At 100 Percent Very few times have I ever opened my eyes to a new day feeling revitalized to such a noticeable degree as I did now, it felt great yet at the same time I was cautious of my new found strength and proceeded with condition. Being well certainly brightened my day, but a shadow was quickly cast over it by Raveesh. You see Raveeshes mind was set on letting Blake choose our next course of action, If i was too sick to continue onwards Raveesh refused to go as well. Blake agreed with me, all those to sick or injured to move on would be left behind at camp while those healthy enough to go went, Raveesh asked Blake to make the decision a grand total of 6 times! Always the same thing, "now Blake you know how I feel, what is your decision?" Blake's answer was every time will go without him, but Raveesh would simply warp the expression on his face and ask again as if the last answer hadnt registered or hadn't even happened. Finally though we convinced him and we could rest ourselves from that mornings never ending ordeal.On the brighter side of things I was feeling good but even better when I saw breakfast, Boiled eggs and toast with butter and jam, ohh the humanity... How sweet it was. After being unable to eat for the better part of 2 days this was truly a welcomed change of pace. I told Raveesh and Blake that I felt good enough to go and so we prepared ourselves for the trek.It was time to go, Sk-23 lined up before the gates of camp and all the groups before ours were lined on the outside of the gates to see us off. We waved and shook hands with all the friends we had made in the few short days we spent at Babeli base Camp. We got to the bus and climbed the ladders with our packs to the roof, Raveesh chose to ride inside the bus. After all that time thinking about not being able to go and having to remain sick at camp the cool air flowing over me, everyone laughing and enjoying themselves on top of the bus, the beautiful mountains surrounding us and the mighty river flowing right beside us brought a great sense of happiness to me and a smile of triumph slowly etched itself across my face. About 70% of the way up towards our first base camp Blake and I were resting below a newly planted tree at the bend in the road, He turned looked me in the face and let his mouth hang open for a bit, then simply said "Im abouts to throw up" "Don't lie to me" I said, he turned his head and vomited rather gracefully I might say beside himself. With the entire group only a few feet away he managed to vomit for a good 2 minutes without anyone even noticing, his professionalism coupled with my calm and oblivious demeanor that pulled that little trick off. In the end though a few of the guys came over and gave us some vicks drops, guess we couldn't pull off a total containment. An hour later we reached camp and Blake threw up again. A little after that everyone began running out of their tents and looking into the mountains across the valley, someone grabbed me and took me to see what it was. A double rainbow... How ironic, after eating Double Rainbow ice cream for the past few years I finally get to see one. It was feint but definitely there, Ive never seen anything like it. One of the guys that was a professor in the group stood there explaining rainbows to me and all the ways we can view them. He even told me of the fabled full circle double rainbow, which is nearly impossible to witness, all the right events need to take place and you must be at exactly the right place to see it.That night the group of youngins we had made friends with gathered around the Maggie noodle bar benches and told stories of all our favorite foods, I told them all about my mothers cooking and which was my favorite, then everyone started talking about their mothers favorite foods, ohh boy was that hard to listen too, the food for the past week hadn't exactly been gourmet, and one food after the other sounded better than the last.During most of the next days trek Blake and I went ahead of the group and hiked alone, for a long time we saw no one heard nothing and talked little. When we arrived at the second base camp we had a welcome drink and then went back down the hill a bit to see the waterfall that everyone seemed to think so highly of. When we got there, of course it was a total waist of time, but we did get some good pictures in so it wasn't a total loss. We slowly made our way back to camp and waited for dinner to be served... lol "to be served" sounds funny.After dinner I met up with the two traveling Architects whom I proceeded to have a long and drawn out discussion with about the duality of man and all things inherently good and evil about our nature. At campfire that night everyone played a singing game in which whatever syllable the the song ends with must be the beginning syllable of the next song, that was a lot of fun to listen to and watch but unfortunately there wasn't much I could do to contribute, and when the whole group looked at me and asked me to sing I got up and said I was cold lol, it was the perfect plan really, the whole night I had only worn a t-shirt and everyone kept asking me if i was cold, so at least I exited cleanly and with a good laugh to boot. During the night Blake and I both agreed that we didn't want to do sur pass after surkoundi so we told the camp leader and tried to get a refund, we quickly learned that refunds were somewhat of an endangered species in India and that we should expect things to work as they do in other parts of the globe. In reality though We couldn't care less and only wanted Raveesh to stop trying so hard to get everything done for us.At morning light I woke up had bed tea and went with the camp leader who showed me a much better and much more beautiful way to see the waterfall. On our way to the next camp we encountered what would undoubtedly be our steepest ascent yet, It was at places almost