Ladakh Diaries: Flight through the mountains and acclimatisation

One word for Leh... “Breathtaking”...  literally and figuratively. At 11500 feet above sea level, the oxygen is thin and requires acclimatisation. But on the other end the view is so breathtaking that it literally takes your breath away.

The flight was mostly uneventful till the mountain range appeared. Majestic, powerful, magnificent, few adjectives I can think for them. They were so fascinating that people could stare at those snow capped ranges forever. And they looked even more beautiful when the sunlight fell on them. The only thing being we were on the opposite side of the sunrise.

Landing at Leh airport didn’t feel like any other airport, cause this wasn’t like any other airport, this was a military base. Though you were instructed to not to click any pic, you clicked pictures with your, mind, pictures etched on the walls of your memories. The cold breeze, the bare mountains that felt like dunes in the dessert, the skies filled with cloud with the sunlight trying to burst through them. 

It was strange and amusing to see your name on a placard of a person waiting to pick you up. On the way to the guesthouse you saw groups of runners getting their running feet, resulting in a growing temptation to go out and run. 

The guesthouse Santo Green is beautiful and quaint, full of flowers in blooms, and apple trees laden with apples, dang had never seen one before, a beautiful vegetable patch filled with cabbages and tomatoes and spring onions and cauliflowers (huge ones) and potatoes. Apricot tree too were there, but were unburdened off their fruits. Flowers were in full bloom, and full of colour and beauty. You could easily view the snow capped mountains from the porch.

Mum took in everything with a childlike glee, totally in awe with the place, fascinated by its beauty, thankful for the opportunity, feeling blessed to see the beauty that lay before her. She was grateful to see Jaj and Pooja and Prerna and meet Prerna’s hubby and Sanjay and Sameer (on the flight).

So yes we needed to rest and acclimatise ourselves, and we did sleep, wrapped in our blankets, but then sleep doesn’t always come when you want. So we sat on porch, clicked pics, took deep breath and let the cold air flow through every part of our being. Plucked apricots and devoured them, plucked some really ripe tomatoes and spent time in the garden enjoying nature, the mountains and the cold evening hair, with the sounds of the wind rustling through the trees providing a melodious background score with the trees , while mountains and trees glistening in the sunlight providing a beautiful backdrop.

So although the day may not yet been over, it has been fascinating, it has been breathtaking, not exactly eventful but memorable. Now it’s left to see what evening has in store, especially since Pooja is cooking. So here’s to the beginning of a brand new adventure.

Weight on ME: My Life with Weight

Weight and I have a love-hate relationship, we love to hate each other but we can’t stand to be too far from each other for too long. May be that’s why we keep finding our way back to each other, even when we are trying to throw each other off the other scent.

My life with weight is not stuff that inspirations are made up of. I don’t think I had quite that much of weight or a dramatic weight loss to warrant a before and after pic. Nevertheless it is a story worth being told.

I don’t remember if I have ever been able to keep weight off for too long. For every time I thought I had managed to get myself rid of it, there it was, right back with a bang. Like an alcoholic falling off the wagon, I always manage to pile on the weight that I lost.

I have always been conscious about my weight gain and my body image. So you see this is not just a girlie thing. If anybody happened to touch my stomach, let alone mention it in a conversation, it would drive me in a nervous fit  of overthinking (ok that was a bit far fetched), but then that’s the way it was. God forbid if I hit a pothole or a speed bump and felt my belly shake like a bowl full of jelly.

It’s not like I am not capable of loosing weight. I have the passion, I have the drive, I have the determination, just lack the discipline, application and the will to give up on food I need to. I go to the gym diligently and ensure I clock in my run run everyday. I wake up at the unholy hour just to make my lunch and ensure I squeeze in a run or a workout. But somehow the results are short lived and there you have the weight back on. At the advice of my friends (also something I wanted to do for a long time) joined a combined fitness centre.

All this stems from my love for food (as if you didn’t guess by now). My mother and my grandmother subscribed to the thought that in order for a child to look healthy they need to be fed well. So I always was well fed. I have tried to follow various diets, met with some success, but then it was back to being a foodies. Couldn’t keep myself away from it for too long and always found an excuse to eat. I have eaten to an extent that it has made me sick.

Whenever I lost weight, I lost it on my face making me look pale. So my aunt ( may her soul rest in peace) started comparing me to my healthy friends (again trying to avoid the F word... no not that word... you dirty mind), see Ryan and Stephen look so nice and handsome and you look like a marrela murga in front of them, you looked so handsome and nice during your father’s funeral, everyone had their eyes on you (ya right, people attended my father’s funeral to look at me). Family friends and old neighbours would constantly ask me if I was sick or keeping well, eating well (maybe they thought I was malnourished).

I joined the gym because I wanted to join the fashion world, wanted to model (do I hear some snickering? But then can’t blame anyone for that, me and model, the thought seems preposterous, but you could call if the Bold and Beautiful effect). 

Always wanted and still do, a good physique, everything included, like those models and fitness models that your see on Instagram and in your Gym, but Kya Kare, yeh kambakt tummy fat aur weight kam nahin hota hain. For me loosing weight is inversely proportionate to gaining weight. It will take me ages to loose it but few minutes to gain it.

But you know what, no matter how difficult it may seem and I will never give up trying. I may have passed the age for my dream, but hey I can always try and look good. Taking inspirations from my friends to stay fit. So no matter what I will always try to get better of my weight, while not forsaking my good.