When Lowell told me that she was an active backpacker, I was amazed and surprised. I was just getting to know her at that time, still am. We met at one of the meetup events in Singapore and have been good friends since then. She would call if she is up for anything during the weekends and would stick to it, no matter what, very much unlike me. Man, she flips off pretty bad if she is not able to keep up to the assignments for the day. I learned that the hard way, actually, when Hash run was on the time table and we were stuck at the National Museum in Singapore, a little more than expected.
Anyways, when she told me about her major backpacking trips across South America and the Middle-East and a few small ones in Thailand, Cambodia and couple of other places, I couldn’t help but feel ashamed of the fact that all I had done in the past few years can be easily summarized to just getting pretty wasted at night and waking up with a heavy hangover the next afternoon. And that was when I decided, firmly, that I should do it too.
I had plans of backpacking way before Lowell told me about her experiences. Trust me, I did and that was how the topic came up in the first place during our conversation; it was more of a new year To-Do kind of thing for me. I didn’t come up all of a sudden with it; the idea rather came into shape gradually. I was quite considering exploring photography for a long time, an inspiration gained from my friends, that I invested every saved penny and a bulk of my salary later in January, 2012 on a DSLR. Before buying the camera, I happened to take a trip to Malaysia to celebrate New Years with my friends. Now, I usually have this routine where my thoughts touch the peaks of philosophy when I get the window seat in a bus. During one of the sessions that night, while I was lecturing the “other-me”, I cornered on a beautiful idea that combined photography, backpacking and writing. And thus, after a month was born this blog: The Backpacking Chronicles.
New Year celebrations were fantastic and I returned back to Singapore, determined to buy a camera, very much influenced by my buddy Rishi. During one of the IT shows in Singapore, while I was strolling around the stalls just to check the prices, an impulse so strong came all over out of nowhere and the next thing I knew was walking out of there with a Nikon D5100 in my hands. Well, one-fourth of the requirements were completed then and there.
Next task was to walk around Singapore and clicks pics and get familiar with the camera. And so I did. Nikon tutorials, Clubsnap.com, advice from friends and what not; in the very little time I had after work, I was done analyzing and familiarizing with the simplest settings to get an average, well, in my terms, a fair shot. Thus was born my Flickr page and the job almost half done.
The next two tasks were easy: to pen these things down and create a blog where I can log the chronicles of my backpacking life - job was done sixty percent. And then, to get the few things required for backpacking – a bag, a torch, few sleazy t-shirts, an account in Couchsurfing.com [this will save me tremendous amounts on hotel bills] and the most important of all - the destination. Should I choose buy or decide on all these, I would complete almost eighty percent; the remaining twenty being to book the ticket and just get my lazy butt on a bus.
This got me talking to Lowell again. Being one of the veteran backpackers and a good friend, I thought it was better and easier to consult with her than Googling and so I asked. The requirement was a weekend backpacking session as I didn’t want to be out of office on Monday morning. To my relief, she too suggested the same – to start with small trips to nearby places first, find out the requirements and then extend as I go on. And so I decided I will do like that. So for now, Thailand is the first backpacking destination on my list. I will need to do more research on the requirements which I will let you know in another blog. Ratna, a friend of mine who is a couchsurfer, has offered me to hook me up with a couchsurfing friend of hers in Chiang Mai, the largest and the most culturally significant city in Thailand. Let’s hope things work out pretty well.
Anyways, two days later after the discussion with Lowell regarding the Thailand backpacking, she sent me an SMS about a hiking trip to Mt. Ophir, the 64th highest mountain in Malaysia and arguably the most climbed mountain the country [acc to Wiki]. I was first skeptical but then decided to go with it and I thought this might be a good topic to start my backpacking blog. So I agreed. Lowell volunteered to book the train tickets and I volunteered to get the energy bars and the water bottles. So the plan is like this: We catch a train from Woodlands in Singapore at 23:00, reach the foothills by 02:30 or maximum 03:00, pass the time playing cards or board games or sleeping and then start the climb by exact 06:00. Now our main target is to reach the waterfalls by Saturday evening after which we will decide if we have to carry on further all the way till we reach Malacca or retreat back, based on our energy levels. Yes, we do have guides with us and we are going impromptu.
And today, as I write this, I am still sitting in my office, waiting to leave asap and buy the important things required for the climb. So, this is just a head start to my backpacking blog. I will be writing more, the next one which will be on the Mt. Ophir trip and then the one after that, the Thailand backpacking trip. This is Vijith Vijayakumar signing off for now.
Off to conquer Mt. Ophir. Adios Amigos.
Image Courtesy: http://www.ryanbonneauphoto.com
