Himalayas 2018: Sandakphu trek

Wandering one gathers honey.

It’s that time of the year again when I travel all the way to Himalayas to have yet another trekking experience. I, along with my friends, decided to participate in trekking expedition to Sandakphu in West Bengal state organized by YHAI, a place where the Mount Everest, Kanchenjunga, Lohtse and many other mountains are visible. The idea was to explore a new side of India where we haven’t been before. On previous occasions we trekked to Khaliya Top in Uttarakhand and Brighu Lake in Himachal Pradesh. And I had done Sarpass trek a few years back which was again in Himachal Pradesh.
And by the way, on this occasion my wife, Varsha accompanied me for a trek for the very first time :)

Here is how we reached Darjeeling, our base camp:
- Flight to Kolkata, where we spent a day visiting places like Victoria Memorial and Howrah Bridge
- Overnight train journey from Kolkata to New Jalpaiguri (Darjeeling Mail)
- Taxi ride from New Jalpaiguri to Darjeeling; Shared taxis readily available at the station

Day1: Reporting at base camp, Darjeeling
It was a comfortable hotel/hostel accommodation at Darjeeling. Once we were done with reporting formalities and freshening up, we headed out to explore the city. The railway station junction provided us a beautiful view of Kanchenjunga range in the background. The toy train with the vintage steam engine was a great sight too with its unique engine sound, drivers honking loud and the exhaust steam.

Day2: Acclimatization
Ours was the second group who would be heading towards Sandakphu the next morning. And we were around 25 people from all parts of India. A morning exercise activity at a nearby ground followed by a moderate walk to a Japanese temple was in the agenda. The group sweated it out on that chilly morning during exercise activity and then started our walk post breakfast. The Japanese temple called Peace Pagoda was built under the guidance of Nichidatsu Fujii, a Buddhist monk from Japan. It’s a serene place where we all spent some time chanting “Nam-myoho-renge-kyo” and, of course, clicking photos. Once back to the hostel, we were asked to deposit any extra luggage so that we can carry lighter backpack during the course of the trek. And we spent again roaming around the city for the rest of the day.

Day3: Trek to Tumbling (9,500 ft.)
Big day and we were up early to start our journey towards Dhotrey, about an hour’s journey in taxi, the starting point of our trek. Here we met our 2 guides, Gopal & Biren and we were all set for the trek after a small pep talk by the representative. We walked for ~8 km in that Singalila National Park.

It was cold, it was foggy and it was good. We had a lavish lunch at Tonglu and the lunch point was a nice little cozy place next to a small pond.

We walked further along the concrete road to reach our next camp, Tumbling. A beautiful location where we spent good amount of time taking photos. This was again a nice cozy home-stay (Siddhartha lodge) where we boys were given the top floor dormitory which was a suitable place to play some games post dinner. We enjoyed playing Mafia, a clever game of identifying assigned mafias in the group. The night was colder and we knew we were in the single digit temperatures.

Day4: Trek to Kalipokhri (10,256 ft.)
The next morning, we packed our lunch boxes and began our trek. The 13 km walk was again along the free road with very less visibility due to thick fog. We were entering Nepal soil during the course and that gave us a sense of achievement as it proved to be our first international trek ;-) The camp was again a small hotel accommodation. The temperature dipped further at night time. However, the fun only increased as we played card games and we all sang as a group. And to add glamour to the occasion, a few local singers and guitarists joined the fun night.

Day5: Trek to Sandakphu (~12,000 ft.)
This was just 6 km walk but certainly the most strenuous off all the days. The last 4 km was a steep ascent and every step was a great effort. When we reached the camp, again a home-stay/hotel accommodation, we were exhausted. The hotel staff didn’t make it any easier as they got busy attending a local politician instead of us, the scheduled guests. Anyways, the soup and lunch revived us. Next was the interesting part where I got a crazy idea of making everyone dance to the Garba/Dandiya beats. Good that our group leader had carried a Bluetooth speaker which came in very handy. We were cramped dancing inside the hotel and it got crazier further as we all decided to dance outside in the open space. Let me tell you it was freezing and with thick fog. But who cares, we had our dancing shoes on, not literally though. We had some wonderful dancers as well; pun intended :-p

Day6: Trek to Gurdum (9500 ft.)
The next morning was full of dramatic events. We were praying for a clear sky to witness sunrise with the Everest range and Kanchenjunga range in sight at 5:30 am, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case. We all returned to the camp disappointed and started getting ready and with breakfast. While doing so, the skies cleared suddenly and there was sunshine and that’s when I came quickly back to the same spot to check if any mountains are visible. And guess what, the Kanchenjunga i.e. the 3rd highest mountain in the world was clearly visible over the layer of clouds. That! That sight was worth all the efforts. However, the Everest wasn’t keen to show up and grace us.
The 14 km descent was enjoyable as it was through the forest and steams and the weather was very pleasant. The camp was a beautiful hotel stay having a very few houses around and no drive-able road to it. People have to walk for a good distance to reach here. The owner had maintained a beautiful garden with some colorful flowers and strawberry tree stretch. The day ended with tasty dinner and many rounds of card games.

Day7: Trek to Rimbik (7500 ft.)
We walked in the dense forest again for few kms before reaching the lunch point, Sirikhola. The hotel was located next to a river and we didn’t require any special invitation to dip our legs in that cold running waters. In no time we all were at the river with all our cameras on.

Post lunch we headed towards our next camp and reached there by 5:30 pm. It was situated in a market area of the small town. In quick time, we took our rooms, got ready and were on streets for general shopping. 
A small ceremony was held before dinner to commemorate the completion of our trek. Completion certificates were handed over followed by some activities.

