Geotourism: Romania

Note:

The following was published in the newsletter of my former employer. One of the monthly features was a travel article to a place of geological interest. I wrote this piece after returning from a wonderful, two-week trip to Romania in 2015.

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Back in the good old days when vampires didn’t wear makeup or wreak havoc at the box office with terrible movies, they lived peaceful lives in quaint Transylvanian castles, terrifying peasants and scaring away nosy Ottomans. This month’s Geotour takes readers to Romania, a land of castles, unfiltered beer, and spectacular geology.

Bucharest, the most common port of entry for travelers, is interesting with the juxtaposition of the old town of the 18^th century with the traces of the communist regime of the 1980s and the party lifestyle of youth today. Two days are enough to explore Bucharest, which boasts several attractions including the Palatul Parlamentului (the world’s second largest building after the Pentagon), the famous Case cu Bere (Bucharest’s oldest pub, serving unfiltered beer on tap), and the Herastrau Park with its sailing boats and floating cafes.

Stained glass windows at Casa cu Bere

The geology starts in Sinaia, Jewel of the Carpathians, two hours away by train. A popular hill resort and former summer getaway of the Romanian monarchy, Sinaia has something to offer travelers of all tastes. The Castelul Peles, built in the early 19^th century by King Carol 1, is the first stop with handsome interiors dedicated to the Turkish, French, Italian, and Romanian cultures.

The Peles Castle in Sinaia

Hiking trails to the Bucegi Mountains National Park begin at the nearby town of Busteni. A cable car is available to ferry people to the top, with breathtaking views of limestone cliffs along the way. Bucegi is famous for its rock formations, the Sphinx and Babele, rock formations built out of glacial sediments. Glacial erratics of granite and limestone are encountered within the sandstones, and limestone caverns are a short hiking distance away. The highlight though is the trek up to the park and back, a round trip that takes close to eight hours through coniferous forests, rope bridges, and glaciers cutting through limestone.

The Sphinx, carved out of glacial till, with tiny geologist for scale.

Hiking down from Bucegi National Park

The final stop on the tour is Brasov, the centre of Dracula country. Founded by the Teutonic Knights in the 13^th century, Brasov is famous for its cobbled streets, fortifications and watch towers, and most of all, the famous Black Church. Devastated by a fire during the Turkish War between the Ottomans and Habsburgs in the 17^th century, the church’s blackened façade gave it its new name. The Bran Castle, supposedly one of the inspirations for Bram Stoker’s Dracula (though Stoker never visited Romania himself) is nearby and makes for a good day trip. Brasov’s geology is to be marveled at as well, with the Valea Cetatii caves close at hand. A short tour conducted by speleologists from Brasov is the usual way to visit, but advance notice lets you join experienced cavers in a two hour crawl through the caverns. The Brasov Philharmonic (though stripped down to five performers) plays inside the caves once a week as well.

Romanian food is definitely great for meat-lovers (Mici, Romanian meatballs with potatoes is particularly recommended), but soups are a big part of the menu almost everywhere and can be a tasty option. Palinca, or plum liqueur, is a local favourite and is surprisingly pleasant when sipped, but at the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder. I was happy to add a bottle to my growing collection of unusual liquor from abroad!

  

A Geologist Writes About His Rock Collection (Part 1 of Many)

On an indeterminate day in ~ 1996, I collected my first mineral specimen. I was about 6 years old at the time, and like many of my antiquity did not know the difference between a rock and a mineral. So I called my fledgling collection a rock collection and it came to be called a rock collection.

12 years later, I had the pleasure of answering firmly in the affirmative when a couple of unlucky moving company workers asked of the (moderately heavy) boxes they carried to my new home in Bangalore: "What do you have in here, rocks?!"

10 years further on, and I'm moving house again. Unfortunately, my rock collection couldn't come along this time and I'm not certain when I'll next see it.

If that last line sounded to you like it was dunked in a deliciously warm mug of emotion, you're right. People become geologists for all kinds of reasons. Among my geologist acquaintances are those who embarked down that rocky road because of the allure of the oil industry, those whose first career choice in medicine or engineering failed, and even a few who took it up simply because it was "something different" in an engineering obsessed country. The driving force behind my decision to study geology was an almost irrational fascination about the Earth and its products, a desire itself rooted in the beautiful mineral and rock specimens that occupied my home for so long.

