजुनी होते ते आता माझ्या बाजुनी आहेत"
(good for you...)
taxies आल्या त्यांनी typical हात दाखवा रिक्शा थांबवा प्रकार चालू केला. मग उतरलो त्याला पैश्यांबरोबर 'best of luck' पण दिला अन taxiत जाउन बसलो.

"अरे मुझे लगा आपको महेश्वरी गार्डन जाना था. लेकिन गाड़ी निकाली थी तो बोला चलो छोड़ ही देता हूँ" (typical हिन्दी accent)
"hmm"
"इतना traffic... कहाँ से चालू है ये traffic"
"जादा नाही"
"अब आगे देखना... रास्तेका काम चालू है बहोत time लगेगा" बाहेर वाकून "अबे जल्दी चल ना आगे"
"काररें (cars) सस्ती हो गई है ना, कोई भी घरसे उठके कार लेता है. चलाना आना पड़ता है. फोकट मे बड़ी बड़ी गाडीयां लेके अईसी गाड़ी चलते हैं"
(आज काही खर नाही)

बोलत बोलत पोहोचलो एकदाचा. traffic असुनही ४५ मिनिटातच पोहोचलो.
नंतर ६:३० ला निघालो. बाहेर पडल्या पडल्या एक taxi दिसली.
"chembur ला येणार का ?"
"साहेब, बसा की"
chembur ला इतक्या लवकर हो म्हणलेलं पहिल्यांदाच ऐकल so just पाहिलं डोकावून तर पर्वाचाच मुलगा taxi चालवत होता...
हा शांत होता. N.M. Joshi वरुन Curry Road. Curry Road वरुन भारतमाता theater. त्यावरून straight निघालो आणि
"माझं गाव कोल्हापुर पासून १५-२० km वर आहे"
(????) "hmm"
"काही पाउस पडला नाही अजून... तुम्ही कुठले हो ?"
"पुण्याचा"
"पुणं पण मोठ्ठ आहे नाई. नोकर्या मिळतात का लगेच ?"
"तिथे taxi नसतात"
"हाँ रिक्क्षा असतात ना ?"
"हो"
"तुम्ही इथे कुठे जाता"
"cleartrip म्हणुन आहे"
"तिथून इथे chembur रोज taxiनी परवडतं का तुम्हाला"
(आवरा... अरे देईन मी पैसे. tension नको घेउस) "हो"
"किती दिवस आहात mumbaiत"
"१ वर्ष असेन mostly"
"मग नंतर परत पुण्याला का ?"
"नाही माहीत"
"पुण्यात नोकरी मिळते का हो लगेच?"
(परत ?) "तिथे mostly software field किंवा business process outsourcing ला vacancy असते"
(ते त्याच्या डोक्यावरून गेला म्हणून गप्प झाला बहुतेक)
"आता कळला का तुम्हाला road ?"
(पहिल्यावेली मला अन त्याला दोघांना road माहीत नव्हता :P)
"हो... सांगतो तुला... तू चल"
"तुम्ही इथे राहता का HP नगर मधे ?"
"हो"
"कसा काय ?"
"बहिण असते"
"बर. तसा मी chembur ला 2nd time येतोय."
असा करत करत finally पोहोचलो मी घरी...


Seriously विचारलं तर मला Pune सोडायचं नव्हत coz अशीच गप्पिष्ट लोकं असतात तिथेही...
मला वाटलं होता, इथे इतकी दगदग असेल की कोणाला वेळ नसेल, पण इथे लोक बकरा मिळण्यासाठी टपलेलेच असतात...
पहिल्याच ४ दिवसातच माझ्या knowledgeमधे बरीच भर पडली आहे.
'इथे आधी bikes कश्या नव्हत्या, आता कशा दिसायला लागल्या आहेत', 'पउसात पाणी रस्त्यावर येत तेव्हा रिक्शा कुठून नेतात', 'bike, taxi पाण्यातून कशी काढायची... बंद न पाडता...', 'दरड पडलेली कशी काढली', 'पोलीस license कसा काढून घेतात' वगैरे वगैरे...

Mumbai मधे noise pollution बरच आहे म्हणतात... I guess that's bcoz "it's The City That Never Stops Talking"...

1Comments CaptCHU****

Sceneaccess failed yet again to put 'Scrubs S07E09' torrent on time...
So I thought lets download from rapidshare...
Free account as usual... so waiting for 2.5 mins to grant the download ticket...
and then i came across this...

They say this is "CAPTCHA" (which is supposingly easy for Human to understand but not bots...)
Normal captcha's are preety simple... just enter 3-4 letters n you are thro...
But our famous Rapidshare says... you are human only if you can differentiate between cartoon of a cat and dog sitting on english letters... WTH...

It took me 3 attempts to pass thro... worst thing was - that 2.5mins counter reinitializes each time u put wrong letters...

So if you are not premium user -
no parallel download...
no upload more than 100 mbs...
no download manager...
that 2.5 min counter...
waiting 1 hr after each download...
and now this crappy CAPTCHA...

ohh sceneaccess... i blame you for this :)

(I still have one file to download... crap!!!)