Day8: Ride back to Darjeeling
Early morning the taxis were ready to take us back to Darjeeling. On our way back, we were fortunate enough to get the view of the famous Sleeping Buddha, the Kanchenjunga range. This view was more majestic than the previous morning’s as this was the full stretch of mountains. What a wonderful sight it was!

After reaching base camp, we packed all our luggage and hired taxies to take us to New Jalpaiguri to board our return train to Kolkata. The wonderful trip ended at Kolkata where we all took our respective flights back. Our group parted ways with whole set of new ideas and plans for our next year’s trek :)

Word puzzle

From the beginning I've enjoyed spending time with my son, Nivaan taking care of his school activities and homework. Initially it was just about drawing, shapes, alphabets and numbers and he was highly enthusiastic about it and used to look forward doing them. But now that he has moved up to Sr.KG class, even his activities are to the next level, specifically spellings, words and sentence formation. Since these are comparatively difficult and time consuming, it becomes challenging to keep his interest level up during these activities. So, often I find myself coming up with new and innovative techniques of getting things done that really helps both of us. 😊
Since few months, there is this dictation activity going on in his class where all the kids are asked to write about 10 words dictated by the class teacher. These words are shared to the parents one week in advance so that they can make the kids practice writing those words. Making a kid write 10 words seems a pretty simple task but believe me, my son's interest lasts only till the forth word and after that it's a war between him and me. So I decided to come up with a great idea of getting those words added in a word puzzle and make him solve it. A puzzle and the sense of accomplishing solving it always drives the kids. It worked quite well in my case as my son got interested in it every week and in the process I could make him get the phonetics and spellings of each word correctly. The results in the class were also encouraging and this made him feel good about it. Mission accomplished! 😎
Here is how it went down. Initially, I made the word puzzle myself on a sheet of paper taking the words given by the teacher.

But as this was weekly activity, I decided to improvise and automate it. I wrote a program which would take 3 parameters as input; complexity, number of words and the list of words. And the output of the program is the word puzzle in a file. I just need to take a print out of this and voila! the meal is served on the table.
Before writing my own program, I realized few word puzzle tools were already available over the net, but I didn't find a perfect match for my requirements:

• I wanted word directions to be only left-to-right and top-to-bottom in the puzzle as I wanted them to be quite easy for my kid during initial weeks. 
• And I wanted the gap fillers in the puzzle from a selective set of alphabets like O, X, Z etc which will make my kid find the words easily.

Here is the snippet of it -

Input:

Output:

Activities like these will undoubtedly bring a lot of satisfaction not just in kids but also in us as well. Isn't it?! 😉

And now, can anyone puhleeease suggest how to make a kid write 'Fruit' and not 'Froot', and that too after they have taken all the phonetics classes? 😣

Fraud alert! (OLX)

So, tell me how many of you get annoyed by repeated reminder texts/mails cautioning us not to share any credit/debit card numbers, CVV, PIN, OTP or passwords with anyone?
I'm sure almost everyone gets annoyed. But believe me, this is very much required.
Because despite these reminders from the banks and institutes, many people out there get cheated every single day. The losses range between few hundreds to thousands of Rupees, and in few cases in lakhs. Yes right, just talk to a police office and he will confirm the same.

With all the convenience and ease that comes with the new technologies, through smart phones and applications especially, there also comes newer ways of exploiting the system and cheating people. That's why we see so many news headlines of frauds and scams every other day.

Many of us might be aware of how these digital systems, online banking processes and procedures work. But there are larger chunk of people who are new to all these changes, the upgrades and so called applications that are offered through smart phones. They are unsure, ignorant sometimes, about these and that's why they fall prey to online frauds. That's why it becomes more important than before why we need to educate our near and dear ones about these technologies and what different ways the fraudsters take to steal information and money.

Last year sometime, one of my relative was duped of money when he shared an OTP to someone who claimed to be a bank manager over phone. Of course, this OTP was used for some online transaction and not for "unblocking" of account as that fraudster claimed it to be for.

Now, here is a bigger and interesting story.

Recently, while talking to one of my near one, call him Kunal, he mentioned that he is trying to sell his iPhone through OLX and has got a buyer who is expecting him to courier the iPhone to Nigerian address. I immediately knew something is fishy and went into the details.

• Firstly, after the iPhone ad was published in OLX by Kunal, he receives a message to share his WhatsApp number from the fraud buyer Mr. "Smith" in order to discuss more.
• On sharing, Mr. Smith texts Kunal in WhatsApp and tells he is interested in buying the iPhone at a better bargain. To boost up his image, he further adds that he works in army and holds a good position and currently is out of country for a "mission". You can just say, he dished out a wonderful story.
• He even convinced Kunal saying that if he ships the iPhone to this "Nigerian" address, his bank will credit the amount to his account immediately on his instruction.
• Kunal in fact receives this below mail which kind of reinforces his claim and starts believing everything is genuine and should proceed towards the shipment.

In a hurry to get a good deal, he doesn't even take a step back and wonder whether all this sounds fine?! Forget about noticing the dead giveaways during the chat or in bank mails.
Please check below image to lookout for in these kind of bank mails for authenticity. Kunal was ready to ship his iPhone at the courier desk when I happened to speak to him. I'm pretty sure, Kunal wouldn't have received any money if he had shipped it.

I was fortunate enough to get in touch with Kunal at the nick of time and prevent this fraud from taking place. I informed him about all these details and convinced him that this whole thing was a setup and he should be careful about all these things going forward.

Mr. Smith, who was now disappointed understandably, had some nice words to share at the end.

If you just search for these kind of frauds and complaints, you will come across innumerable ones already reported in different forums. So please talk about these kind of frauds/scams with those who are less aware and who needs some help in understanding important topics such as the banking transactions, online shopping and the payment options along with the process involved with selling/buying used items etc.

You may as well share your similar experiences here.