I thought I'd write a little about my collection of rocks, far away as it is now, as a means of reliving the moments when I collected them. My rock collection is more than a few quartz, zeolite, fossil, ore, and rock specimens. My collection of rocks is a collection of memories.

Blue Chalcedony

Chalcedony is a kind of quartz. Made up of  crystals, tiny and numerous, chalcedony is given the quaint yet now modern sounding descriptor "cryptocrystalline". Called agate or onyx when banded, or carnelian, chrysophrase, or sardonyx when coloured, chalcedony represents the triumph of nucleation over growth, the two processes that compete to create crystals. On a blazing summers day in 1998 Nashik, I trekked up Ramshej Fort to see Long-Billed Vultures nest. Somewhere along the way a glint of blue caught my eye, and I wiped away the mud on a boulder to reveal a vein of bright blue chalcedony. My poor father, who happened to be with me at the time, soon found himself on his knees, chipping away at the vein with a piece of basalt I had helpfully commandeered for him. This would not be the first time he did something like this. Some time later, I held the specimen up to the light and marvelled at its colour. The colour of minerals is what attracted me to them in the first place, led me to collect and study them as an amateur, and ultimately write my master's thesis on them.

Colourless Apophyllite

There is no dearth of dirty jokes in the geological sciences given our colourful technical vocabulary. One of my favourite geological terms is cleavage, the property of certain minerals to split along preferred crystallographic planes due to weak bonding. Apophyllite is a silicate mineral in the tetragonal crystal system that displays stunning basal (or pinacoidal if you like even fancier terms) cleavage, meaning that its crystals tends to break, quite easily, in directions parallel to their bases. Before I knew what cleavage was (mineralogical, or well, the other kind), I was fascinated by the razor thin reflective surfaces I saw in apophyllite crystals. My great uncle, a retired GSI geologist and one of my inspirations to take up geology, bequeathed unto me a pocket lens that I used to gaze deep into my apophyllite crystals. On one such occasion, carelessness led to the crystal slipping from my grasp and falling to the floor, splitting in two along the surface my eye was so keen to study. In my first ever mineralogy class as an undergrad, I learned what that surface was, why the crystal broke along it, and that one of the signs of a seasoned geologist is the ability to resist chuckling when someone says "cleavage" in class.

Pelitic Granulite

In 2011, I visited the South Delhi Fold Belt for three weeks of geological fieldwork. The fact that we were in Gujarat, a famously "dry" state, meant that we actually had to work instead of indulging in bottled pleasure every evening the way most respectable geologists do. On one of our traverses, we came across a massive outcrop of pelitic granulite, remnants of shale that had been buried deep in the Earth's crust, metamorphosed, and finally exhumed in a shiny, banded avatar. The granulite, with its pink leucosome bands and black melanosome bands, would look perfect in my display cabinet and so I set out to collect a sample with my trusty Estwing E320. Now, as someone accustomed to working in basaltic terrain with only minor exposure to metamorphic rocks, I hadn't a clue about how hard these rocks really were: something I was soon to discover at the expense of my hands which were bloodied and bruised by the time I had collected a reasonably sized sample. On this occasion, the term "hand-specimen" as used by many a geologist, could apply just as easily to the granulite I had laboriously extricated from the rock mass as it could to my own appendages that were red, swollen, and covered in all manners of cuts and bruises.

......

To be continued... 

See you later, Snout.

Zorro, my lovely black Labrador, died yesterday at the ripe old age of 13. He was a simple dog who valued his privacy and despite having touched the lives of many people through the years preferred a quiet funeral. I decided nevertheless that a eulogy of sorts was warranted and thought I'd publish it here.

I met Zorro in August 2005, a month before my 15th birthday. My mother picked me up from school one day and we went to meet Zorro at his old home. His owners didn't want him any longer and asked his vet if he knew anyone who was interested in adopting an 8-month old black Lab. The vet had visited us a few days earlier to administer an injection to our crotchety old Cocker Spaniel, Bandit, and told my mother about Blacky, as Zorro was then known.

