Trekking it!!

I was once asked what do I hate most in the world? I replied instaneously, "Hypocrits, Bad Food and Treks." But here I am writing about one of my least favorite things in the world which I almost completely enjoyed (don't miss the almost), a trek with my college roommates.

Who am I? I am currently a journalism student at Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication. "Convergence " is the mantra behind our survival here at our humble abode in between the lush landscapes of Lavale. Never heard of Lavale you say? Well, all I can tell you is that it is close to the Oxford of the East, Pune and let's just leave it at that. Don't get me wrong, I love the University campus at Lavale. The beautiful infrastructure, amazing people but the best thing is the uncomparable beauty of the surroundings. Our campus is situated on top of a small hill. If we enter from one side on the hill, our eyes are drawn to the tall, well constructed buildings of the academic block of our campus. But if one proceeds to the other side of the hill, he/she can see a beautiful golf course and the campus of another institute at the foot of the hill. However, since my very first day on this campus the one place which drew me and my roommates, Padma and Vaishnavi, was a small temple nestled alluringly in the middle of a green field with a small lake surrounding it.

On the very first day, all three of us decided that we will go to the temple one day. But then MMC took a toll on all of us. Every day we just about had enough energy to go to the balcony and admire the temple from a distance telling each other that we will go someday in the near future. But days passed in a blur. Months turned into semesters and semesters into years. We still looked out the balcony and sighed deeply, looking at wach other with longing eyes, but fate was never on our side. Either we were too busy or even if by some chance we would make a plan to go it would start raining. Seriously, it became frustrating after a while.

But one day it was as if everything was perfect. For once, we had an off from college. We were lazing around in the room wondering what to do. Suddenly the idea of going down to the temple came under discussion. Everything came into place and we decided that finally we were going to go trekking down the hill to the temple. We quickly gathered some essentials (in our case, three umbrellas, a camera, a bottle of water and something to eat...:D) and were all set to start our long awaited trek down.

The first and the most important task was to find the starting point of out trek. Now there is construction going on in many parts of our campus. So we had to careful. After careful consideration we decided upon our route and started down the hill. Now the weather here alternates between being sunny and drizzling. That day too though it had rained in the morning, luckily for us it was almost dry when we started our trek. However, since we were trekking, there was no firm foothold as the rain had made the rubble on the path extremely loose. Now I am really bad with treks so my poor roomies had to literally hold my hand to stop me from sliding down. Still I managed to uh um...tumble down once or twice. the worst part was I managed to climb down the tricky path, it was on the flat road that I managed to fall. My roommates till date tease me unmercifully about the fact and i still claim that a bug went into my eye. It's true.:D

The trek down was beautiful. The sights were the same and yet so different. We always looked down and saw the temple from our hostel balcony but that day we looked up and saw our hostel from an entirely new eye. On our way we met many locals who showed their sympathy to my cuts (damn that bug..:D) by flashing a shy smile at us. Suddenly the temple, which we always saw from a far off distance and which seemed so tiny, peeked out from amongst the shade of blooming trees at us. We went forward with great expectations but woes of woe the temple gates were shut and we were unable to go inside. We felt deprived but strangely at peace. We stayed there for a short amount of time talking to a couple of local kids. Then it was time for us to come back.

It was an evening which we will remember for a long time to come. A strange calm had set over us on out way back from the temple. Though we had been unable to go inside the whole idea of achieving something like actually reaching the temple was so satisfying that every other emotion took a back seat. While on the way down we were more cheerful and bubbly, the way back saw us slightly tired, silent yet completely at peace.