I was twelve, and my backpack was nearly as big as I was. Standing in
Hyderabad airport on the morning of 17th May 2008, I had no idea I was packing for a memory that would outlast almost everything else from that year. Sixth grade. Sixty-eight kids. Five teachers. And the Himalayas waiting at the other end.
Sixty-Eight of Us, and the Sky Ahead
It was a school trekking excursion — the kind of thing that sounds simple on a
notice board and turns into an expedition the moment it begins.
Our destination was a camp set up for us in the Chandrakhani range of Himachal Pradesh, at a base camp roughly 6,700 feet above sea level. There was no direct way to get there. So day one was all travel — a flight from Hyderabad to Delhi, and from Delhi, a hired bus to carry us into the mountains.
Now, imagine sixty-eight extremely, amazingly energetic twelve-year-olds. And five teachers.
Thinking about it today, I can’t help but laugh — not at us, but at what must have been going through our teachers’ heads.
The Grown-Ups Who Came With Us
It’s strange how much detail my younger self held on to. Right down to what myteachers were wearing.
First, Rupa Ma’am — my class teacher that year, and our biology teacher. A
subject I struggled with absolutely, and yet, somehow, one of my favourite
teachers. She was dressed in all black with a beanie, and while I imagine her
mind was busy calculating how to control sixty-eight overexcited kids, the smile on her face told my younger self only one thing: she was just as excited to go into the mountains as we were. She also helped me buy a present for my mother on that trip — a beautiful painting on a wooden trunk. It still rests in our showcase today.
Then there was Mr. Martin, our sports teacher. I was never a great player,
though I did decently well at basketball. My younger self remembers him in red and black sportswear, absolutely keeping everyone in line. And believe me when I say this — to a kid like me, he was the only one as scary as the principal. Maybe even scarier. (For the record, our principal wasn’t scary at all. He was a fun guy. But the sports teacher? Absolutely terrifying.)
Then our yoga teacher, Mr. Srinivas — who, to my younger self, seemed like the quietest teacher of them all. All I remember is that he was ready to do yoga in the mountains. And when I injured myself later on that trip — a story for a future article — he was kind enough to stay back with me and watch crappy TV in the middle of the Himalayas. Which is, by far, one of the best things a teacher has ever done for me. Thank you, sir.
And lastly, our physics teacher — who was already giving us homework. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but I think it was something along the lines of examine the psychological and physiological effects of the Himalayas. Trust me, for a twelve-year-old on a trip, that was not exciting at all. But in hindsight, I think I should thank him too. He gave me the basis for the logic I use every day.
Tents at Sixty-Seven Hundred Feet
By the time the bus finally released us, the city felt like something from another life. The first thing I remember seeing when we arrived was a big mountain covered in snow. I asked a person close by — much older than me, almost my teachers’ age — what it was. He said it was Mount Kailash. Or at least, that’s what my twelve-year-old brain decided he said. In hindsight, it was probably what they call Friendship Peak. But it didn’t matter. Every time I stepped out of my tent, I would put my hands together in prayer.
To my recollection, day one ended with us being grouped off — five or six kids to a tent at the base camp. Sixty-eight of us, zipped into little fabric homes under a sky we’d only ever seen in textbooks.
The mountains hadn’t even started yet.
The Echo
A painting bought by a twelve-year-old still sits in our showcase, eighteen
years later.
And somewhere, that same boy still folds his hands at a mountain that was
never Kailash.
Maybe that’s what mountains do — they don’t just hold snow. They hold the
people we were when we first saw them.
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