Midnight among the mountains.

It was midnight and the rocks were taking a break. They were wind-worn, moist with fog and tired of supporting the flora and fauna around them. Like that wasn't enough, men had peed on them through the day, rubber-soled shoes had trampled on their rocky surfaces (they got their revenge though, turning slippery at places) and the behinds of many a human had mooned them. Just as they breathed their relief at having been left alone, what should they hear but the srcunching of wheels on gravel in the distance.

Two mini-buses full of over-enthusiastic midnight trekkers had just arrived!

They were filing out of the bus, forming a circle and...wait a minute, what are they saying? "Dangerous Deepu, Smart Sreeni, Jolly Jason, Gullible George, Perfect Pallavi..." this wasn't making sense. And why were they moving their hands towards and away from their chest like that, was it some sort of self-stabbing exercise? And, OMG! What was that funny hip thing they were doing??

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I refused to move my butt in the Juguju (my dance instructor's term for it is 'Rhonde', and elegantly so) and stayed put, watching the others in the circle: K shivering slightly - her wind cheater was brand new, smart, but highly lacking in providing protection from the cold; GK smoking on the side, his bulky backpack resting beside him; A with his camera; S laughing silently... and on the other half of the circle, all the techies trying to be cool trekkies. They wouldn't have been half as bad, if it wasn't for the fact that i heard two of them cracking Tiger Defense 101 jokes in the mini-bus - "What would you do if a tiger jumped over you? Catch its balls! Ha ha ha ha ha!"

We walked a kilometre on a road made of red soil to get on to the hill christened Kalwarbetta - one of the highest and steepest climbs in the Nandi range. At one point, it felt like the beginning of the Blairwitch Project - flashlights encountering void because they weren't powerful enough to penetrate the air to hit the hills on either side, fences made of dried, thorned bushes and sudden cave-ins of the road. To add to it, just before i left home my mother got weirdly emotional and asked me not to go because she had had a bad dream about me a few days ago.

The moment of ascent crept up slowly on us. It began innocently enough and i was thrilled to bits about actually doing it. By the first break, i couldn't catch up with my own breath, leave alone the rest of the fellow trekkers. The view behind was worth it though - much like the view key-jangling man in ET gets when he stands at the edge of the cliff/mountain. Two minutes later we were climbing again. I think it was at this point that i really began to lose it - my body began protesting, quietly admonishing me for not having gymmed that day so i could be prepared for the pain and shortness of breath. (K was humming songs all the way up. Kickboxing thrice a week must be much tougher.)

My vision blurred, my lungs gave up and i could only see darkness around me. (Duh.) A ray of light pierced the darkness and i heard the oracle speak, "Hey, are you okay? Do you want water? Sip it, don't gulp, you'll only get more tired." She was a vision of strength, stamina and motivation. Ashamed as i am to say it, i didn't let her leave my side through the rest of the trek. Her left hand pressing into the hollow of my back kept me moving throughout. In between, i lost my balance real bad and would have tumbled God-knows-how-many feet, but she was there to propel me forward. In short, i was a complete sissy.

Three-quarters of the way up, somebody shone the light on the oracle's face, and who should i see but Anita, a classmate from college! The rest of the trek was easy-breezy (!) because i had somebody to talk to. (P claims to know my year book by heart, that's how much catching up Anita had to do from me.)

After all the huffing and puffing, it was sort of an anti-climax when we reached the top of the hill because it came so abruptly. The once-erect fort of Tipu Sultan lay scattered in ruins, grass and lichen growing over the stones. It looked haunting and gorgeous. At least what we could see of it, because the fog was descending rapidly. We had three hours to kill before sunrise, and no tents or bonfire to keep us warm. Temperatures dropped so much that any minute Dementors would come flying at us out of the castle, wearing armours and crying "Tipu Sultan! Zindabad!". K sat huddled in seven layers of clothing (alright, five), P and GK constantly smoked, S was just standing and A for the better part of it was one among the circle of people who were playing games. I was walking around, giving K and P a hug (none for GK and S - the latter i didn't know too well, and the former was the 'mard ko sard nahi hota' types because he gave his jacket away to K), avoiding getting whammied by the wind and constantly thinking that i was possessed because i was seeing people where there weren't any.

Five 'o' clock came, and with it a strange vision of white floating cloth. As it approached us, we could just about make out the boy-man under the shawl asking us if we wanted water or biscuits. Five in the morning, in the middle of nowhere, selling water and biscuits? He was either a ghost or demented. The fog was still so thick that we could have happily cut ourselves big pieces of it and eaten it up. Which also meant that our chances of seeing the sunrise were next to none. Ouch, i thought, considering i was the one who'd told these guys about the 'full moon trek' and the 'magnificent sunrise' on Kalwarbetta. The guilt weighed me down along with the fog.

Six fifteen, and the sun still refused to make its presence known. Reluctantly, we started our descent. This time, i was exhausted but didn't give up. GK had said that the uphill climb would be terrible, but it would seem worth it when we started down. He was right - the world looked like something else from up there - virgin greens and browns, giant white fluffs moving in the sky casting shadows on the ground, water bodies sprinkled randomly... a part of Bangalore that was more hill station and less IT city.

Surprisingly, the downward journey seemed much, much longer than the climb. When i reached the base, i turned around and asked GK who was walking behind me, "F***, we climbed that much?" He went, "No." Pause. "We climbed much higher." Oh freak. Not bad at all.

In the mini-bus, our heads nodded off as our brains tried to shrug away the numbness. K was sleeping on my shoulder and my head was buried so deep in my chest that if the bus had jerked, it would have snapped and rolled over. I must have been snoring, because I felt somebody tap my shoulder - A, sitting next to me, half-asleep himself, did an imitation of brail and asked me to use his shoulder to sleep on.

Ten in the morning, i reached home, well-spent. Would i do a trek again? Yeah. Maybe. In a thousand years.

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"*&!&#!@^$&^$&^)(!#%$%", cursed the rocks. Thank God the intruders were off, especially the fat-assed woman constantly panting and whimpering like a little child. Her name was just apt for her - Nitwit something. So thinking, the rocks and trees and earthworms relaxed a little, letting the early morning dew cool their temper. But the bliss was short-lived. Hordes of vehicles arrived, bringing with them some people, plenty of food and a bit of alcohol. Oh God! Would they do the hip-thing too??