Fort night

When you are tired, there is only one thing to do -- exercise. So, as mentioned by a close friend Senthil, a bunch of us friends decided to go to the hills, since they didn't come to us (the hills, that is, not the friends). If you have ever lived in Pune, or talked to me when drinking beer, you must be acutely aware of the fact that there are many hills within 100 kms of Pune. Shivaji, in his infinite wisdom and free time, built more than 400 forts on many of the hills in Maharashtra, and I am personally thankful to him for that. Rajgadh, our destination for this trip, is my favourite trek and I have been there (you know this too, if you have ever been with me when drinking beer) ten times in all. Some of those treks were quite memorable, but that is the topic for another post.

The topic of this post is to note down, as Senthil did, what I realized about people on this trip. Here goes:

Nothing.

I am not the kind of person who, when he sees a person wielding a gun, goes all analytical about the need to wield a gun, the kind of people who give in to such needs and what not. I, under such circumstances, go to sleep. Yes, friends, I can sleep with passion. My motto in life -- when in doubt, sleep. I can take time off from sleeping for sleeping. I frequently get nightmares that I am being chased by a psycopath serial killer after my bedtime. Shudder.

Anyway, I didn't draw any conclusions about people, life and things based on this one trek. That is Senthil's job. I want to tell you what I saw during the trek that I really felt happy about.

1. I saw a sunbird holding a boll of cotton in its beak, jumping from twig to twig. That made me happy.
2. I saw Arjun holding a boll of cotton in his mouth, jumping from cliff to cliff. Wait, that was probably a dream after we finished all the beer and went off to sleep. But it made me happy, nonetheless.
3. I saw crabs, bugs, centipedes and millipedes. And I was happy that at least some things were safe from Salman Khan and Nawab of Pataudi.
4. I saw how the colour of soil changed from red at the base of the hill to dark brown at the top, and I was happy that I was not colour blind.
5. I saw next morning that our campsite was actually above some of the clouds. I was happy that we had tents and we could actually camp out at such lovely places in the night, far from lights of the city, and the only illumonation for us in the night was the hazy moonlight filtering through the thick cloud cover.
6. I saw the dark blue sky next morning and it made me really happy. I have this thing about blue skies...
   

I was happy that I have an enthusiastic bunch of friends (and a wife) who dragged me out of the house on the weekend and provided me the much needed break from a tiring routine.

It feels great to be back to blogging. I have much more to write about. Soon. Watch the space...