The Chilling night

by Tirth Dhami (India)

A leap into the unknown India

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It all started with a hope of expanding the scope of my subconscious mind by creating more memories, meeting new people, getting out of my personal space and more importantly, focusing on new career opportunities in my life. So I decided to be a backpacker and travel towards the North Indian region for a whole new experience. It all began on 24th of December when I boarded my train to Dehradun. I could see a lot of new faces and everyone seemed very excited about the journey. Most of them were solo travellers while others were in groups and some had come just to enjoy time with their loved ones. Everyone utilized the travelling time to know and get used to each other as we were going to spend the next 12 days together. There was this one guy who seemed very peculiar thoughout the journey. He caught my attention because of the intense look on his face. Soon we reached the base camp where I was going to challenge my physical and mental abilities. I had never been in a cold environment and sudden changes do affect us sometimes. The temperature was less than 5°C during the day and at night it used to drop down to -5 or even -15°C. We reached our first base camp named 'Sankri' when we all had an interactive session during dinner. Bonfire was arranged and everyone was having a very good time but suddenly the leader stood up and started briefing us about how we have to spend the next few days and who is going to share tents with whom and about the food timings and schedule as decided. The day nearly ended after this and everyone went inside their sleeping bag waiting for the fun to start. Next day the leader gave us a wake up call followed by morning exercise and a filling breakfast because we had a long way to go. We started our trek from approximately 6,400 Feet and we were told to gain altitude of nearly 9,200 feet on the very first day. I was named the silent guy as I hardly interacted with anyone but suddenly I became a helping hand for people who needed help in climbing. Being an athlete, I have a really good stamina and with proper health condition I can lift weight upto 25kgs. So to help others while climbing, some equipment from their backpack were transferred to my bag to make it easier for them to climb. We climbed and reached to our destination which is called 'Juda ka Talav'. Suddenly the wind started making noise. My legs started shivering and I could feel the chilling breeze piercing my skin. I ran inside the tent to get cozy and enter my sleeping bag to get some warmth but it turned out to be the coldest night of my life. I clearly remember it was 1:30 am and suddenly because of the heavy wind flow our tent started shaking and after a few seconds we realised that we were no longer inside our tents because the tent just flew away. I can never forget that moment as it was -22°C and I couldn't even feel my hands. It felt like every part of me was detached from my body and I couldn't even move a bit. The leader saw us and took immediate actions which were necessary at that point. I can never forget that night because the feeling of being stabbed thousands of times in less than a minute, I felt like my soul left my body and touched the other dimension. It was a horrifying experience that left a scar on my soul and to this day I can feel the chilling wind whenever I come in contact with such surroundings, but this incident made me stronger enabled me to explore my passion without any fear. I now feel a strong urge to constantly take up challenges and prove myself at every point of my life. Today this incident makes me look like a survivor whose soul was pushed to the edge but it bounced back and came back stronger to face what it thought it could not.