Last weekend (Aug 6-7, 2011), I summited Mt. Rainier through the Emmons glacier. We had the best weather I have seen on the mountain so far, the views as usual were stunning and the company (Melissa, Jim & Heidi) was joyous!  What better way to spend a weekend, yeah? But wait there is more … I was climbing to support the cause of Asha for Education and fund-raise! In addition to our rope team three more Asha team rope teams summited Rainier! Kudos to all the climbers and the cause!

A little bit about the climb..

We started about 4am on Saturday from Seattle. After getting our permits we got to the White pass trail head around 8am. The glacier basin trail has been remarkably improved, thanks to all the trail volunteers. It felt like a highway! We chomped a wrap and called it lunch around 11am just before we started ascending the inter glacier. We got to Camp Schurman after an itchy scramble around 2pm.

Thanks to the rangers we had a shovel available in the snow-cave to fetch some good snow to start the long process of melting liters of water to be consumed! Given the heavy snow conditions this year there was no running water around. After a hot mountain meal and some hot chocolate we headed to bed around 7pm with the pact to do a summit push around mid-night.

    Camping at Camp Schurman

When we woke up around mid-night turned out almost everyone else was also awake. The wide open crevasses and some anticipated jumps had everyone pushing for an early summit attempt. With my relatively dim lamp and Jim leading the rope we were off to the cracks by 12:30am. After long hauls, rest stepping, some crevasse jumps, an amazing sunrise we summit around 8am! The weather was just perfect. Low winds, balmy weather, hot chocolate and wine were order of the day on the summit! Following are some pictures from our lovely ordeal!

       Lovely Sunrise                         Rope team on Summit!                                   Pic with our Asha Team

After spending an hour on the summit we had the more treacherous part of the climb – the descent! Suffice to say, we were not looking forward to the descent, we had jumped some funk stuff which with sun on the head would be quite interesting to maneuver. Thanks to Jim belay and Melissa’s singing we did make it safe to the base camp around 2pm.

Yes, we did jump some crevasses                           Picket Time!                                          Up, close!

Happy to be out of the crevasse zone!

After getting to the camp we took a short nap and started out way down from camp Schurman to the white river trail head around 4:30pm. The Asha team just has started their way down as well. The part from Camp Schurman to inter-glacier with some tricky scrambling and wide exposure was a bit nerve wrecking but once we were on the inter-glacier it was one long nice glissade down to the Glacier basin!!! After rather a long walk and lots of “are we there yet!” we got to the cars around 9pm!

A tiny break…

Earlier this year I wrote a series of pic and poem posts, this climb inspired the one below -

Song for his post is of course – Don’t stop believing.

“Beauty is abound in the beast

Grandeur and godliness make a feast

The terror is tamed with a team

Might seem a lofty goal with a pulse weak

A step at a time makes it real

And a cause to support makes it surreal!”

A little bit about the cause…

I have been volunteering for Asha for Education, Seattle chapter for a few years now! This organization is ranked among top 10 charities in “International/Development and Relief Services” by Charity Navigator. I believe in the cause of education, and through an organization like Asha I was able to help a school for hearing impaired (Mayaboli) raise money for land near my home town in India. If you believe in the cause as well please considering supporting the climb with the any form of donation!

We put all our stuff on the bus at 7am. It was raining pretty hard then and we were glad that we chose to bus out, but by they time bike were on the top of the bus myself and Rahul were totally drenched! Afterwards i left some of my clothes drying in the bus (well, I had laundry from last night too, which i cleaned before we decided to start super early).

Anyway as per the plan we got to Tiruchendur at about 1pm and were impressed by the timings, to make some more room we went an hour ahead and the bus driver dropped us in time for about 60km ride in to Kanyakumari. After a short break and lunch we started our ride at 2:45pm and where in Kanyakumari at about 5:40pm. To be short, this was an awesome ride!! A perfect riding weather with amazing views and a not so busy decent road — what else can we ask!! It was breathtaking!!

After getting in to Kanyakumari (well yet another temple town full of tourists), we got checked in a hotel with a great sea view and got ourself some Thali dinner. Rahul and Tulika headed to rest and i’m still punching keys.

Tomorrow we head to Kovalam and we will be in another state — yay! Kerala!!!!

Pic 1.  Breakfast South Indian style with a belly, missing the moustache

It was an amazing day, the ride was scenic and as the locals call it – ECR (East Coast Road) was a great road to ride on. Some pictures to whet your appetite.

Pic 2.  Scenic Road!

At about 10:30am I had an awesome breakfast #2 at a local street side shop

Pic 3. Breakfast #2.

I called Rishi’s father (Rod) at about noon to let him know that I’m about 20km from Auroville at Markalam. After making my way in to Pondicherry at about 2:15pm and a short break for some Lemon juice I reached the Auroville visitor center at about 3pm.

Pic 4. Entering Pondicherry and place (Mango Resort) where I relaxed with Lemon juice.

Now on to the main topic of this post:

Auroville

Auroville is utopian concept very well implemented in my opinion. This ashram intends to create a new way of life inclusive of all nationalities of the world.

Auroville’s make a plethora of things –

Pic 6. Auroville-an Art

This ashram was setup by the Mother in co-ordination with Aurobindo ashram, with big help from government of India (Imagine visa’s for folks from 50+ countries and permission for them to work and keep the identity of Ashram intact).

