Why I Trek
As I sat at night time on top of a rock in a remote clearing in the Kanchula Korak Musk Deer Sanctuary, in the Northwestern Himalayas, my gaze adjusted onto the picturesque night sky. There was no noise (light disturbance), not even the moon was to be seen. All I saw was a pitch black blanket on four sides and a starry dome, lit with a myriad of frequencies and energies, enclosing above. Only the silvery outline of the alpine forest was to be seen apart from the weak glow of my fluorescent camping tent. “Why did I come here?”, I asked myself. It is so easy to sit inside a cement box with glass panes and say that the Earth is a small planet in our galaxy but what about that do we truly experience? It is so easy for me to say that there exist 8.7 million species of distinct flora and fauna and yet we hardly notice the millipede in our backyard or the coucal in our man-made gardens. To know about it is one thing, and to experience it, with all its intensity, is another. And so I went...