I caught a glimpse of Zorro, black as night with a bright pink tongue, as I opened the gate to his owners' home. In the time I took to walk up to him, he planned his attack and sprung at me, knocking me over with a well aimed jump to my chest. He proceeded to lick, nip, and slobber all over me, making it clear that he approved and was ready to adopt us. He clearly knew what he was doing.

We packed him up into our car and drove home. Uncertain of whether or not he'd wreck my room at night, I tied his leash to the leg of my bed. I awoke the next morning to find him snuggled up comfortably next to me and the leash in tatters on the floor.

I like to think Zorro was simply meant to be our dog. My house was full of books, and Zorro quickly took to reading many of them. He devoured the Complete Works of Oscar Wilde and was a regular consumer of the journalistic efforts of the Economic Times and The Times of India. He sometimes suffered from indigestion, and I have little doubt which of these publications was the cause. He patiently worked his way through Anita Desai's The Village by the Sea but seemed to lose interest in reading after that. Having read the book myself, I can attest to the fact that Zorro must have found it hard to swallow.

He tried very hard to make friends with Bandit who was himself well into retirement when Zorro joined our family. Zorro lay down in front of Bandit with his tail wagging, but received only low-pitched growls in return. I like to think that Bandit and Zorro would fit perfectly into Ogden Nash's Two Dogs Have I. When Bandit suffered with gastroenteritis, Zorro sat by his side for days, gently prodding his stomach from time to time as if to check on him. When Bandit finally died, Zorro sulked for days at the loss of his mentor. He bravely took up Bandit's duties of demanding walks, being greedy, and generally behaving like an ass all the time. He excelled at the last of these, prompting us to call him Ass just as much as we called him Zorro, Black Blockhead, Snout, or any other of a number of names.

Zorro loved travelling in the car. He and my mother would drop me to the bus stop every morning before school, and Zorro would eagerly await the arrival of the bus so that he could occupy my seat in the front. This practice was so intriguing to passers by that I was asked about my dog by fellow students, the bus driver, and the bus conductor. Up to the very last day of his life, where he struggled to even stand up because of his weakness, Zorro's reaction to the jingling of the car keys was quite the spectacle: he'd almost jump off his mattress and bound to the door, grunting and hopping with excitement. Dogs can teach people a lot, but the most valuable lesson I've had from Zorro is to love life and use every opportunity to the maximum.

His love for travelling took him to Goa, Wayanad, Kolar, Ranganthittu Bird Sanctuary, and more. He blubbered at the sight of deer and elephants in Nagarhole National Park, swam to save his own life in Mobor Beach in Goa, and snouted at crocodiles in a Coracle in Ranganthittu. When we moved to Bangalore and settled into our new flat, we once took Zorro down to the swimming pool. When my sister and I jumped into the water, Zorro started to panic and jumped in to save us. Shortly after, a sign appeared asking swimmers to leave their pets at home. Hardly a week into his new home and Zorro had already made an unforgettable impression.

Not one to confine himself to a single set of interests, Zorro dabbled in dance and show business. His talents were soon noticed and he was invited to star in his own dance video where he performed Michael Jackson's Moonwalk to perfection. His humble and gentle nature however led him to eschew fame in favour of a life spent sleeping on his fat mattress, supervising my mother in the kitchen, and playing with toys that we brought him from as far away as The Netherlands and the USA.

We'll miss you, Zorro! Take care wherever you are and don't stop snouting, Moonwalking, and behaving like an ass!

  

A Playlist for the 2018 Tata Mumbai Marathon

In a little over a month, I'll travel to Bombay to run my first marathon: the Tata Mumbai Marathon 2018.

I ran all my previous long-distance events without accompanying music because I wanted to experience every minute to the hilt. This time, with 42.2 km and a lot of minutes to experience, I thought I'd better have some music. The prospect of the Wall, and the motivation I'd need to beat it, are major factors in making this decision.

