After a horrendous 26 hours of bus/jeeping Christina and I made it up to Darjeeling and the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, our home for 28 days. Brief overview: Christina and I took a mountaineering course at HMI. The course lasted for 28 days, with 18 of those days being our "expedition". What was the course like you ask? Well, let me tell you...
We arrived to HMI, which is literally in a zoo, the night before the course started. The campus is quite large, and to access it you walk through Darjeeling's Himalayan Zoo, which is home to Red Pandas, Bengal Tigers, Clouded Leopards, and lots of other Himalayan animals. The campus has two artificial rock walls (indoor and outdoors), a hostel, a dinning hall, a "movie" theatre (where they show rock climbing movies from the 70s), accommodations for all the staff and sherpas (yah, they continuously employ a fleet of sherpas), and (inexplicably) dozens of defunct kayaks. The first night was very exciting, as we got to meet all of our co-mountaineers, and most importantly to us, found out our culinary plan of the next month. Turns out our first meal was a very good predictor of every other meal: dahl, rice, sabji (some form of curried veg), and chapati. The food was pretty good, but we could tell we'd be very sick of it very soon. The people, fortunately, we did not tire of, as we managed to make some great friends very quickly.
The first day was equally exciting, as we soon discovered we had joined the Indian army! Not really, but it felt like it, as we were expected to "fall in" (meaning line up in order and stand at attention) frequently, address everyone as sir, and BE ON TIME FOR THINGS! We also discovered that when HMI's website said "instruction in Hindi and English" what they meant was instruction in either Hindi or English, not both. So we had to get some very kind Hindi speakers to translate many of the lectures for us.
For the first week we were based out of HMI. We spent each morning doing PT (physical training) which either meant running and yoga, or practice hiking. We would then practice climbing and rappelling until lunch. After lunch was everyone's favorite: hours of lectures! Particularly boring for us when they were in Hindi...
After the "theory" section of the course came the "practical" part. We left our cozy little zoo for the mountains of West Sikkim. To get there took one day of driving and four days of trekking. The trek was gorgeous, but our bags were very heavy and the terrain steep. The average bag weight was probably 20 kilos (we know because we weighed them...). Christina and I enjoyed the trek, but many of the people found it tough beyond enjoyment. This was probably the most physically demanding thing many of them have done. Lots of the Indian trainees were from the south, which has lots of trekking, but none of it particularly hilly. When we arrived at base camp many people collapsed on their beds (as soon as they had set them up that is). Base camp was a pretty impressive sight. It is located at the base of the Singalia and Sangri ranges, and is about 4500m above sea level. The camp has two barraks, one for guys and one for girls, a dining shack, a kitchen, and many other random buildings. It must have taken a lot of yaks to get all that wood up there!
We had 12 days at base camp, so we got to know it well. Every day we either hiked 3 hours to the glacier for ice climbing, crevasse rescue, glacier travel, or ice rappelling practice, or stayed at base camp and went bouldering, practiced rappelling without a harness, went jumaring, or learned medical stuff (like building a stretcher out of climbing rope). The 12 days were tough, as we were in very close quarters and had minimal amenities, but we survived the cold and enjoyed the 2 weeks. The journey from HMI to the base camp took 5 days -- but somehow the return trip only took 2...Needless to stay it was an exhausting journey!
Once we arrived at HMI we spent 4 days doing very little. We had a day of competitions: climbing and cross country running. Neither Christina nor I took it very seriously (we didn't think it was worth blowing out our knees running down steep pavement), but Christina managed to win bronze medals in both events! Go Canada go! We also practice our graduation routine 4 times, which was extremely excessive considering there were no guests besides our instructors. As a nerdy bonus we did get to wear matching jumpers for our graduation ceremony!
The days following we awaited Vanessa's arrival by drinking copious amounts of tea, eating bengali sweets and all forms of food that didn't contain dal and rice. Our plans once reunited include brief visits in Kolkata, Bangalore and Kerala before heading for a month of surfing and yoga in Karnataka! We are definitely excited to find some warm weather in the south!
