The love of the summit

There's something so majestic about a mountain that from childhood you can see its there in each of our drawings. That jagged peak which has a snow-cap with nothing coming even close to its beauty. I've been trying to understand over the past few days, as to what exactly is it that takes over a man to climb something which is so dangerous that people give you better odds at winning a russian roulette than climbing one of those. And am talking specifically about THE MOST DANGEROUS summit as of today. And its not the everest, but its li'l brother K2 which steals this dubious award. Statistics speak for themselves, a 1in 4 probability that you would die, a slightly better chance that you would safely come down after a successful summit, and a nickname of "killer of women" due to some even more treacherous statistics. This is not for the faint hearted, this is actually for those who truly believe that they need to push their bodies to the extreme limits and to rise in the face of imminent death. 
Among elite climbers dispute exist even today about which is the most difficult mountain on the planet, expert opinion is divided between Annapura and K2, but from a strictly technical standpoint, K2 shows the greatest difficulty in escalation. Even the easiest route to climb, consists of crossing a complicated high-altitude Alpine glacier. Here's a small description of what the Camp4 to Summit journey holds at K2 
"

Final Climbing Dangers

The summit, 12 to 24 hours away depending on weather and physical condition, is roughly 2,100 vertical feet (650 meters) above Camp 4 perched on The Shoulder. Most climbers leave Camp 4 between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. Now the prospective K2 climber faces his greatest and most dangerous alpine challenges. The climbing route up the Abruzzi Spur from here to the summit is fraught with perilous dangers that can kill him in an instant. These dangers include the extreme oxygen-depleted altitude, fickle and frigid weather including strong winds and bone-chilling temperatures, hard-packed snow and ice, and the danger of falling ice from a looming serac.

The Bottleneck

Next the K2 climber heads up steepening snow slopes to the infamous Bottleneck, a narrow 300-foot couloir of ice and snow as steep as 80 degrees at 26,900 feet (8,200 meters). Above overhangs the 300-foot-high (100 meter) ice cliffs of a hanging glacier clinging to the ridge just below the summit. The Bottleneck has been the scene of many tragic deaths, including several in 2008 when the serac broke loose, raining huge chunks of ice on climbers and sweeping away fixed ropes, marooning climbers above the couloir. Climb challenging and steep ice up The Bottleneck with your crampon front points to a tricky and delicate traverse left on steep 55-degree snow and ice below the serac. A thin fixed rope is often left on the traverse and in The Bottleneck to allow climbers to safely ascend this section and to quickly descend out of danger.

To the Summit

After the long ice traverse below the serac, the route ascends 300 feet up steep wind-packed snow to the final summit ridge. This ice-enameled helmet is not a place to linger. Several climbers, including the great British alpinist Alison Hargreaves and five companions in 1995, were swept off this snow helmet by gale-force winds to icy oblivion. Now all that remains is a sharp snowy ridge that climbs 75 feet to the airy 28,253-foot (8,612-meter) summit of K2-the second highest point on the earth's surface."

Such treacherous paths await those who decide that life isnt just fun when you watch Salman khan talk about the History Channels. I truly believe that I understand what must be going through all those men who climbed through K2, Everest and Annapurna and survived or those who dint, because it truly is a way of immortalizing yourself. To challenge your body to achieve that which very few dare and even fewer succeed.
Here's wishing a successful trip to all those who are planning a Everest or K2 this season and every other season in the future, and wish that all are able to return safely and successfully 

For a chillling tale of the Horror that was 2008 at K2 please read this article

I leave you with the image which brings out the true fright of K2 for me 

One wish - Guaranteed success

Long delay in the Eurotrip journal, and lets hope that it gets over soon. That will be some long journal. For the time being I need to pick my brains and of some other people on a very interesting statement one of my friends made. 

What venture would you embark on if you were guaranteed success :)

Of course this can lead to a lot of options.. some of them being 

• Setting up a teleportation system
• Conquering the world etc etc etc

Of course it was more practical for us to change the statement to a more realistic venture 

 What venture (something which has been tried already) would yo embark on if you were guaranteed success :)

Now we are talking about more achievable ventures,stuff like creating the next google, opening up your own beauty salon chain, creating a fashion label which is known worldwide. 

So why do we not do any of those, so why are we so afraid of failures. Of course the time is here for a long sermon on how nothing is achieved if you never tried to it, Well lets not get into this. We're surely not here to get one of those lectures. So what am i rambling on here for. Here's the motive - 

Have you noticed how the best ideas come when you are in the confines of the WC, or maybe when you are on a long bus ride and the wind push your hair back, so why do we get all these thoughts at such lonely times.

Because we are too busy doing everything everyone expects us to do. And in all this mad rush we never get the time to analyse our achievements, so how about we do something about this now. 

How about we set up some plans, some business plans at that, set aside some money so that someday when you are ready to declare that "my job sucks" you can start wondering if there's enough time, enough time to do things which you would do if you were guaranteed success. 

Would love to see some ideas come from you guys which you might wanna try :)

ICE - Inter city express

On my way from Berlin to Milano and there were three trains which would take all the pain of transferring me from the German Capital to the Monza circuit. Well, over the last few days whenever we have travelled on the trains we have always been late. Maybe 10 minutes and in some case half an hr late. What happened to the efficiency of the railways, and that too the bloody Germans. I thought they were supposed to be setting the highest standards. Well time to test that with the ICE from Berlin to Koln and then a 20 min later train from Koln to Basel. My first stop in Switzerland and finally a EC to Milano Central. And what a surprise. Not only was each train on time at the given destination they were dot on time at all the intermediate station. For some reason I just felt so happy all the times when the train would halt at some station and I would check the watch to confirm that the train was ON TIME. Just as the germans were supposed to be. Perfectly efficient. I think this has more to do with the fact that as in Indian we are used to trains coming late, “making up time at night” and tolerating 10-15 minutes delay as part n parcel of the whole system. God dammit, we need to learn so much from the ICE. Was on the phone for quite sometime on the train and there was perfect reception of my Vodafone signal because there were mobile repeaters in place. So in a perfectly quiet  apartment u can talk for as long as u want while the train rushes past the german landscape at 249kph (that is what they were displaying on the screen in the compartment, I know it was not the fastest the ICE would have gone but am sure that was fastest I have gone while on land except the airplane takeoffs, not sure what the speeds are then)

Which brings me to the main point, about why we as human beings appreciate something as simple as punctuality and honesty when these are assumed as the basic characteristics of any individual?  All this while when people were evolving into more and more complex beings, we forget that even now all we need is the other person to be polite, gentle, and honest and some simple things like that. So next time when you board the ICE and you marvel at how awesome it is, remember one thing – it’s just doing what its supposed to do, reach every station at the designated time. Simple. The rest is all show off from the Germans J Hate the Italians. They need a reservation on all their stupid trains. Bloody 13euros for a 4hour train journey from Basel to Milan.