Paradise.....Part 1

Treacherous, dangerous, harsh and forbidding but rewarded by stunningly beautiful valleys, awe-inspiring peaks and picture perfect lakes and rivers, trekking among the majestic beauty and cultural diversity of the eastern Himalayan region has captured the imagination of many a traveller. Ten days in this paradise are what inspired me to document the trip...our adventures and apprehensions, the enticing sights we saw and the wonderful people we met...the soul-stirring sunrises and fire-place bondings...to try and (albeit partially) recreate the magic of our extraordinary experience through my limited mastery of the English tongue...
As is customary, I shall start with a list of the characters involved in our charming lil travel tale... an extremely assorted group of people, each hilarious and therefore mention-worthy in his/her own special, crazy way.....
Kris: a.k.a ‘Krisipedia’, an avid traveller with an exasperatingly exhaustive encyclopaedic knowledge of almost anything...the leader of this rather motley group of adventurers... kind of an anatomical puzzle with his freakishly accurate internal alarm, a lens in place of his nasal apparatus and facial muscles that frequently change shape and structure to create alarming and sometimes hilarious graphic effects... to add to this, rumour mills have it that, until recently, this bio-miracle’s aortic pump was floatin around a lil outside of his body...
Stuart: Don’t be misled by the name...this dude is anything but ‘Little’....like Kris, also unrecognisable without a camera in front of his face...has a fascination for chickens ...dubbed as the ‘Murgi Man’, he can be recognised by the characteristic sounds of the clucking of hens followed by the clicking of his camera...has been discovered to be an ideal travel companion during the course of this trek due to his many uses...as a delectable source of nourishment according to Rob, a sturdy wind-anchor according to Kris, a cosy hot water bottle to warm Irene’s bed and so on...
Rob: also has a fascination for chickens, though his love is contingent upon a mandatory rite-of-passage through the fires of a gourmand’s kitchen... enthrals listeners with his original rendering of the hindi language, the alphabet of which he has effectively shrunk by half (through his highly efficient merging of consecutive consonants)...his cannibalistic instincts irk the antennae of most alert children and send them into fits of teary-eyed bawling and this howling is often greeted with a victorious grin and a click to remember from Rob-the-Red...makes up for being the kids boo-boo-monster by also being a modern-day Casanova... simultaneously courting more babes than some people manage in a lifetime...
Irene: hmm... let’s start by saying this trek has added to the (already extremely deep-seated) uncertainty about her exact species...Irene-watchers claim that she has, in the past, been spotted demonstrating behaviour that is characteristic of various forms of poultry, some species of fowl and also some different kinds of homo sapiens not normally seen in everyday existence...we are happy to report that this bizarre list has been extended to include farm animals and imaginary cartoon characters...her bewildering evolutionary history apart, Stuart’s very own ‘little’ lady is the power transducer of the group...runs towards fireplaces with (almost) the speed with which Stuart runs towards local beer, and converts the heat into hyperactive enthusiasm...
Mike: what you have here is textbook case of a split personality disorder... one minute he is your average young man walkin along...totally ordinary...deceptively normal...But put him in front of a camera and behold the transformation...what a lens can do to his various joints (his body creates angles hitherto unknown to human kind) is nothing compared to the look of constipated concentration that arrests his face when asked to pose...some might say that he has a killer attitude and the looks to match, but, in keeping with the trend so far, yours truly shall refrain from the meaningless and un-interesting things that are compliments...and hold your horses...the personalities don’t end here...unlike Irene, our guy here is very clear about his simian traditions and is prone to demonstrate ape-like tendencies now and then...
Kirsten: wellllll...the narrator knows this gal a lil too well to write a good, and by good i mean sardonic, biting and a lil tongue-in-cheek, description, but, in good spirit, one shall give it a sporting try... a pint-sized spring toy....an intriguing and comical medley of Happy the dwarf and the sometimes vain fairy tale princess herself, mirrors and camera lenses have a death grip on this ball of energy.... mundane things like train-lamps and ornate ash trays can send her into fits of astounded glee, much to the amusement of the rest.... with her what-she-assumes-is-cute ( a notion that is misplaced by atleast a few light years) expressions and antics, is at an eternal lock-horns with Irene for the rather prestigious “group clown” title.... the deceptive dwarfism and perpetual state of excitement notwithstanding, ‘the Pankazzz’ , as she is popularly known, is surprisingly considered the brains of the group.... (please refrain from mentally estimating the IQ level of a group where Kirsten is considered the brainiac)
Sam: Sam the guide...an ideal foil to our group of fire-crackers...the rock-solid voice of sanity sent by God himself to keep this ensemble of comic characters on schedule and on planet earth... looks half his age thanks to the life-time of trekking in the heavenly Himalayas...the mountains probably know our sensible Sam as well as he knows them...