2finally came the last day of the trip (or we thought so ) . I don't know what the reason was but i didn't feel like sleeping and though it was awkward i stayed up all night and that too without a company . whether it was loneliness or solitude i am not sure but there was something within me that told me that i needed to do so . Also it didn't make much of a difference as we slept around 10.30 and were supposed to wake up at 2 in the morning . yeah we woke up at 2 in the morning. the reason being that we had to climb the mountain and considering the heat of the day makes it more stressful , people opt to start climbing from 4 a.m in the morning . So amongst all the unidentified emotions I found one logical reason to not to sleep viz. it would be difficult for me to get up after sleeping peacefully for 3 hours , especially considering the fatigue that had started to settle in after three days of travel ( i wouldn't have done that if i knew what the future had in store for us) . anyways I woke up or rather got off my bedding at the scheduled time and got involved in the daily chores on morning which I usually did at least 4 hours later on any other day . the most chilling part of the process was the bath i took . the water was as if custom made to give people shivers. I had never felt tap water to be so cold , no not even in winters and right now is the time when summers are at its peak . anyways It was refreshing and was just the right thing to fill the body with a renewed energy and enthusiasm .
We came out of our rooms with the water bottles and other things that we had decided to accompany with us for the trip to the top of the mountain , which was house to shikharji . ( interestingly shikhar mean peak and the temple is at the peak of the mountain ) . i was not told by my friend that we wold be climbing this big a mountain . over the course of time we were to realize that we had to walk as much as 9 miles then to visit the temples on the top another 9 miles (there were many small ones) and finally to come down another 9 miles. i was cursing my luck . why did I were kitos instead of sneakers . also i was wearing a cotton trouser where a denim would have been an obvious choice . anywasy there was a temple inside the dharamshala , which we had to visit before starting the climb . It was the temple of bhomi baba sho is said to guide all the pilgrims to the topand bring them down in sound health . it was supposed to open at 3.45 but opened at 4.10 so we kinda stated late but what was basically irritating us was the anxiety that we had to hold on to longer . It was during this period of wait that i saw people who came and sold thin bamboo sticks that would help in the process of ascending . Of course i didnt feel the need for it and didn't get myself one . finally the temple opened and we all did the general prayer and bowed down three tines and prayed to recieve his guidance on the way . as we came out of the dharamshala and started waking up the slope started to get steeper . the route was made up of coal tar for the next couple of hundred meters .there after started the actual steep slope . the route we were to travel was well defined . It was made up of concrete and thus was pretty rough at times .Just think of the dwigamber Jains who walk up this route bare footed . We were a group of ten people out of which the two older ladies had opted for palanquins . the others I thought would move up together . I saw that the eldest person of our group , my friends eldest uncle would be left alone behind and thus I decided to accompany him also we were moving in the vicinity of the palanquins , which were being carrier by a group of four that synchronized their steps by the minutest measure possible . It was early in the morning the sun had not yet come up . I felt like I would be doomed to move up all the way with this person way more than thrice my age .I mean what in the world would we find in common to talk about . the other day he said that he liked to hear to cricket commentary but didn't like to make judgments or talk at length about it . That was a shattering thought that struck me because in India one thing that one should know about is cricket . no matter where you go whome you meet , if it is a stranger still you can talk to him or her about cricket at length and though the outcome is worthless but still you talk instead of looking at each others face . but what about this situation . But then as we moved ahead this man felt the urge to drink tea and we found a tea stall after traveling about an hour up the slope. during this period the discussion was mainly on how he was a tea addict in the greener years of his life and how he came over it . though such a topic meant that the responsibility of carrying it on was on his shoulders and his effort did break the shakles and we started conversing more and more freely and over various things , ranging from religion to life in remote areas of gujrat , to the religious politics of Gujarat and communist politics in west bengal and to the karma of a person . He is a very liberal person i realised and i was surprised to listen to what he said because he said he didnt gather much of education but still had a vast knowledge and an intellectual level of thinking that most of the educated urban apartment clan people never reach in life. It was amazing to see how much life teached a person . He has a whole lot of things bugging him in his life but he never utters a word about it , seemed as calm and cool as fedrer on grass court and at 68 was ready to match steps to step with me . We