Mr.Everest

About a month ago, I met a mountaineer.

That's right, I did, ironically it was on the scorching desert sands of Rajasthan.

Technically not, actually. But it was Rajasthan, and it was scorching hot, at least in the afternoons.

He and I bonded over bhindi at lunch, and I fell in love with his child-like curiosity and fascination with everything around him. Especially since my own life circumstances and experiences have caused me to cultivate over a period of time, an attitude of amateur cynicism ( I'm not yet a pro-cynic, still manage to feel occasional pangs of hope).

He has managed to visit places twice in this lifetime, that I can only dare to dream about visiting once, place in question being Mt.Everest. He has also been to the roof of the world, posed with a posse of hyenas (I'm sure that's grammatically incorrect but it sounded nice in my head), skiied down a volcanic peak to bring in the new millennium, and has photographic evidence of having 'been there done that' at the North and South poles. Of course, this list doesn't begin to cover the list of peaks he's actually scaled.

But just yesterday, I, inhabitant of the vertically challenged city of Chennai, managed to inspire him to scale yet another peak! Metaphorically speaking, that is, which is the only way it could've possibly been.

You see, it came to pass that he viewed my effort at a blog, and decided that if I could do it, then he most definitely could, and had to, I would add. So this morning, I opened my inbox to find this:

u inspired me to do this

http://satyabratadam.blogspot.com/

For a minute or so, I was over-whelmed with pleasure at the thought of having inspired anyone at all. Then I went ahead and checked his blog... And my first thought was his blog is way better!!!

They say first impressions are the best impressions. And my first impression stays. His blog is wonderful. There are gorgeous pictures far better than those you'd find in any travel brochure, and equally gorgeous descriptions of the places, a first-person account of them even! I can't think of better blog material (except an astronaut blogger maybe).

So this post is a tribute to my dear friend, Mr.Everest. I'm hoping he will return the favor and inspire me to get off my summer-sodden ass and get cracking on scaling a couple of those mountains he likes to call home.