We are the cosmos made conscious, and life is the means by which the universe understands itself.” ― Brian Cox

This is one of my favourite quotes, to reflect on ourselves, and our place in this universe of wonders. Today, as I reflect on the last couple of years, I can confidently say that my fascination with the cosmos is the reason why I am finally, doing what I love!

It has been two years since I came back home from Dubai, and I can say that this past two years have been the happiest, most fulfilling years of my life yet. I reflect every now and then about what I have learnt and experienced this past years and it gives me this sense of immense satisfaction, which I have never felt before in life.

It all started when I went on a Solo trek to Sandakphu in 2013, on vacation. I was staying at this quaint village called Tumling, and I remember the evening being very cold, so the owner had set up a small campfire right outside our hut to warm ourselves.  As soon as I got out of the hut, I was greeted by this ocean of stars, twinkling above my head like fireflies. I was awestruck. I didn’t know what to make of what I was seeing, I felt like I was looking at heaven. Apart from being the first time I saw such clear skies, it was also my first trek. I weighed around 98 kg’s, unfit and overweight. I found it very hard to take a few steps without having to stop and take a break. There was something magical about where I was though, the allure of the Sleeping Buddha perhaps? I don’t know. I huffed and I puffed, crawled and cribbed, and somehow managed to reach Sandakphu. I had never felt such Euphoria before, to push myself to my limit and to reach my destination, to watch the sunset over Kanchenjunga and the first rays of the sunrise fall on Everest!

The experience of Sandakphu stayed with me and even though I wanted to come back and do more treks, I never could find time out of my busy schedule to come back to India, only for a trek.

The sight of the night sky however, got me intrigued about the cosmos and I ended up watching a lot of documentaries about space on YouTube, which increased my fascination about it.

In the autumn of 2015, my sister, after completing the Goechala trek with Indiahikes, sent me photos that she had taken of Venus, Mars and a photo showing an arm of the Milky Way. I was taken aback on how beautiful the photos looked, and was determined to do the same trek the very next month.

-The photo that enticed me to go to Goecha la.

Pc – Krishna C.

The trek to Goecha la ended up being the single biggest reason I wanted to be a Trek Leader. It still and always will be, for me at least, the best trek a person could do, at least in India.  This was the first time I had a realization that Trek Leading was something that I would really love to do!  I will never forget the awesome experiences at Goecha la, from being hit by AMS (Acute mountain sickness) and my fellow trekkers and sister carrying my backpack, taking care of me and making sure I was okay, to flushing my IPhone 6 down the toilet at one of the campsites, (by mistake of course).We wore gloves, pulled out pipes, sifted through faeces, looking for it! Unfortunately, the phone was lost to the mountain. Yes, I was apparently known as the “Trekker who flushed his IPhone down the toilet at Tshoka “.Surely not something I wanted to be famous for! The only downside to this entire trek was that the reason for me joining the trek, to stargaze, was not fulfilled because of a full moon! It didn’t strike me that I needed to check on moon phases before heading out to stargaze.

-The team at Thansing, headed back to Tshoka.

Pc- Varun K

I wouldn’t join Indiahikes for another 6 months, finishing up things at work and heading back home took time. The disappointment of not being able to see clear skies stayed with me; however the trek itself has become etched in my memory as one of the best experiences I have ever had, and all I could think about was trekking!

This love for trekking and fascination with the stars is what prompted me to mail Indiahikes. I joined in May, 2016 at the Roopkund slope. Learning about trek leading and what it takes to be a Trek Leader took up most of my time then, and I didn’t get much time to do research on stargazing. Once the monsoon set in at the end of June, the question I would ask was, “is it ever going to clear up?”

It wasn’t until a campsite at Tarsar Marsar in Kashmir, when I got the next best views of the night sky. I remember one of my trekkers, Shonali, asking me,” Hey Jude, why don’t you learn about the constellations and share the knowledge with trekkers?” I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that before, and I ended up learning about the Big Dipper from her, as it was the most obvious sight in the sky that night. We stayed up for an hour after bedtime to chat about how beautiful the sky looked that night, saw a couple of satellites race across the sky, an amazing meteor shower, flashes of light so fast that our eyes could barely follow it! I thanked her for her advice, after which I started putting in more effort to learn about the night sky.

My efforts first bore fruit at a campsite called Jiskun at Rupin pass, where I was able to find Orion, about which I had been studying for quite a while, since it is one of the most conspicuous constellations, and the most intriguing. I was surprised with how much I could talk about it to the trekkers that morning, and I was happy with where I was headed with knowledge about the night sky. I realised that learning about a few individual stars and other celestial objects in a constellation is more interesting than trying to figure out how the constellation looks like in the sky.

Using an app to show how the constellation actually looks like, after the impartation of some mind boggling information about the stars and other celestial objects, is the best way to stargaze.

The look on the faces of some trekkers when given this unbelievable information is priceless! They usually are like, “What? No way!” “Really?” “Wow!” “Omg!”

My favourite piece of information is about a star called Betelgeuse, in the constellation of Orion. This monster is one of the largest stars known, shining 100,000 times brighter than the Sun. It is roughly 1180 times the radius of our Sun too! You could fit everything in the solar system, from the Sun, all the way up to Jupiter, INSIDE the star. In other words, you could fit 2,000,000,000,000,000 (2 quadrillion) Earth’s inside the star! If facts like this don’t mind boggle you, I don’t know what will!

I am no astronomer; I only possess basic knowledge about the cosmos. However, it was enough to give me perspective in life. I asked myself, “Is it worth it, to stick to a job which I am not passionate about for the rest of my life?” I understood that it is not worth it, to follow the herd, to be the stereotypical human being. What if I wanted to do something different?

Today, after working in the outdoors for 2 years and having started Tour de outdoors, i realize that i have gained more life experiences in this last two years, than a lot of other years combined, and life could not be better.My goal with this article is not to preach about life, but to hopefully instigate curiosity about the vastness of the universe, and our place within it.

Being born and brought up in a city, I can tell you that the night sky at higher altitudes is far superior, and should be one of the primary reasons to head to the mountains!

I hope to write a few more articles to enhance knowledge of the night sky and hopefully this will add to the overall experience of a trek in the Himalayas