As a child I remember going on
various holidays in the hills. No Bengali vacation is ever complete without a
trip to Darjeeling or Gangtok. This was back in my childhood when I visited
Darjeeling. The Mall Road in Darjeeling is quite famous for some great restaurants,
scores of handloom shops and quite a big population of horses! Going for a horse ride through the entire
stretch of road there is the favorite past time of all tourists in Darjeeling.
And I gave in to it and went for a horse ride. I must be some 6 or 7 year old
that time.
This horse riding is nothing like
a horse riding that we understand from the movies or anything. They simply
strut and walk in the slowest pace possible and you get to enjoy the scenery of
the lush green hills around you. Now these horses have this uncanny habit of
walking on the extreme edge of the road. I don’t know if they are trained that
way to give you a scare or something else. So every time I pushed it towards
the road it came back walking on the earthen stretch that you have between the
road and the deep gorges. And the sight of the depth of green scared the hell
out of me. It was a scary horse ride of the life where any moment you could
have fallen down the slopes.
When I came to Bangalore later
with work we used to plan several weekend trips with friends. Bangalore is a
lovely place with great connectivity to many tourist spots. We went rock
climbing at one instance. The fear of height was like a latent force in my mind
and I had forgotten almost about it. We trekked for a few hours and then
climbed up this hillock. As we started climbing up – the first moment I saw
down I felt the fear rising through my body. Can I do this? What if I fall?
What if I broke my legs? Too many thoughts clouded my mind. But I held on to my
nerves. It’s best to resist looking down or looking back. And without shifting
my eye sight anywhere other than the top of the hillock I climbed up along with
my friends.
Reaching the top gave a huge joy
and boost to my morale. The light breeze the morning sun shine calmed us down. I
dared to look down the depth from top and it definitely was scary. But now that
we were on top the fear was little less. May be I had just risen above my fear.
We sat there chatting on top for a long time and the trainer explained how many
groups of youngsters came climbing there and how some of them always waited at
the base and never muster the courage to climb up!
And guess what I have done. Much
later when we were planning to buy our own apartment in Bangalore we picked up
one on the 12th floor!! So now I don’t mind looking down from my 12th
floor balcony and enjoy the awesome view.
Check out this video by Mountain Dew on a very similar incident
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