Why people go for trekking

"So why do people go for treks?

Why do they risk their lives to conquer an unseen mountain?

Just for the sake of victory?

To prove that they can achieve anything or is it just a healthier time pass than watching a movie on a weekend?

Those are hardly the reasons. Treks transform you.

You come to know yourself but not by looking within, it is by loosing yourself.

On a trek you hardly remember who you are. You hardly remember what you do in the city for a living. You for some time let go of all the people associated with you. On a deeper level your basic characteristic traits do not matter. All your regrets and your achievements go hide deep in your backpack.

The mountain does not care whether you are a CEO of a multinational or a local sherpa. After walking for sometime in nature you loose your identity and become one with the mountains.

You are no longer the insecure feeble stubborn human being. You are one with the wind. You are one with the mist. You are the birds. You are the greens. You are the freshness. You are alive.

Somehow nothing else matters, your work, your relationships, nothing. All that matters is the next step. It could give you a firm footing and confidence to move ahead or it can lead you to a fifty foot fall.

In that decisive moment you are alive. More alive than ever.

That’s when you completely lose yourself and realize who you truly are.

Each moment reveals newer potentials. You swim across unknown waters of your soul.

Through falling you realize that you have the strength to get up.

Through bruising you realize that you have the power to be healed.

Through being alone you realize your own freedom.

In the everyday routine of life, all of us forget who we truly are. In fact being on a trek is one of the very few times when we actually remember!"

Trekker

How do we use help and advice?

To accept good advice is but to increase one’s own ability.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There a large banyan tree and hundreds of birds were living there in their nicely constructed nests. There were also monkeys which lived on the same tree. On a rainy day all the birds were safe and comfortable in their nests, but the monkeys were suffering. The birds took pity on the monkeys and they advised the monkeys to construct a house for themselves so that they also can be comfortable when it rains. The monkeys did not like this `unwanted advice’ and told them to mind their business.

On another day, it not only rained, but it was also very cold. The monkeys got wet and were shivering in the cold. They collected some fireflies (also called lighting bugs) and tried to ‘warm up’ thinking as though the fireflies can serve as heating place. As we know, these insects have a dedicated light organs under their abdomens which glows like fire. But this light will produce no heat. The birds knew that they monkeys cannot warm up by this and told the monkeys that fireflies do not have fire. They also once again suggested to the monkeys to construct their houses, since they have the advantage of hands which the birds do not have.

The monkeys got wild and shouted at them that the birds are ridiculing them because they have houses which the monkeys don’t. Not only that. They went up the tree and destroyed all the nests to `teach a lesson to the birds’!

Lesson: Don’t offer your help to those who will not appreciate your help!

There is no poverty of helpers, but only receivers. One important trait of successful people is their ability to make use of the help they receive from others. Not only they feel happy about receiving help, they also make the person extending the help happy. They respond in such a way that others feel very happy and comfortable to offer the timely help.