The Unaccompanied Indian Explorer: 80 mile hike: Day 1

Well, it appears that I survived!

Am still a little weary, but overall it wasn't as difficult as I had expected (it wasn't actually 80 miles).

The point of the hike was to have some fun, and enjoy being outside during the long weekend. I can safely say that this was accomplished and I had a great time.

Day 1 was well and truly the most difficult day of the 3. It consisted of a D+ graded, which should have been an E. It was walking with 15kg+ packs from 7:30 till 5. I took 2 packets of breakfasts, 2 lunches and tea for food, as well as 2.8 litres of water. We carried our clothes, sleeping bags, tent and anything else we needed for the 3 days besides food.

The hike consisted of walking through jungle from a bus drop off point, and going all the way to Camp Poondi, where I was last month for camp if you can remember.

It was a gruelling challenge, but an amazing experience.

One of the challenges in the hike was leeches. Whenever we were going through forest or wet ground there would be leeches that would try to latch onto your shoes and make their way inside. Some of the people had brought with them salt and also lemon grass oil, which is a repellant for leeches due to its strong smell. Throughout the hike I only got bitten once on my calf though, not nearly as bad as some other poor people.

Whilst hiking along a road there were some large swift blurs that we could see moving through the trees on our right. We stopped quietly to try and get a better look. The leader said that they were giant squirrels. Looking at them on google images; they seem cute and cuddly, but they can definitely move very fast through the trees.

We also encountered a herd of Bison in the forest. The entire group (40 miler's included) were very tense and edgy when they were around. It was great to see them with babies as they trudged through the jungle.

For the last hour and half of the hike it was pouring and sprinkling with rain. This slowed us down drastically and made going up the final sets of hills in Poondi very difficult. It also ruined many nice photo opportunities.

Once arriving at Poondi camp though, it was much better. The other group of hikers who were middle schoolers doing their '40 mile hike' were already there with a fire going. There was much standing around and competition for the best drying spots surrounding the fire. Drying wet feet and the pitter-patter of rain on the roof was very memorable.

Ok, now lets get into some of the photos from day 1.