Alpine Bootcamp
A week Learning the art of traversing through the mountains from Peter Van Geit.
Have you ever gone to the same place and felt like being in a totally new and different place? Like seeing it from a different set of eyes?
Attending the alpine boot camp in Manali left me amazed at the beauty of the place that I had not seen earlier hidden beauty behind the cafes and walking streets of old Manali. It changed my perspective on travel, hiking, and to some extent - life.
What was the Alpine bootcamp about?
It was to get equipped with hiking minimally, by yourself without the need for any commercial hiking groups and confidently traversing through the mountains. There are a lot of things to learn, and mindsets to be changed if that has to happen. E.g. Peter was like “If your bag is more than 5kgs, I am going to kick it down the stairs”
A city boy with high ankle hiking boots, a packed 60L rucksack weighing 15kgs, 10 pairs of clean clothes, a metal water bottle, and a bulky sleeping bag is on one end of the spectrum, a 30L backpack, open sandals (or Just open chappals), 2 pairs of clothes, half filled plastic bottle, and with the first thought of “Is this light enough” and “do I really need it” is an alpine style hiker on the other side.
I was, before the boot camp, leaning towards the former 🙈 (Slightly!)
The weight is going to kill you says Peter.
Peter Van Geit, the real life Forest Gump
What a guy! A Belgian guy working in corporate for a number of years comes to India, loves traveling, and falls in love with the country. Starts the Chennai Trekking Club and garners 40,000 members! Goes hiking into Uttarakhand, the Himalayas, and throughout the country for months on end with his small backpack and then contributes his findings to OSM (Open street maps, more on it later, just remember the name 🙂)
He teaches all his learnings, how to plan a traverse through the mountains and how to essentially become independent while hiking in the Mountains. And well, how to fall in love with nature. Freakin Brilliant.
How the days went by?
C6-The basecamp
What a rusty little house! It was simple, basic, clean, and just right for this bootcamp. With a couple of Indi dogs, Julius (The greater Dane), and fellow boot campers, it was a lively, happy, and buzzing place that I loved staying at! We’d go every day to hike and be back and have dinner at C6.
It was in a village called Dunghri above Old Manali. The last stretch of steps to reach this place was death!!
The theory
Every day, in the morning it felt like being back in school and Peter would be like “You have to learn theory!” He taught us about the geography of the Himachal, Uttarakhand, Jammu & Kashmir, about the people there, the tools we’d be using to plan our journeys, and a lot of other things. He prepared slides for each topic and we’d study for an hour, take a chai break, and come back again, and sometimes Julius would show up to break the monotony
The treasure hunts and small hikes around Manali
After we’d learn some theory, we’d go hike around for 2-3 hours by 2 PM or so. Peter would give us 4-5 points to cover, and we’d all be planning how we’d cover these points, what route would we take and try to optimise it, and sometimes just take the more scenic one.
One time we we were searching for a lost student of his. We finally found him sitting beneath a tree deep inside the forest.
Overnight Camps
Two nights of the seven, we camped some 10 km from our base camp. We’d start around 11 AM after the morning theory classes and reach the campsite by 4-5 PM. Mostly in groups of 2-3 but we kept meeting other people on the way and groups changed and people waited for people and some just went alone 🙂 and alpine style.
We’d reach the campsite, pitch our tents, light a fire, chat, and enjoy the night.
On one of the nights, we ended up playing Mafia for quite some time. It was harder to play in the dark and with a lot of people learning it for the first time it was amusing to see them play. Haha.
That night was the first time I saw more than 1000 sheep in front of me for the first time and everyone said just one thing! Meh! DJ Sheep just playing one track on repeat!
The other overnight camp was thrilling as well. The rain came, of course, it had to! A couple of folks found a cave nearby and off we went to the cave, lit a fire, and stayed there till the rain subsided! What a fun night it was living like cavemen! A few brave folks wanted to sleep in the cave and even after trying to convince them, they didn’t budge or maybe just felt lazy to pick up their sleeping bags and come back to the tents.
But guess what!, the dogs started barking (Yes the Indi dogs, Pingla, and another dude hiked with us to the campsite) and just didn’t stop! Poor guys had to come back to their tents 😛 It was scary!
Random stories
At ease in the forest
It felt extremely liberating to be inside a dense forest among the giant trees and still be at ease because you knew the way and were not lost! Thanks to OSM!
The road is Lava
The road is lava! After getting used to just taking trails, it was considered bad to take the road! The road is lava! Just take the trail. What a fundamental change! Usually at a random hill station, I’d not take the shabby looking trail because I would not know where It’d take me. But now - the road is Lava
Sudden beauty
You’d be walking up the trail and feeling tired because it’s a steep climb and boom suddenly, there’s a meadow or a waterfall, or some donkeys passing by, or a lot of thorny shrubs! And then I realised how Windows got its wallpapers and why these poets talk about all the grass and leaves and whatnot!
Dog love
We had to cross a river as the last stretch of the hike to reach our campsite. While we were about to the dogs would not stop crying! The flow was strong and we could not have carried them along. So we thought, they’d go back. But they did not!
The one Indi dog that joined us in Old Manali, attempted to cross the river. The first time he realised that the flow was strong and went back. The second time he almost got swept away and the third time, he made it!
Pingala all this while was crying and then vanished! To appear after an hour or so at the campsite. I still don’t know where he just appeared from.
The scenes were much more dramatic than I can justify by my writing. Everyone was worried and scared that he might have just gotten swept away.
Here is the Don Pingala
Imitating Peter
I discovered that I can talk like Peter. Don’t believe me?
The fellow hikers
There were 14 people in the group. And all of them were so much fun! It was amazing to see people from different walks of life come and have a passion for hiking in the Himalayas. Beautiful. There were so many stories and memories created and everyone had their unique personalities. It was quite a cool bunch of people and it was lovely to hang out with them for a week :D
Tools powered by community and technology
The amount of respect and awe I have for the open source community now is just at a peak. Google Maps is for our cities, and Open Street Maps (OSM) is for the mountains and hikers.
So it has a map and has trails highlighted on it which you can take to hike in the mountains. Hikers use this to record their journey and put it back on OSM adding credibility to the path and things you might find which are not on the map.
Say there is a stream of water you see but it is not on the map, you can mark it on the map and it’ll help others.
Also, you could compare routes- If I go from this way, it is going to be a steep climb, but if I go from that way, it is not that steep. Let me take that one.
You can even overlay some satellite images, or 3d terrain images and have fun visualising your next journey!
There are tons of other useful features and I loved using OSM. I’d not go into detail otherwise it’d become a separate blog post in itself. Just that it is the Google Maps of mountains and enables one to confidently go and hike alone or with a couple of friends without having to rely on someone external.
Closing thoughts
Have you just let yourself free and just went with the stream of life? Wherever it takes you? It can be scary and intimidating because not knowing (for a while) can be uncomfortable and we are not used to it. But in that discomfort of being lost, there is a belief in being able to find the way. Is there any other way? The only knowing is belief.
Climbing a mountain in a literal and metaphorical sense is hard, fun, daunting, and exciting all at the same time. What if in all the wilderness you knew where you were going and you could just immerse yourself in epic views and zone out (for a bit)? Maybe we can open our eyes and see how beautiful everything is. Understand what slowing down means, while moving through the mountains.
To a life of seeing, traveling, and hiking! I firmly can see that I love the mountains more than ever now.
Thanks for reading!
simple but powerful ❤️
Beautifully written