The purpose of this blog therefore is to list the songs I think I'd want to accompany me on my run. A secondary objective is to have readers make suggestions for songs they think might serve me well. Therefore, this blog will be subject to change as and when I receive suggestions. The way I've written the blog so far may make it sound like I'm using songs as tools rather than for sheer listening pleasure. This is true in part: while running long distances, and especially marathons, having the right music can really help. That being said, I'm not using beats or rhythm to pace myself: the songs are purely to distract from the physical torture. The songs listed below are therefore mostly jumpy, cheerful, or guitar heavy. Some I know I want because they have certain characteristics. Others simply came to mind at random.

1. Astronomy (Metallica Cover): Oh wow. The guitars. The "Hey!"s. The trippy lyrics. I want this song to be playing when I hit the wall.

2. Cat Scratch Fever (Motorhead Cover): Lemmy's gravelly voice is the perfect accompaniment to running on roads gravelly or otherwise.

3. Galway Girl (Ed Sheeran): If you're a close friend reading this, don't say anything. Yes, I've started listening to Ed Sheeran. No, he's not my new all-time favourite artist. But I do like this song. It's cheerful and fast and just about right for marathon running.

4. The Trooper (Iron Maiden): Another Wall song. The Light Brigade charging the Russians is pretty much equivalent to us tired runners charging the finish line.

5. The Boys of Summer (Don Henley): Very senti, yes. But it's got the pace and the lyrics and it evokes the right memories.

6. The Heart of Rock and Roll (Huey Lewis and the News): Jumpy and good to sing along to, though I probably shouldn't do that.

7. Born to Be Wild (Steppenwolf): apparently the villain in the new Justic League movie is called Steppenwolf. I'm not going to waste my time watching it, but I will listen to the song while running.

8. Two Princes (Spin Doctors):

9. Brown Eyed Girl (Van Morrison):

10. Tunnel of Love (Dire Straits): I've a very strong feeling that won't be the last Dire Straits song on this list.

11. Modern Love (David Bowie):

12. Child in Time (Deep Purple):

13. Kashmir (Led Zeppelin, Celebration Day Version):

14. Time (Pink Floyd):

15. More Than A Feeling (Boston):

16. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (Black Sabbath):

17. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (ACDC):

18: Stranglehold (Ted Nugent):

19. Short Skirt, Long Jacket (Cake):

20. Tom Sawyer (Rush):

21. Breaking the Law (Judas Priest): Because the video is ridiculous and thinking about it will cheer me up.

22. Les Champs Elysees (Joe Dassin):

23. Cemetery Gates (Pantera):

24. Paranoid Android (Radiohead):

25: Run Like Hell (Pink Floyd):

26: Rock and Roll (Led Zeppelin, Celebration Day Version):

27: War Pigs (Cake): The second Cake song on my playlist. I have a feeling there'll be more!

28. Save Tonight (Eagle-Eye Cherry):

29. Are You Gonna Be My Girl (Jet):

30. Am I Evil (Diamond Head):

31. Sunshine of Your Love (Cream):

32. Walk of Life (Dire Straits):

33. Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming (Deep Purple):

Fake Accents

Wait, what?

Another blog post? But I just published one the day before yesterday! Is my perennial laziness finally waning? Nope. I just feel like writing and hey, why not?

Okay, so fake accents.

We've all met that guy. Or girl. Or maybe a number of guys and girls. You know the kind I'm talking about: the ones who've gone abroad for some (mostly short) span of time and returned to the motherland with an accent. I've noticed that British and American are the most popular fake accents out there. Somehow nobody wants to come back with a Singaporean accent, even though it's a pretty popular destination for tourists and business folk. My theory is that people don't find Singapore as glamorous or show-off worthy.

I know a fair number of people who went to Old Blighty and I have concluded that of all the accents out there, the British one is either:

1. The hardest to shake.

2. The easiest to put on.

3. Perceived as the most impressive.

I must admit, putting on a British accent IS fun. I've tried it on occasion, especially when quoting P.G. Wodehouse. There's nothing quite so satisfying as saying "Tinkerty tonk" with a degree of stiffness in the region of the upper lip.

