Adventure-Travel

I’ve been wanting to scout out the Izta-Popo national park ever since I got a sneak peek at the volcanoes while in Ikea a few months ago. Several blogs pointed at exploring this region by doing the La Joya traverse which essentially gets one to the base of the Iztaccihuatl volcano. I head out this morning to Amecameca - a small quaint town to the east of Mexico City. The bus that left TAPO [Terminal de Autobuses de Pasajeros de Oriente] around 0700 only got to Amecameca by 0900. Should have left earlier! From there at the Centro, I was able to hop into a cab that got me to Paso de Cortes around 0930. ...

At 12,220 ft and after a 3-hour climb, it felt like home and more importantly I felt real strong. This was my first decent hike in quite some time now and I was pleasantly surprised my body wasn’t really complaining. Early this month, M and I spoke about getting back into the hiking circuit. It’s been about 9 months that we’ve moved to CDMX and we’ve covered a decent bunch of the touristy stuff. CDMX has so many good hikes to offer and quite a few are reasonably accessible from the city limits. With work-travel, visitors and other schedule conflicts; we felt it was reasonable for us to fit in one camping trip and one exploratory hike very month. ...

The initial plan was to hike up to Greenleaf hut by the Old bridle trail and summit Mt. Lafayette at the crack of dawn. Sunrise on the ridge would have been terrific and the switchbacks on the way down would have been just perfect! However, Mountain weather forecast on Thursday indicated a cold front approaching on Friday night - temps dropping down to 3 F! We decided to shift this to a day hike instead. ...

Appa’s been mentioning Luray Caverns for a while now, so we decided to head there this weekend. He did pretty well despite his knees giving him a tough time. ‘Oh so worth it. Simbly beautiful’ - his words! While at it, we got our annual national parks pass and decided to do the scenic drive in Shenandoah. S had a terrific time hopping on top of the car and addressing the wilderness at almost every pull-over area. ...

This labor day weekend, the fam VRBOd a pretty nice woodsy property in the Poconos. It’s been years since some of us have met! The adults had some great time together just winding down while the kids literally brought the place down. The property had direct access to the Beltzville lake and almost everyone took to the water. A first of kinds…The kayaks weren’t the best maintained and a couple of us did take some falls in the water. Life jackets came in super handy! So thankful I learnt swimming early on. This weekend did bring out the outdoorsy flair from everyone. ...

L made me promise on Saturday night that I wouldn’t cancel the hike next morning. She had every reason to be doubtful since we’d cancelled the Rajgad hike earlier today. After our K2S hike last night neither Ankur nor I were in a mood to venture out in the heat. What we didn’t know however was that she traded a sleepover with her friend for the Saturday morning hike to Rajgad. With us on the hills all last night and bad network reception things fell between the cracks. Amends were made and we chalked out a plan to head to Lohagad/Visapur on Sunday first thing in the morning. ...

[caption id=“attachment_37938” align=“aligncenter” width=“1200”] Sinhagad at a distance. This picture is from on of my previous hikes.[/caption] Sharp at 0600 as we finally reach the road that winds up to Sinhagad, Ankur and I take a moment to savor the twilight chill. The last 7.5 hours has been nothing short of mesmerizing and rewarding. Just as it was twelve years ago when I did this hike with a much larger group. ...

‘Urbanization’ peeking in quite adjacent to the Hauz Khas fort. This beautiful reservoir and the surrounding wooded area sealed the deal! Spent quite some time exploring around here this evening. Can’t wait to introduce M&S to this place.

The Arabian sea - shimmering bright orange with the diffused reflection of the dusking sun, was way too tempting. With strong currents and offshore winds, It’s been an intense couple hours. Not much wave riding for all that paddling. Before we called it a day, I decided to paddle one last time past the frothy whites and onto the swells. For a few minutes, the water seemed super serene. Calm enough for me to visualize dolphins far in the distance. Folks who’d been here earlier in the morning had a good spotting and it would have been lovely to spot them now as the sun was slowly setting. And suddenly something didn’t seem that right. Another look at the water and I could see what I should have caught a few seconds before. Even before I could properly pop on the board, the swell quickly built momentum and yanked the board off my feet. Gravity, raw energy, power that looks so beautiful on the surface and all that connects these, unforgivingly engulfed me in their churn and royally spat me on the beach after a few seconds - though what felt like eternity. So much for that glorious sunset on the board! ...

With quite a few developments on the personal front, the last few months has kept me quite ‘busy’. Despite Covid, I did a bunch of travel which is always nice! Last August, Appa kinda lost his patience and wanted to make a trip to India. We figured September was the most optimal time and I flew over to MD to accompany him back. With just a day off work, I was able to finagle a whirlwind weekend trip to the US and back. M and S head over to the states in October to be a bit of a help in MD while I looked after two grand old men here in India. It’s been a while that I’ve done this and but for a few rough days, I loved spending time helping them accomplish what they wanted to over the course of three months. Appa was able to get most of his ‘admin’ stuff done and more importantly got to spend time with his younger brother. ...