c u on top - satyabrata dam

  When I consciously started climbing, just around my tenth birthday, I hadn’t really given it a thought that how cool it would be to reach the top of the mountain, far less climbing to the top of every country I would visit in future. The former consolidated in my mind when I reached my first summit atop Mt Kolahoi and witnessed the world from above. It was indescribable and absolutely divine. That climb, my first real summit, definitely sowed within me the seed of a summit - to reach there and to be able to look higher and beyond. In effect summits to me became a place from where I could see how many more summits awaited my arrival.   Through an extraordinary series of events when I first stepped out of India to another country, and on my first visit climbed the highest point of that country (France / Mt Blanc) it gave me another purpose for my travels, not only to discover, explore and befriend diverse people and witness glorious vistas of nature from all sorts of pl...

  A year that literally began for me at the roof of Africa, atop Kilimanjaro amidst eclectic group of friends and held uncharted possibilities has now come to its pre-destined end. That the year was unique is a hyperbolic understatement. It was downright unprecedented and never even imagined in my wildest fantasy and mind you I do have some magnificent flights of fancy.   2020 was a cataclysmic, apocalyptic, and to a very large extent pessimistic year for the entire planet. A pandemic of this proportion had never happened before in the human history and I pray to almighty may never be repeated. That it was necessary, some ruminated, if only to teach us humans a lesson in humility and to pause our all out war on annihilating our planet of her resources, including species of all kinds. Sadly as the year sunk into oblivion we haven’t learned any lessons at all. Anger, envy, hatred, cruelty and mistrust and all such human failings are very much still in the offing and perh...

At some point of time in my public life I did make a mention that if I hadn’t uploaded a blog post in 6 months then it should be safely assumed that I had finally crossed the Styx to the other side; which to be fair should have happened innumerable times already, notwithstanding my blog post frequency. Based upon this offhanded or highhanded (whichever you prefer) statement many of my well meaning friends and followers scattered around the planet assumed the obvious. And I do not blame them since that was indeed my desire, to see how the planet reacted to my demise so that I could witness it before I died. Much to my surprise and also some amount of despair, a global hunt ensued to prove the veracity of this assumption either way. Many of my friends (whom others thought had any clue, which they certainly hadn’t) were beseeched or waylaid by strangers at strange places both virtual and real seeking if they knew of my intra or inter planetary whereabouts. Social media (read: t...