Treks transform us every time in its own way!

Trekking is always a rich experience, when embraced with open arms it has the power to transform us physically, mentally & emotionally.

Gearing up!

When we planned our first mother-daughter duo trek to Chopta-Tungnath-Chandrshila trek, I was certain that I needed to be double prepared to have my 10 year old daughter climb a Himalyan trek, though a beginner friendly trek. We started preparing ourselves for the trek 20 days before with a 30 minutes daily fitness routine comprising of fast walk, jog, cycling and climbing stairs.

Whenever anyone enquire us about vacation plan, my response would be "We are planning to go on a trek, hope it goes well", Meera would ask "Why are you not replying as we are going on a trek and always say planning to go". Smilingly I would reply, "It's always a plan, making it happen is in Bhagavan's grace." Though we prepare physically, the mental & emotional preparation is much more needed for a trek to happen successfully. This trek made us understand the real meaning behind these statements.

Two weeks before the trek had tense war situation of Operation Sindoor by India, so we were not sure if we could go ahead with our trek. By God's grace, it became normal and got informed by the Trekking organization "Trek The Himalayas" that the Trek is on as per the plan. It's a 3 days trek, we reached Dehradun airport, went to Rishikesh after a 45 minutes taxi drive and stayed in Swami Dayananda Saraswati Ashram.

On the first day morning, TTH trek team picked us from Rishikesh and took to Baniyakund. It was a slight descent hill drive of approximately 6 hours. We stayed on a Swiss cottage tent and went on a stroll to nearby meadow. Meera enjoyed the weather, new place and excited about the trek. There were totally 10 trekkers of which 8 were ladies. Our trek leader briefed us about the trek and asked us to get ready for the trek by 1 AM the following day. You read it right - early morning 1 AM, which will let us see sunrise from the summit among snowclad Himalayan mountains. Both of us ate dinner, packed backpacks and slept early at 8pm. We woke up at 1 AM got ready and reached the base camp. Trek team gave us some cooked black Chenna dhal which would give us energy during the trek. Meera liked it and ate a full bowl.

Twist on the trek!
Geared with head torches, hand gloves & jackets to cope up with below 10 degrees, we started our trek at 2 AM from Chopta village offering our prayers by ringing bells on the Tungnath arch on the entrance. It was quite dark, cold and silent without even birds chirping sound. While I was the last one on the group to climb, Meera joined others before me. After 20 minutes, I could see Meera slowing down a little and a bit uneasy. She started complaining of stomach pain and sat on a stone. With initial symptoms I could understand it to be gastric problems and gave Digene tablet to chew. We both walked together accompanied with the trek leader. Within another 15 minutes, she again sat down with stomach ache. We gave her something to drink, comforted her and started the climb again. 

Can we make it?

After an hour, she had tears in her eyes because of stomach ache and just sat on a rock. While I soothed her, trek leader gave her medicine. We were halfway through the 5km trek. It was quite dark and cold perhaps 5 degrees. I prayed to Bhagavan Shiva from the bottom of my heart to give strength to Meera to climb up and reach Tungnath, for we cannot rest here in an open freezing dark mountain place. We can neither go down nor stay there as it would worse Meera's health. The only option is to keep going and reach Tungnath which has some dhabas (hotels) to rest. 

Grace of Bhagavan Shankara

While I asked her to chant "Jai Sriram" and motivated her that she can climb up overcoming this challenge, I chanted "Jaya Jaya Shankara, Hara Hara Shankara" deeply with a bhava that He alone brought us here & He alone can take us to reach Tungnath. By taking breaks every 20 minutes, with silent prayers going inside, we reached Tungnath around 5.30 AM. The dhabas were open then and we both sat inside a dhaba just 100 metres away from the temple. While rest of the team went to Chandrashila summit which was another 1 km climb from Tungnath, Meera slept on my lap inside the dhaba. Cool breeze made me shiver a little and I realized from a visiting customer that the temperature was  -1 degrees. 

Birds chirping sound, snowclad mountains amidst beautiful ochre sunlight, warmth of the hot piping tea made two hours go in a jiffy. Around 7.30 AM Meera woke up and after she went motion she felt a bit relieved of gastric problems. Tungnath temple got opened at 6AM and I cajoled Meera to walk 100 meters more to have Tungnath darshan. She agreed and extended beyond her pains to climb up to the temple. She could not remove her shoes and walk as it was freezing -1 degrees, she had darshan from outside, while I went inside temple and offered my deep pranams to Tungnath Mahadev for blessing us to reach his abode in Tungnath - the highest Shiva temple in Kedar range and prayed for everyone's welfare.

Thrilling solo horse ride

On our way back, Meera ate few spoons of Khadi Chaval (buttermilk & rice) and agreed to hop on a horse back on her way back downhill. Thankfully our local guide accompanied the horse and Meera as the horse climbed down very fast. While the horse ride took 40 minutes to reach the entrance bell, I took 3 hours downhill and eager to see Meera. She was feeling better and waiting for my arrival.

When asked about her experience she chuckled and replied, "It's the early morning trek that I could complete even with stomach ache & the solo horse ride on the hills that made this trekking special!" For me, the trek certainly developed endurance to handle emergency health situations with poise and developed a deep and strong bhakti bhava towards Bhagavan by connecting through prayers.

It is these situations that makes trekking a rich experience that transform us in physical, mental & emotional aspects. This first Mother-Daughter duo trek certainly will be etched in our memory forever. Meera also understood the meaning of my response,

 "We plan to go on a trek and Bhagavan's grace makes it happen".