But would I do it consistently over a prolonged period of time? No. It hurts. After a while my face begins to feel like what Voldemort's must. Nope, the facial discomfort of a stiff-upper lip is too much to handle.

Okay then. What else? 

Back when I was in The Hague, my favourite pub was this Irish place called O'Casey's. I started going there for the pub quizzes and Guinness and before long I was regular enough for the chaps behind the counter to start calling me by my first name. Good times. I decided I'd try out an Irish accent and did so for an entire evening. Although it was a lot of fun, it was even more tiring than the British one and so I laid it to rest.

Taking a cue from some of my colleagues at the former workplace, I learned there were ways to circumvent the difficulties any particular accent posed. A college senior (who as far as I could tell had never spent any considerable time in the US of A) used to dish out a pretty decent American accent. She'd butterrrr her toast, and take a break at the waterrrr coolerrrr where we'd discuss the thangs going on at wurrrk and in general. Of course, her Bengali roots did show themselves especially when it came to switching As with Os (still can't figure out why they don't say Kolkoto instead of Kolkata).

Another person, one of those YOLO, FOMO kind of chaps, decided to up the stakes. He'd been to a bunch of places and decided that no single accent was good enough for him. I'm not sure what he wanted to sound like, but in the end it seemed like all his accents had wound up in some kind of bacchanalia with regrettable events occurring afterwards. The results, which took a lot less than 9 months to show themselves, was a sort of American-British-Indian-Dutch-Spanish-Whateverelsehaveyou hybrid. Dumbass.

But, all said and done, I DO sympathize and am guilty of putting on a fake accent myself. You don't believe?

In college, I took a week's trip to the USA. And not just anywhere in the USA. To Cambridge. That's across the river from Boston. I thought I was prepared to order Clam Chowdah in typical Boston fashion, but the accent defeated me. To demonstrate what a Boston accent's like, here's Matt Damon on The Late Late Show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXSjCJvN5Zc

Halfway through my trip I realised I'd never be able to acquire an accent like that. But I was determined to go back to college and impress everyone with a brand new accent. So I went ahead and walked into class with something that sounded like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6VX8qFlxK0

(The accent only; not the dialogue. Back then I was 'umbble geologist from Indiranagaraaa.)

Some of my friends have pointed out (and these are the Xavier's bunch who have their own range of accents depending on which part of Bombay they're from) that I have a Tamil twang to my voice.

Now this is where I must concede that I sometimes fake accents on a consistent basis. 

You see, there is another reason why someone might fake an accent, particularly one from abroad. It reminds them of a time in their lives they were fond of and through their accent they're simply trying to relive those times in their own way. I remember with great fondness the days I spent in boarding school in Tamil Nadu, where a fair number of people went around saying things like "Ehhh, what da macha", "Podi!" and the like. 

So yeah, fake accents can be annoying but maybe, just maybe, the person behind it isn't being the usual pretentious ******. But it's unlikely. They usually are.

Tinkerty tonk!

The Ladakh Marathon, or The Greatest Run in the Universe (Part 1)

Okay. Just to be clear, I didn't run the Ladakh Marathon. I ran the Ladakh Half-Marathon. The latter doesn't sound as dramatic so I didn't use it in the title. I wanted to make the distinction clear because one of my greatest pet peeves is the general lack of understanding among fledgling runners about what actually constitutes a marathon. Case in point: a former professional colleague once completed a 5k and went around saying that he was a marathon runner. Dummkopf.

I'd wanted to visit Ladakh for a while, but didn't like the idea of going all the way there just to sit in a cab and be driven around the usual string of sights. Nor did I particularly relish the thought of doing a motorcycle trip or a bike ride from Manali to Leh as is common with so many tourists. So when I turned up at the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon Expo in January 2017, I was more than a little excited to see a booth run by Rimo Expeditions advertising their Ladakh event. I broke the habit of a lifetime and actually picked up a flyer, promising myself that I'd do the run if my schedule permitted it.

