The trek I

During the younger years, I used to go for hike with a group of friends to the hills at Paro. We would always plan for a little hike every month and make sure that we visited the monasteries and sacred places there. We would get up early in the morning on the appointed date and proceed with our hike. The day would always end with laughter and talk on the day’s event. Then we finished our training period and got busy with our own work and lost that enthusiasm we had for trekking since most of us worked far apart.

I even forgot about all zest that I had for trek. And I guess I got lazy even to take along distance walk. Then in 2007, I was invited by the cluster coordinator to facilitate a workshop. I agreed to it but I was little worried because the venue was officially a day’s walk from the nearest road.

A day before the scheduled date, I and a friend started our journey from the nearest road at about 9 O’clock in the morning. We had a small bag each. I was carrying some materials for the workshop, so the principal of that school had sent a staff to collect our things. It was a very exhausting hike; we had to climb uphill, so we were finding it very difficult. We even teased each other relating our hike to the race of the hare and the tortoise in the fable we read as students.

In the mid way we were showered by the tormenting rain and as luck would have it, we had forgotten our umbrellas in the car. We were drenched from head to toe when we reached the Gewog office. We were offered tea and then resumed our journey. When we reached the place, some of the participants had already arrived. We were quite embarrassed since we were sopping wet but grateful that we reached our destination.

On reaching there, some of the lady teacher’s saw our condition and tried to make us feel at home. They even brought their dry clothes and heating appliances which we gratefully used.