Mt Abu is a place that forces you to put into play every one of your survival instincts, and during most activities in the town small voices convince you that life has been nice but perhaps you've had too good of a run. Jakob's love for the outdoors and climbing brings us to Mt. Abu. Set about 1,200 meters above the ground, it takes a winding 28 km journey up the hill to reach the town. Rocks crumble off the narrow road as cars play chicken with one another mere inches from the edge. Knuckles whiten as you hear yourself vocally expressing the near misses with shocked and fearful whimpers.
The town itself is relatively sleepy - a welcome change from much of India. People smile and appear to have more time. We arrive at Shri Ganesh, a lovely guest house with simple clean rooms and an extremely helpful owner. With only 2 night here, we go in search of a company in which to trek with. The wild animals and the tribes people in the mountains make trekking for a solo tourist a highly unrecommended activity. Only 6 years ago an Israeli was robbed and killed by a tribe when trekking alone.
We manage to find Ashok, and organize a sunrise and sunset trek for the next day. We walk to sunset drive in the afternoon and see the sun descend over the mountains beneath us. The heat descends with it and people all cheer and clap as the sun is lost beneath the horizon. We drink chai at a small cart before walking back into town. We find a delectable looking Sundae shop and decide it's perfectly permissible to have large cookie laden chocolatey goodness for dinner. We float home to bed in a sugar coma.
We awaken early to see Ashok standing outside our hotel waiting. It's just before 7am and he looks like he hasn't gone to bed - prepped and ready. We stumble out of bed and wrap ourselves in warm clothes. He hands us a long stick of bamboo each.
"What's this for?"
"Leopards"
We laugh. Ashok does not.
We walk to a point before a jeep appears and we climb in the back. A long winding journey up the hill and we stop at a small office. Ashok goes inside and wakes up the man sleeping under his desk-bed and calls us out of the jeep.
"Sign your names here please"
"For if we never come back" Jakob remarks.
We laugh. Ashok does not.
The treks prove to be truly beautiful, making steep ascents to come to far reaching panoramas of the world from nearly 2,000 metres up. Properties look like small rectangular building blocks, all sitting side by side. Thankfully, despite many heart stopping moments of rustling and growls behind shrubs, we fail to see the usual leopards and sloth bears (not sloths as I initially thought but actual bears) present in the area. Ashok apologizes about this. I assure him I am not that upset we missed them.
At dinner a man comments on my camera with the twang in his voice that is undeniably Aussie. We get talking to him and his wife to find we are both from Melbourne.
"I just finished at RMIT"
"I teach there!"
"Where abouts in Melbourne do you live?"
The moment when you discover you're sitting in India with strangers who live in the same suburb in Melbourne is a weird one. Suddenly everything becomes just slightly too intimate. We finish our meals and walk them to our new favorite sundae shop and say goodnight. We head home to pack and sleep for our next chapter of the journey.
