Later in the evening, this German friend introduced us to a card game called “5 card Mao”. Oh man, let me tell you, it’s the best card game I’ve ever known. We sat down to play and we were hooked on it it. From 9 pm to 4 am, we played all night. The way the game treats newcomers, making one go through the journey from “waadhafffak!!!” to “aaah sweet…”, is such fun and gratifying. Apart from the game concept being the most dynamic, it requires a lot of attention, reasoning skills and it incentivises continuity. This guy said when people start playing, they only stop when nobody can make sense of the game anymore. And because of it’s dynamic nature, this could be played at any setting with any type of audience and it’s assured to be fun. I’ve been so pumped up ever since to experience this game with different friends of mine. You can google it up, but I suggest blindly playing with someone who knows the game, for once, to enjoy the realisation-experience I was talking about. And the best part is, it could be played with the standard 52 card deck.

Random strolls

After the game, the sky was still black and about 7 of us decided to go stargazing. It was 4 in the morning and we were walking from our campsite to the paragliding landing site. As we entered the streets, a few dogs started barking at us. Couple of people got tensed, while the rest of us were shooing them away in confidence. More dogs kept coming from the dark alleys and started joining the rest; within minutes, we were surrounded by around 25 dogs growling and barking at us. We sticked together and they cornered us right away. We couldn’t move in any direction. Shaken by that development we were clenching our fists in horror — we were shitting out pants. It was the first time in my life I was being held hostage by animals. Not gonna be macho about it, I was really scared for a moment there. These dogs kept moving in on us with some anger in their eyes. My heart kept racing up, just like everyone else’s and since I had a thick blanket, I was in the front using it as a shield. Suddenly a friendly dog came running out of nowhere, jumped in and started barking back at the rest of the pack. This one was full white, like an angel and furry enough to be petted (later 😁). This ally made us doggo-phobic and we slowly strode across the town like a water droplet on an oily surface. Thanks to that silvery savour, we safely got out of the streets. Dogs are just awesome no? (the irony). It sticked around with us till the end and we were playing with it. I’m totally getting a dog someday… Anyway by the time we got out of town, the sky started turning blue and we missed the stars. But it was beautiful seeing the mountain ranges slowly come to life, one after the other; the fog uncovering them slowly like a blanket being pulled by a Ghost 😅 . And the sun light hitting the snow top, making them glow like a golden jewel in the sky. We were walking on an empty road with a lot of curves, and meadows on the left as far as our eyes could see, and the mountain ranges on the right. It felt deep.

After immersing ourselves in the moment (and taking some selfies) we started walking back towards our campsite. There were no dogs by then and streets were so empty and quiet. We saw a middle aged man opening his “dress shop” and requested him for some chai (tea). He was kind enough to prepare it himself. We enjoyed that hot chai in the cold early morning with a great view from his terrace. And no I’m not exaggerating any of it: the dogs, the view, the hot chai; not even a bit. Everyone felt the same as I did; except may be they enjoyed the tea more.

Day 12

I woke up late in the noon and met this mechanical guy who had built a bike from scratch on his own. He helped me remove my tail light, because it was touching the back tire due to the accident. Since a few of us were planning on a trek, me and Deepak went to Baijnath to buy energy bars. It was evening and I was riding, just 4 days after my accident. The road felt so smooth and curvy; the sky had a beautiful linear gradient on it from blue to orange; that orange light reflected on my road as well… It was such a beautiful 15 minute ride, we were just in Awe. Once I reached town, I was caught by a police officer for not wearing a helmet 😆. It felt funny because I rode all the way from Chennai to Bir and the police catches me here, the one time when I forgot my helmet 😑. I didn’t know Hindi, I couldn’t even answer his questions; luckily Deepak helped me out with an excuse that I’ve been hurt and we’re heading to a hospital. Later we did go to hospital and got my chest pain checked up. The entire place was empty and the doctor was chilling in his room with some physiology book. Anyway turned out the pain was no big deal.

It was pretty dark by the time we came back. Since we missed the stargazing the previous night, I wanted to checkout the sky. So we rode to the same spot, parked the bike, walked into the meadow for while, laid down on the grass, rolled one and enjoyed it, gazing at the stars… It was bliss. To add up, there were horses grazing right next to us. I tried to pet them but they kept dodging me. Then we came back to town and ate thukpa on the porch of some house, talking about random philosophies. The town felt so laid-back and so did I.

Some hacking

Later that night, random conversations and we were discussing about a German hackerspace few of them kicked off. It had been a long time and Schneider (github) wanted to check out what was happening there. I am not clear on the technical side of it since I’m not a networking techie myself but he found the IP of one of the machines in the hackerspace. I guess he must’ve been involved in setting it up, he logged into it and started streaming the webcam feed. We saw two guys sitting and working with their laptops. Then he turned on the mic and started saying “Moin” (hello in german). But there was some problem with the audio and after some debugging, we were conversing with them on what’s going on there and stuff.

They were not techies and they had no clue on how that was happening. Also they didn’t have a monitor; so too bad, no video feed for them. It was a funny conversation.

Day 13

The next day I went to Kangra KTM service center to fix my number plate and side indicators directly to bike’s rear (It used to be in the tail I removed). Those guys were really friendly and didn’t even charge me. Since I was all the way there, I wanted to checkout Dharamshala and see what all my friends were hyping about. The city had one narrow road and there was long traffic. Luckily I was in a motorbike and I kept overtaking. The city in general had narrow roads and was too touristy for me. I headed up to McLeod Ganj, which was a fun ride since it had a lot of steep rise. May be it was the summer vacation, there was no snow, no water in the falls and yet too crowded. At least I could check it off my list. I bought a nice fedora and took a random unconstructed path to get a taste of off-road. Then I came back and started packing for the trek we were planning.

Day 14 — 17

We went on a trek and a lot of things happened. Covered in part 2.5

Day 18

In the morning there were a session on book binding. I didn’t participate but it was fun watching. Bir is very famous for Paragliding and everyone who tried said it was very enjoyable. After lunch, we booked a paragliding ride and they took us in a jeep to the top of a nearby mountain. Unfortunately as we reached the top, the weather got worse and our ride was cancelled 😞. Later that evening Tink gave a session on hacking happiness, it was insightful. And then was another session on A/B testing by Abhimanyu which was surprisingly very interesting.