It turned out that my schedule, ably supported by the multitudinous professors who rejected my hard-written PhD applications, did indeed permit my participation. And so, in July 2017, I screwed my courage to the sticking place and registered for the half-marathon (I didn't qualify for the full because I didn't already have a full marathon timing under my belt).

I invested in a running coach. My experience at the SCMM wasn't bad, but I did have one too many uncomfortable experiences along the way with nagging injuries and inconsistent running. With most of the Ladakh run happening above 11,000 feet and on inclined ground, I didn't want to take any chances.

And so, at the end of August, I found myself cursing the poor quality of the passenger's waiting area at Delhi Airport while en route to Leh. I reached Leh after managing a window seat on my Vistara flight and being (only slightly) disappointed by the view: the Zagros mountains as seen from an aircraft window beat the tar out of what you see flying over Ladakh. Hard to believe, perhaps, but true.

Touchdown Leh, and the air was oh-so-thin!

I'd heard about altitude sickness from two broad categories of people. The first were Ladakh 'veterans' who'd been there dozens of times, taking the same old pictures of Pangong and the horribly annoying selfies at Khardung La. These people could very easily have OD'd on Diamox, given the quantities they'd recommended I pop. I (not so) guiltily wish they had. The second were Ladakh 'veterans' who'd been there dozens of times, taking the same old pictures of Pangong and the horribly annoying selfies at Khardung La. These people never took Diamox and were not terribly averse to highlighting (usually in loud voices) their lack of need of bottled Oxygen at Khardung La or wherever else. They also seemed to be immune to altitude sickness, at least as far as their unverified stories went.

My taxi driver told me to sleep it off all day and drink a lot of water. I slept all afternoon and thought I'd have dinner in the hostel mess that night. Alas, the call of momos was too loud and I ended up walking 2 kilometers into Leh to satiate my rumbling tummy. Big mistake. I got lost on the way back and barely made it to the hostel before my head felt like Bertie Wooster's on the morning after the Boat Race. Altitude sickness is real, kids (I didn't take any Diamox, but spent the next day relaxing in the hostel and reading Ice Station Zebra).

No, this wasn't on the same day.

Okay. Ladakh is so beautiful. I got Leh'd, yaaaaaaaar. Nada nada. Whatever.

I tested the waters by running up to the Shanti Stupa. There aren't a lot of hills where I stay in Bangalore, but I'm generally comfortable running on inclines whenever I've had to. This time, I wasn't comfortable. At all.

I ended up using 'practice' and 'acclimatization' as excuses to take a bunch of photographs instead of running any further.

With Hrushikesh Palande, volunteer with the Ladakh Ecological Development Group (LEDeG), and the peaks of Hemis National Park in the background.

I gasped. And gasped. I gulped down air like a drowning man. Nothing worked. I had to stop several times in between, completing what couldn't have been more than a kilometer and a half in about 15 minutes. Is this what the half-marathon would be like? Curses.

My next run was a little more ambitious, and more than a little foolhardy. I decided to run up the road to Khardung La. Just so we're clear, I didn't run all the way to Khardung La. I just ran on the road that leads there for about 6 km or so.

With views like these, could you really blame me for wanting to run?

Having left my cell phone (primitive Apple technology) in the hostel, I don't really know how far I ran. Unlike my previous attempt at the Shanti Stupa, this run was mildly easier. I still gasped and gulped, but with a little effort I managed to get pretty far out.

The Nilgiri Ultra 2017: Glorified Cross Country

On a somewhat gloomy evening in August 2006, I majestically brought up the rear in the inter-house cross country finals at the Laidlaw Memorial School and Junior College, Ketti.

As punishment, they docked 50 points from Plummer: the poor house I was dumped in when I joined the school.

I vowed never to run cross country again. The next year, being what was referred to in LMS slang as a 'Big Jang' in standard 12, I took great pleasure in skipping cross country in favour of 'studying'. In reality, I would hightail it down to the dormitory and take a long, leisurely bath before anyone else could hone in on the hot water.

Fast forward 10 years, and I was back in the Ooty to run 25 kilometers in the Nilgiri Ultra. Whoda thunk. By this time, I'd discovered that running was pretty cool if you didn't have the carrot-and-stick arrangement to worry about and I'd taken to the sport with some frequency.