Nouri (and Christina)
We arrived to HMI, which is literally in a zoo, the night before the course started. The campus is quite large, and to access it you walk through Darjeeling's Himalayan Zoo, which is home to Red Pandas, Bengal Tigers, Clouded Leopards, and lots of other Himalayan animals. The campus has two artificial rock walls (indoor and outdoors), a hostel, a dinning hall, a "movie" theatre (where they show rock climbing movies from the 70s), accommodations for all the staff and sherpas (yah, they continuously employ a fleet of sherpas), and (inexplicably) dozens of defunct kayaks. The first night was very exciting, as we got to meet all of our co-mountaineers, and most importantly to us, found out our culinary plan of the next month. Turns out our first meal was a very good predictor of every other meal: dahl, rice, sabji (some form of curried veg), and chapati. The food was pretty good, but we could tell we'd be very sick of it very soon. The people, fortunately, we did not tire of, as we managed to make some great friends very quickly.
The first day was equally exciting, as we soon discovered we had joined the Indian army! Not really, but it felt like it, as we were expected to "fall in" (meaning line up in order and stand at attention) frequently, address everyone as sir, and BE ON TIME FOR THINGS! We also discovered that when HMI's website said "instruction in Hindi and English" what they meant was instruction in either Hindi or English, not both. So we had to get some very kind Hindi speakers to translate many of the lectures for us.
For the first week we were based out of HMI. We spent each morning doing PT (physical training) which either meant running and yoga, or practice hiking. We would then practice climbing and rappelling until lunch. After lunch was everyone's favorite: hours of lectures! Particularly boring for us when they were in Hindi...
After the "theory" section of the course came the "practical" part. We left our cozy little zoo for the mountains of West Sikkim. To get there took one day of driving and four days of trekking. The trek was gorgeous, but our bags were very heavy and the terrain steep. The average bag weight was probably 20 kilos (we know because we weighed them...). Christina and I enjoyed the trek, but many of the people found it tough beyond enjoyment. This was probably the most physically demanding thing many of them have done. Lots of the Indian trainees were from the south, which has lots of trekking, but none of it particularly hilly. When we arrived at base camp many people collapsed on their beds (as soon as they had set them up that is). Base camp was a pretty impressive sight. It is located at the base of the Singalia and Sangri ranges, and is about 4500m above sea level. The camp has two barraks, one for guys and one for girls, a dining shack, a kitchen, and many other random buildings. It must have taken a lot of yaks to get all that wood up there!
We had 12 days at base camp, so we got to know it well. Every day we either hiked 3 hours to the glacier for ice climbing, crevasse rescue, glacier travel, or ice rappelling practice, or stayed at base camp and went bouldering, practiced rappelling without a harness, went jumaring, or learned medical stuff (like building a stretcher out of climbing rope). The 12 days were tough, as we were in very close quarters and had minimal amenities, but we survived the cold and enjoyed the 2 weeks. The journey from HMI to the base camp took 5 days -- but somehow the return trip only took 2...Needless to stay it was an exhausting journey!
Once we arrived at HMI we spent 4 days doing very little. We had a day of competitions: climbing and cross country running. Neither Christina nor I took it very seriously (we didn't think it was worth blowing out our knees running down steep pavement), but Christina managed to win bronze medals in both events! Go Canada go! We also practice our graduation routine 4 times, which was extremely excessive considering there were no guests besides our instructors. As a nerdy bonus we did get to wear matching jumpers for our graduation ceremony!
The days following we awaited Vanessa's arrival by drinking copious amounts of tea, eating bengali sweets and all forms of food that didn't contain dal and rice. Our plans once reunited include brief visits in Kolkata, Bangalore and Kerala before heading for a month of surfing and yoga in Karnataka! We are definitely excited to find some warm weather in the south!
Nouri (and Christina)
WOO WOO BRONZE METALS! Hahahaha, sounds like you guys are epically hardcore now and having a really good time. Jack and I are sitting in misty England, eating crisps (aka chips) and enjoying all your stories. Thanks for posting them :). Enjoy your last month of adventuring! Love from Ashley and Jack
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