Here is a short video on our trek and Rishikesh ashram stay made by Meera 

Ganga Arti - 

@Pujya Swami Dayanand Saraswari ashram, Rishikesh

Ganga Arti @Swami Narayan ashram, Rishikesh

Ganga Maa flowing mellifluously

Om Tat Sat

Being a mother...

Being a mother gives you a special feeling.. We have always been taken cared of or cajoled by someone all these days.. For the first time in your life, this little baby loves and needs all your care.. This is a very special mother's feeling and we pamper our baby.. It seems as though he is our utmost priority and everything else comes second. You enjoy their pranks and yes, to be true, sometimes it does make you frustrated. Especially when you are taking care of him alone. Sometimes, losing our patience we might even scold them. The wonderful thing to appreciate and learn from them is, they "forget everything"! Yes they forget that Mom scolded and smile at us the next moment and wants us to hold them. :) Children indeed are gifted to have this character. Infact, we humans have them innate.. its just that as we grow, we get transformed and slowly lose it. I am remembered of a famous Tamil song குழந்தையும் தெய்வமும் குணத்தால் ஒன்று (kulanthayum deivamum gunathal ondru) Yes, this is also the song which I sang in my childhood and got some prize. My mother always says that she spent so many days making me sing that song... As I told earlier children "forget everything" and I have forgot how much she struggled with me.. :) Ah, this makes me think why youngsters don't appreciate or respect their parents affection! May be they "forgot everything" that how they have been grown up by their parents.
Okie, let me not diverge from what I intended to write in this post..

I thought I could scribble some of my experiences that might be valuable inputs for someone..

• First thing I would say is don't ever practise your baby to fall asleep after drinking milk. It will be seriously difficult to make them sleep otherwise.. Most importantly they will not sleep in your absence and also refuse to take any other milk in the later months.. Give them milk sometime before they go to sleep and put them to sleep in someway that suits you both.
• You can eat some ayurvedic legiyam (paste) that helps promoting secretion of breast milk. The breast milk usually gets scant after 2 or 3 months.. so it is a good idea to start consuming it earlier.
• It is a good idea to give breast/formula milk or water to the babies from the initial days using bottles. This helps to inculcate the habit of drinking from bottles. Though you might think that it might not be needed initially, in the later months some babies refuse to drink from bottles. And, this is the mistake I did!
• It is a good practice to keep them on the floor most of the time and hold them only when they cry or want to.. Don't ever hold them because you like it or they love it.. Babies always loves to be carried on.. But this will hinder their development progress and also you will see from 9 months the techniques they use to make you carry..  It is very important that you keep them on the floor after 5 months for they start learning to turn around, roll, crawl, sit, stand etc..
• If you are planning to send your baby to daycare, then it is a good idea to know the habits they follow beforehand. Habits like using potty,  eating habit, drinking habit, sleeping habit etc. This would really help the babies to accustom themselves with the daycare easily.
• Once babies start taking solids, I am sure that all mothers like their babies to be fed by them. Also babies like the same way. But from my experience, I would strongly recommend that its a good idea to practice feeding solids and formula milk by other close ones like Father, or grannies.. It is in fact true that during initial days they resist to eat and in some cases eat less when they are fed by others, but the practice makes it slowly better. This really help in future, when you are planning to send your baby to daycare or you have to join office back or you could not feed them for some reason!
• After seeing children in the daycare, I would say the best habit that we inculcated to Barathraam is sleeping without dummies or pacifiers (tutti in Finnish). I felt bad when I saw a 2 year old needing a dummy to sleep. While babies innately like to taste their fingers, it was during 3-4 months they develop a strong tendency to suck the fingers. We gently diverted his attention from sucking and yes, its a bit difficult. He cried many times in the night and we pacified him somehow and yes, sometimes we did use the dummies (sometimes in the night and while he is inside pram). But not always. At the end of 5th month, his liking towards sucking gradually reduced. And, after that he never wanted a dummy. I know that each baby is different, but if you spend sometime you can bring up your child without using dummies.

I will keep updating this post with my latest experiences and things to share..
I am sure that you have something useful to share. Please do pour in your thoughts.

Our sweet little Barathraam

On an auspicious day, we are blessed with our cute little baby Barathraam. I was wondering earlier before delivery  how I would take care of a small little baby for I din't even have courage to hold a small baby. However as everyone says, things change when it comes to own individuals. Yes, I could now say that one will acquire all needed skills to take care of a baby naturally and will become motherly.

One of the most important things about babies are that they are very good in observation and acquires inferential knowledge. So it is very important for the parents to watch out their activities. I have learned many good habits from my parents and grandma, and imbibed many good activities from them. To name a few, I imbibed श्रद्धा (shraddha - performing work with trust and faith), hardwork, dedication from my father, being tolerant, inquisitive, creative from my mother, and being perfect (including keeping things from where its taken), systematic from my grandma. When anyone says that Vidhya is good at this, I  attribute all those praises to my parents and grandma, for its because of the way they brought us.

Similarly, I believe Barathraam will find some good habits from us. So it is very important for us to follow some of our good habits consistently and at the same time acquire new good habits.

As the saying goes சொல்லி கொடுத்த வார்த்தையும், கட்டி கொடுத்த சோறும் எத்தனை நாளைக்கு ? - as, "How many days will the preached words and prepared lunch will stand?" meaning those advices which are kept told will have effect only few days. Only when an individual realise it by himself, he will do it lifelong. Children will not heed to our mere words or instructions. So for our words to be effective, we have to live those words by ourself.

I pass on this message to all those ought to be mothers - You will acquire motherly skills naturally, but you have to watch out your habits for your baby learns from you and not from your words.