Day two of the diary — tents that fought back, a teacher who knew better, and the hungriest I’ve ever been
18 May 2008, remembered in 2026
We reached base camp at 7:30 AM. By 3 PM I had jumped off a cliff and would have fought someone for a plate of rice. Day two, and the mountains were just getting started with us.
Tents that fought back
The morning began with tent allotments, bunkmates, and an hour-long lecture on what to do and what not to do in the Himalayas. Then they handed us our tents and gave us an hour to pitch them.
I remember having a lot of fun and a lot of frustration at the same time. As soon as we hammered one side down, the other would pop out. Some of us laughed. Others groaned. And a third group found the groaning funnier than the tents.
Eventually the tent surrendered. We got maybe half an hour of rest before the horn sounded, calling us to assemble at the campfire point.
The Cliff
They took us rappelling.
Which, for a twelve-year-old me, was literally jumping off the side of a cliff. It did not matter that the instructor kept explaining the harness, the ropes, the second instructor on the ground holding my life in his hands so I wouldn’t fall. My brain had done the math: cliff, plus me, equals no. I was about to walk away when Rupa Ma’am came up to me.
“I know you’re scared. But trust me — you do not want to miss this
experience.”
So I climbed onto the edge of the cliff. Extremely reluctantly, I might add. The harness was fastened, and I began my descent, nervous the whole way until somewhere around halfway down, the fear quietly turned into laughter. By the time I reached the bottom, I was having fun. I stood there and waited for the rest of the group, feeling like I had survived something enormous.
Then came the walk down the rest of the mountain. The instructor told us: walk
sideways, you’ll have more grip. Half of us listened. The other half were still so excited from the rappelling that they forgot the mountain had an incline. A few kids slipped and got hurt on the way down nothing serious, but still.
The Hungriest We Ever Were
We reached base camp at almost 3 PM, and we hadn’t eaten lunch.
Imagine 68 extremely hungry twelve-year-olds who had just climbed down a mountain. I never met the people who cooked for us that day we always assumed it was our teachers. But whoever you were: I’m sorry for all the shouting and the over-excitement. We were hungry. That’s the only deference I have.
The evening was gentler. Sleeping bags were handed out, more briefings about the mountains, and then the campfire the real one this time, actually lit. We sat around it for a very long time, and dinner came to us right there.
And, as usual because apparently we’d made a habit of this by now we started singing loudly around the fire just to annoy our seniors, giggling the whole time, getting shouted at, going quiet, and then starting again. Eventually we surrendered for the second time that day and retired to our tents.
The Echo
Rupa Ma’am couldn’t make the cliff smaller or the ropes stronger. All she did was lend me her certainty until mine showed up.
I wonder how many things I’ve walked away from since, simply because no one was standing there saying you do not want to miss this.
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