The course began and ended at the YWCA in Anandagiri. Staying here was most satisfactory: it is conveniently located, very clean, and run by friendly and helpful staff. The rates are very reasonable too, especially if you're sharing a room.

At 1, I shuffled into the dining hall for the pre-race briefing and bib collection. I sat down at en empty table and was soon joined by a group of elite runners, recognisable by their GPS watches and air of comfort in a room where I thought everyone would be nervous. One of them, who introduced himself as Shashwat (and about whose ultra-running exploits I would read about at length in his blog) asked me about the cheap (but really solid) Decathlong watch I was wearing. I said something stupid and revealed my true colours as a fledgling runner. Ah well, I'm sure Shashwat had to start somewhere too!

At half-past 5 on Saturday, the 2nd of December, the runners in the 25 km and 50 km editions lined up for a final briefing with Globeracers lead Kavitha. Following instructions to keep our headlamps lit and our reflective jackets on throughout the course (visibility was down to single digits, in feet) we were off.

Remembering my coach's advice (never run too fast in early stages and waste energy), I kept things slow. We turned off onto the Coonoor road and hit our first incline. At this point, a couple of Army runners decided they'd had enough of us slower folk obstructing their path and they shot off into the rain. They'd eventually finish first and second.

I negotiated the first couple of hills without too much difficulty and soon found myself near the Coonoor - Lovedale junction. At this approximate location, me and a few friends were almost caught by our Principal one weekend as we returned (just a tad) late from an Ooty outing in 2007. He didn't catch us and we made it back to school in time for my all-time favourite LMS dinner: Chapati and Chicken.

Okay enough nostalgia. I took the turn towards Lovedale and the (relative) grime of Ooty town was soon forgotten. Pine and Eucalyptus trees all around, I ran with the Nilgiri Mountain Railway to my right and turned towards (insert evil and dramatic drumroll) The. Lawrence. School. Lovedale. Da da da daaah.

Lovedale Railway Station

Shortcut to Ketti with the Lawrence School behind the trees beyond

Okay, Lawrence isn't that bad. I had a couple of friends there and although our schools were rivals of sorts that didn't stop us from having a lot of fun during badminton tournaments (the only sport I didn't TOTALLY suck at. Okay, maybe I just sucked less than everyone else).

The run was getting prettier by the minute. Mist descended and any view I might normally have had of Ketti Valley was obscured by clouds. I pulled out my third-rate cellphone (primitive Apple technology) and took a few photographs, reproduced below for your pleasure.

Before long, I reached the half-way point where I stopped to take more photographs. Although I broke one of my cardinal rules and took selfies during an earlier run in Ladakh, I refused this time around and asked the pit stop person to take a couple for me. That's me right there, wearing my Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre (WRRC) t-shirt. Do look them up on Facebook and Instagram and do consider supporting their work. If you work at a company in Bangalore that engages in CSR activities, you could also invite them over for a talk or two.

Photographs taken and primitive Apple technology stowed away, I confronted the uphill climb back to Ooty. It was here that I realised, in the midst of the fog and rain, what a real Ultramarathon must be like (though the 25km event was part of the larger Nilgiri Ultra, a real Ultra is by definition longer than 42 kilometres). I screwed my courage to the sticking place and lumbered on, overtaking a couple of runners along the way. My coach's advice to take it easy at the start was paying off.

Running and walking. No, mostly walking. Okay, maybe equal amounts of both. I reached the final pit stop and ate a boiled baby potato. I chilled a little too long and one of the runners I'd overtaken caught up. Determined not to lose my place, I bolted back past Lawrence and Lovedale and found my way back to Ooty. This is where the runners high hit me (instead, mercifully, of the wall) and I ran faster than I'd run all morning back towards the YWCA. I overtook one runner easily, and then another, before storming up the slope to the YWCA reception. Mine was the third name in the finisher's list.

What a run, and what an experience! I can't wait to get back to the Nilgiris next year, though perhaps for the 50k division! If only I had another shot at running cross-country :(

I decided to celebrate that evening in the company of old friends (pictured below):