Trekking - Chasing the Rainbow

There is a lot of beauty in this world. One has to look for the beauty, but it is definitely there. Living in crowded cities sometimes makes one forget this.

What makes you happy? Personally speaking, I am at my happiest walking among the clouds, high on a sun-drenched Himalayan mountainside. I usually go in the month of November – the best time of year for trekking. The days are perfect for walking (though the nights are cold), there is no pollution and as you get off the main motorable roads, you feel a century away from the modern world.

These are memories I cherish, because they sustain me through the less-than-happy times. I have lived in the American Rockies - very nice mountains. I imagine the Alps are similar. They are beautiful, but the Himalayas are a different experience altogether. They inspire not just respect, but reverence. This feeling of reverence is easy to experience, but difficult to explain or convey. However, I will try.

Why is it such a joyous, life-affirming experience? Because when I am in the middle of a forest in the Himalayas on a clear day, miles from a main road and surrounded by everything nature has to offer, I am in my element. All my insecurities, jealousies and pettiness cease to exist. I am strong but compassionate, calm yet curious, fearless yet prudent, grave yet with my sense of humor intact, detached yet connected to everything around me in a way that I cannot describe.

At times, I enter the "Zone" - where for a moment, I become one with the earth below my feet, the sky above me, the trees around me and the mountains that dominate the horizon. I feel connected to everything that there is, everything that ever was, and everything that ever will be. It is a feeling better than money, sex or anything else this world has to offer. And I am not a New Age philosopher by any stretch of imagination.

These are the moments of epiphany, of enlightenment. In moments such as these, I become the man I have always wanted to be. I regain my faith in humanity and again believe that it is possible for me to leave this world a better place than when I found it.

I remember the lyrics to an old Bob Dylan song (correctly, I hope):

"Saw a shooting star last night,
And I thought of me,
Whether I ever became
The man I wanted me to be”

To get the opportunity (however brief) to glimpse one’s own full potential, to know what one is capable of, is in itself reason enough to undergo hours and sometimes days of rigorous, exhausting physical activity. It is chasing a state of perfection -I will never get there.

"I'd gladly lose me to find you,
Gladly give up all I got,
To win you,
I am going to run and never stop".

Far away, the dark clouds have dispersed and the rain has cleared on the high mountain ridges, and there is a rainbow. That is my next destination. I will chase that rainbow, though there is no pot of gold at the end of it. But the joy comes in the pursuit of the rainbow, not reaching it. And in the end, it is the journey and what one does along the way that matters and not the destination – in trekking as well as in life.

So, I am looking forward to blue skies, friendly apple-cheeked villagers, dark evergreen forests interspersed with beautiful flowers of a hundred hues, slivers of bright, clear sunshine, glistening ribbon-like rivers, purple valleys and above all, the mighty, high, silver Himalayas.

I am looking forward to the simple camaraderie of a trek with a friend, the tiny tea-shops along the way, the little wisps of cloud in an azure sky, the giant Himalayan eagles circling for prey in the valley far below, the feeling of being part of Mother Nature's universal and unique heartbeat and of being connected to something that has been there forever – nothing in the world compares with it.

I remember the lyrics to an old song by a long-defunct band called Canned Heat:

"I'm goin' where the water tastes like wine,
Gonna jump in the water,
Stay drunk all the time"

Who knows? Maybe someday I will become what the Tibetans call a sennin - a crazy old man of the mountains - half mystic, half madman. I doubt that, though some of you may say that I am already well along the way!!