rested quite a number of times on the way at tea-stalls which gave some refreshing tea to the travellers so that they feel rejuvenated to pursue their path and get an assessment of the task that lied ahead . at times in our path we found a few dogs that were walking in front of us as if guiding us to the path we were to travel . these dogs are said to be blessed by bhomi baba and thus guide us on way . as we moved further ahead towards the completion of the first 9 mile of the trilogy the tea were replaced by lemon juice that we had to avoid dehydration . It was after finishing the first part of the journey that we found a lemonade stall . after resting there for around 15 minutes we moved ahead and found there were a few choices to make . there were three directions in which we could move . One lead to the shikarji , along the way there were subsequent small temples that were home to the footprints of various tirthankars that had meditated at the place . on the other side we had a way leading to parasnath through a path that took us to another peak of the mountain . and also there was a way leading down towards Jal-mandir . It was a temple in middle of a water shed . IT was being renovated . We found other members of our clan and proceeded towards the steep declining slope and it was then that i realized that moving down a slope can be more strenuous than moving up . but it was fun as I could just run the whole way , of course at times it was becoming difficult to control the speed . if i could run at that speed on flat ground i would become the fastest sprinter in the world . Anyways it was a very pretty site the temple , and we spenmt some time there after all the effort that we had put in to climb down and were to put in while climbing up . after that we came back to what i would call the choice-making-crossing . At this point we made an assessment that how much could we walk . We decided to give a skip to the main temple which was 9 miles away . We decided to move around the place visiting the footmarks of the tirthankars . We just kept moving and moving , quite aimlessly , moving up and down , right and left , up the slope and down the slope , even reaching places wher we feared being lost with no one to be seen . But fortunately as soon as we felt like this we found someone around the corner . At one point we were moving through a curved path that pretty much defined the shape of the mountain . It was such a great feeling to look at the scenery there . I wished there that i could fly . I felt like jumping of that place and glide through the air and have a feel of the oneness of the sky , the greens and the earth ( but i thought my life would give me more pleasure than that in years to come :grin: ). We were at par with the clouds and as we felt them approach us we felt how even nothingness gives us a sense of being. a whole cloud could pass through us without us realizing that . It does give a feeling of dampness , but really it is nowhere near something that can flood a whole city ( as it does every monsoon ) . The weather was a respite from the harsh sun that beated down on us the whole day . Then all of a sudden we found that in a matter of 15 minutes we were near the stairs leading to the temple that we once felt was at the peak of another mountain . We had certainly taken a detour without realizing it . Reaching to the top we found my friend and his cousin already out there . It was unspoken but decided that it was our last stop on the mountain and spend quite some time out there . then we started moving down . we went to a food stall had some palak pakodas there which hardly had any palak in it . but it was nice to have something hot in that ambiance . then we started the decline , visiting the daak-banglaa along the way . the decline as i had a brief experience earlier was pretty strenuous . though we were moving much quickly but still it puts a lot of strain on the ankles and knees . and this led to me repeatedly cursing my friend who didn't tell me about this or else i would have carried my sneakers along . Also I was wearing a cotton trousers which i didn't want to get spoiled . I would have loved to rough up my jeans out here . Alas ... . unlike the ascent , we just sat once while coming down . also as i was with my friend and his cousin I could take the liberty of taking the shortcuts that were a roughed up way that one could take to avoid a long curve of the concrete path . It took us quite a while to get down . when we were told that we had another 6 miles to go from the place where we rested , we weer kinda shocked . We kept meeting people of our clan ( or our group) and started moving along . We expected the journey down the mountain to be easier and shorter so it was really frustrating to keep walking and that is when most of us felt demoralized and started feeling tired . the spirit with which we started was diminishing . a thought popped up in my mind that may be it is true that all our feeling are after all dependent on our state of mind . Once again I stopped with the elderly uncle as I saw he was finding it difficult to walk down the slope . We took a considerable amount of time to complete what i would call the last leg of the journey . I bought a pain-relief ointment from a chemist and moved towards the dharamshala . Well we thought that it was finally over . Now all we had to do was catch the train that we had booked at the dharamshala. Well little did we know what was to follow . ( too much to be stuffed in one post )To be continued......
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