Pic 7.  Founder of Auroville and her deep study of flowers.

Auroville wants to create a place where nation can show their identity through pavilions and invite their citizens to join in the Auroville experiment.

Pic 8. Unity Pavilion

Last but not the least the they have an amazing meditation hall called the “Matri-Mandir”. This gold plated dome with italian marble is 50m in diameter and create an amazing sense of peace! It’s a feat and a must see primarily because of its serenity!

Pic 9. Center of Auroville – Matrimandir and the banyan tree.

Sri Aurobindo’s Philosophy

Thanks to discussion with Rishi’s father – Rod, I was introduced to works of Sri Aurobindo esp. Savitri and The Life Divine. He infact has written a short book which introduces these two.

Pic 10. Rod’s book – Mantra, Metrics and Meaning.

The short of the long I learnt from our discussion is – Sri Aurobindo had a very non-traditional take on Hinduism. His point in Life divine is to enrich your life through creativity and not through extreme penance. One should give up low feeling like – pride and ego but a higher level will flow in. Creativity can be expressed in power, love and numerous other forms like Krishna did. This is deemed to be the true vedantic version of Hinduism.

Thanks to my gracious host today (Rod & Kirti Hemsell)

Pic 11 .Rod and Kirti

I’ll make a brief stop at Pondicherry tommorrow then head onward to Tanjavur from Chidambaram tomorrow (slight change of plans here)

It was interesting to see a Teach for India’s approach to learning work. Milind was doing a great job engaging and teach the kids, at the same time his set of volunteers were making sure that the kids got more 1:1 teacher time. I was also reminded of how important the superstar rules are, and we has grown ups also needs to read and follow them regularly.

Pic1. Superstar class, Rules of the Class,

Pic 2. Milind and Volunteers teaching in the class.

I have a very good video of Milind teaching vowels to the 2nd graders. I’ll upload it and put a link here as soon as I get better internet connection.

One interesting twist in this experience was that Milind offered me to try and teach “Action words” to a small group of 5 kids. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and was first hand grappled with the problem of keeping 7-8 year olds engaged in the learning process. I was also touched by the fact that the kids offered touching handshakes and wanted Vaibhav-Bhaiyya to come back!

Pic 3. Group of super stars learning who learn a bit of “action words” from me.

I start my tour (http://www.vitraag.com/tourofsouthindia ) tomorrow to help raise fundraise for Milind’s cause. Infact you can get to the action right from here .

Pic 4. Pledge for Milind’s superstar class and Teach For India.

I have done this ride in twice before (2006 – 70miles, 2007 – 100 miles). I had a sort of deja vu from 2007 I started getting cramps around mile 70, but the good part of I’m quite happy with how i pushed myself. I learnt two things –

1. Human body is amazing, if you push it can survive a lot of things. I ended up pushing through the last 3 miles hill with cramps, after a few pedals the cramps disappeared.

2. Make sure your condition your muscles for performance not just endurance. I did hard run on Thursday and I was still sore from it. I should use my training time effectively, just like Body by Science.

Anyways, the Asha Team and Emel (a friend from Run, Dinner Social) did awesome! Most riders finished the 65 mile loop, now folks are eyeing the STP. Emel did awesome on her first century beating me by a full hour!

My stats: Ride time 8 hours 20 min. No where good but given the conditions I’m very happy with how i pushed myself.

Now the pictures.

 
7:30 start ended up being 8:20 start as i forgot my helmet

 
Gorgeous sunny day!
 
Rest Stops – I did about 1:30 of rest stop time (Slacker )

Finish line fiesta and team Asha

I have shared the pictures of ride here.

Enjoy the long weekend and happy Independence day.

I’m impressed by Raji’s ability and peotic talent here is the sampler:

‘Twas early on a Saturday morn,
That 5 brave bikers wound their way,
Six and ten score miles they rode,
Into Portland to make their foray.

Thro’ sun and rain and wind and gale,
Over hill and valley and plain and dale,
A flat tire here, a torn tube there,
Survive they did, many a scare!

Read their saga in the thread below
(Actually it’s just a picture slideshow)
And if you’re inspired to do similar feats
Go grab your bikes, put on those cleats!

‘So, what’s next?!’, you may impatiently ask
Well, if you haven’t guessed it yet
This weekend is when we will start
Training for STP 2006, you bet!

Watch out for more info in Friday’s mail
On the ride we will take on this time
(And I’ll stick to prose instead of verse
And spare you the pain of my corny rhyme!) J

-Raji (B-)

I’m impressed by Raji’s ability and peotic talent here is the sampler:

‘Twas early on a Saturday morn,
That 5 brave bikers wound their way,
Six and ten score miles they rode,
Into Portland to make their foray.

Thro’ sun and rain and wind and gale,
Over hill and valley and plain and dale,
A flat tire here, a torn tube there,
Survive they did, many a scare!

Read their saga in the thread below
(Actually it’s just a picture slideshow)
And if you’re inspired to do similar feats
Go grab your bikes, put on those cleats!

‘So, what’s next?!’, you may impatiently ask
Well, if you haven’t guessed it yet
This weekend is when we will start
Training for STP 2006, you bet!

Watch out for more info in Friday’s mail
On the ride we will take on this time
(And I’ll stick to prose instead of verse
And spare you the pain of my corny rhyme!) J

-Raji (B-)