vertical and very unforgiving, I'm not sure how any of the older hikers managed to make it, but I'm sure it was with the help of the other members. After a break in an open field I went on alone and hiked at the fastest pace I could, until finally I found myself completely alone and in front of a large stretch of uphill plains, seeing as how I had no idea which way to go I waited for a few minutes until the guide came up behind me, he pointed to something barely visible up and to the right of the mountain, after 10 minutes more of walking I realized it was the banner for the 3rd camp.I got into camp and the camp leader was none other than the guy who had got me to play pittu days before at base camp. He wasn't very happy that I was coming into camp on my own though, so he made me put on a jacket and sit outside to wait for the others, which actually took a long ass time so i took off the jacket and laid down in the tent. When all was well and good and everyone had come at last me and some of the guys went out for a walk, we got the edge of the treeline and there they were, the fullest view of the Himalayas we'd seen yet, and what a view it was, it seemed as if I had been placed in a position to witness a gathering of all the worlds great mountains all set side by side in area that a single person can cover with only a glance.That night I once again found myself discussing the baffling rituals, secrets and little wonders of man, this time with other members of the group, we talked about love, war, meditation and karma. It became more and more obvious to me that the Indian people above all other hobbies love to have discussions and debate all day and all night, which suits me just perfectly ^^After that Raveesh took me aside and told me the story of his life and how he had come to be the man that he was now, it was a fascinating story one that in some ways paralleled my own life, after that little heart to heart I went to my tent and fell asleep. At 9 am the next day we headed out for camp 4, at lunch point we could see storm clouds amassing on the other side of the valley. We both wanted to get to camp as soon as possible but everyone else was in no such hurry. Blake just wanted to take a safe shit and I just wanted to get away from the storm, so I took a deep breath to relax and blake wondered off into some crevasse and took care of his business. When we got to camp Wadood asked me how Raveeshes Family and mine had met "all those years back.." I told him our families had never met and that we had only met him a week ago. Wadood and everyone else in the tent looked kind of surprised. Wadood told me that Raveesh had been telling everyone that our families had been friends for over 30 years. "this story goes back 30 years" he would say as he twisted his finger in a spiral motion upwards. It kind of threw me off my day and cast a shadow of doubt on everything Raveesh had told us thus far, including our little discussion last night.
Final Push We again left camp at 9 but this time we ran straight into snow, it was one of those don't slip or make a mistake unless you want to slide down the side of this mountain and slam into a crevasse or some bottomless pit kind of deal. Which was scary enough for me but for the rest of the hikers... well I'm just glad we all made it.After coming to the highest point of our journey and having taken one of the girls mothers packs because she couldn't make it otherwise we rested on the hill, watching all around us in ever direction as the panoramic view stunned us all. How breath taking a sight it all was, to bad I had to spend this time confronting Raveesh about his extra curricular activities... He told me he would stop but asked me what he should instead tell people about us, i told him he should just tell the truth, that we met in delhi and decided to do this trip together not a week ago, he didnt like that idea very much, he said that in India that isnt a good way to meet people, so i just told him it was better to say nothing than to tell a lie. We glasseided (lol have no idea how to spell this) down the mountain for exactly 1 minute then rested at the camp, had maggie with egg and tried to get dry. It seemed like forever that we were just sitting around and we were all getting colder by the second.
Then the same storm clouds we saw the day before again rose to defy us, Blake and I weren't going to wait regardless of what the others were doing, so we broke off and headed for the ridge line. The moment we got a good 50 yards away from the group a snow storm encased us all and as we looked back at the group threw the haze Blake screamed (enjoy your extra coffee and maggie you bastards, see you in hell!) a dramatic and well characterized vocalization that I felt perfectly fit the situation. We traveled onward for about another 20 yards until the wind combined with the snow was to much for us, so we climbed to the edge of the ridge and found a small alcove to rest in. It was pretty much the equivalent of half the size of those plastic portable 2 foot high pools for toddlers. After 5 minutes one of the girls from the camp stood over the little ditch and I got her to join us, a time after that the wind and snow died down and we resumed climbing. We started Descending so fast that soon there wasn't much snow around and we could even notice it was easier to breath. At a point on the way down we waited for the rest of the group to catch up, and when the girls and their father came he asked me to hold his smallest daughter and keep her warm, she sat down in front of me and curled up between my legs and my chest, I wrapped my arms around her and was astonished at how cold and shivering she really was. 10 minutes later she had stopped shaking and we started once again on our way down to camp 5. After a little confusion on how exactly to get there we arrived at camp, and from there the conspiracies began!