soliloquies in the outdoors
Cold, is all that they are, rocks in the high mountains, some basking in stasis, others churning in that slow glacial procession… concoctions of pressure in myriad forms, sharp volcanic outbursts or a gradual buildup of sediment… flaky or smooth, jagged or rounded, monoliths or pebbles, blunt prose or poetic allegories, they’re cold, all cold… …
Reminiscences from Bhyundar Khal, a high altitude Himalayan trek in Uttarakhand connecting the Valley of Flowers to Gamshali village near Tibetan border
‘twas perchance that we got to know of Chenap valley, which we did as our original plans went awry at the last moment… tucked in ‘twixt religious fervours, highways and hydropower more hedonistic that utilitarian, and the never-ending scrapes of JCB for last-mile connectivity, ‘tis purported to be a quieter alternative to Valley of Flowers, …
The lizard that jumped from a high Iroko tree to the ground said he would praise himself if no-one else did… – Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart the reptilian world has generally been designated to embody negative traits in the constructs of human imagination for as long as one can comprehend, from the sacred annals …
Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God. – John Muir the leitmotif of any mountain, any protrusion that can make its surroundings feel insignificant, would unarguably be divinity… the sanctitude offered by the higher climes more often that not …
The sky ambles blue, broods black and bleeds white… look at any high mountain panorama and you’d see the analogy ticking away incessantly through dawn and dusk, that play of shadows and light, of heat and cold, of hope and despair, the quintessential play of yin and yang if one were to ponder, or suffer, …