Recently we completed the OXFAM
India trail walker (http://trailwalker.oxfamindia.org/)
and I thought I will ramble about that.
I dedicate the title of this article to a close professional colleague
who had somehow read my mind and said ‘Are you going to write with this title,
once you finish it’? Though I regretted that I was becoming somewhat
predictable, but he was bang on. I wanted to give that title only. So, I owe it to Vikaas for the title.
Though this write-up is coming up
because we succeeded in completing the walk, I am capable of writing with the
same candor even if we have not completed the walk. The only difference is
that I may have not hit the ‘publish’ button!
Background
I had messed up on the Bengaluru
full marathon. I gave up after 24.5 Kilometres. Generally I am extremely
compassionate towards my own self and recover fast from most failures. However
most of my failures were due to lack of skill, competence and dozen other
shortcomings. I felt this specific one was due to me losing my will and that is
something I cannot afford to lose. Life went on and I saw the advertisement
about OXFAM India trail walker. I thought this was one more opportunity to test
my will. I forwarded that to some of my colleagues, who were more friends than
colleagues and whom I felt had some penchant about adventure, walking and also
who had put up with me for some or rather many years. I kind of got responses
from all of them in couple of hours and we formed two teams in the order of
which responses came! Each teams had to have a group of four people.
Apart from the early bird registration fee for
Rs 4500 per person, we had to raise funds of Rs 50000 to enter into the
competition. This was one thing none of us had done before as well. As usual,
we said to our lazy selves, we have enough time and let us cross the bridge
when it comes. And true to our own self one of the teams did an all nighters on
the penultimate day to pull off the fundraising and be eligible to participate
in the race.
With that background, I will
start the ramble.
Event Organizers
I have to tell about OXFAM a bit.
Well there was all round scepticism about if this is true, if the money we
collect will finally reach the needy, if they shall live up-to their word and
other things. Frankly these things have never mattered for me. If somebody is
willing to do well at a scale larger than I can never imagine, I trust them to
do their bit. This has worked for me. The trail is in its fourth year and the
increasing number of participants and collections holds enough evidence for the
good they have been doing and I do not wish to delve into that much. This link
gives some of the details about the walk, the work they have been attempting
and also many other details about the walk as well. I am a kind of person who
never bargains with a vegetable vendor even though I am aware of the fact that
I am being fooled, just for the fact that he will give me a warm smile to me
whenever I go (For him, ah! The fool has come). However, I am also aware that I
am being a bigger fool when I walk into those shops in the malls! I guess I am drifting and that can wait for
some other day.
I owe a great salute to the event
organizers and the hundreds of volunteers who were round the clock for complete
forty eight hours cheering each and every individual checking in and checking
out of the check points (Hold on a bit, the details about the check points are
coming!). The medical volunteers at each check points, thanklessly helping
everyone to get their stretches done, wrapping bandages, putting blisters pack
on terrible looking stinking feet and not one moment demonstrating a sense of
remorse. I have been at the good side of the receiving end of many great
services of many volunteers at many a place and in some places and I did not
have sense of decency to thank them at most times. I really have not figured
out why these volunteers do what they do so caringly and to me they are already
on the stepping stone of servant leadership. I have been only a taker so far
and may be these wonderful volunteers shall inspire me to be a giver one of
these days. I take a bow to that wonderful clan of volunteers.
Given the trail and the places
where the check points were placed, the food served and facilities were as best
at it could get. In any event of this nature, there is always scope for
improvement and I am sure the organizers would have got more objective feedback
from people more qualified than me in these things.
I wish OXFAM the very best in its
equality drive.
Support
Crew
I will give in. We were plain
idiots. We did not even understand the concept of a support crew till the first
two check points. Support crew are a wonderful set of people who tag along with
the team and see them through to the finish. They cheer you, do everything you
ask them of with a smile and never let you give up. In other words, they are
the executioners of your plan and have everything in their arsenal to see that
you hit the finish line. Some of my friends did mention to me about this before
the walk, but I did not understand or appreciate at the need and passed it off.
When the OXFAM India CEO awarded us the certificates and asked our team leader
Syed where our support crew was, he blinked for nanosecond and managed to come up
with ‘we were supporting each other’ with a great smile while cursing our
stupidity internally.
But we did have our support crew
in different forms.
·
The all mighty almighty
·
Family who just checked if we were alive or not
·
Friends who were tracking us on GPS, taking status on whatsapp and
alerting other friends
·
Fellow team members nudging and urging each other
·
Some inspiring souls trailing, crawling, limping to the finish line
with everything that can go wrong with their bodies, gone wrong.
·
Some of the people who funded us
·
Team members who had to retire under various circumstances and never
let us retire
Support crews are a blessing.
Please plan for them. Do not let stupidity or ignorance stand in your way.
Trail
Path
I would rate the trail as being
moderately difficult and one particular stretch was monstrously difficult. The
view was pleasant mixed with scenic lake views, small ascents and descents,
with pockets where we can understand silkworm to silks, houses with open spaces
where you can go and take a nap if you want, with no one worrying We
went through variety of villages which were each distinct in their own ways and
villagers unique in demonstrating a lack of frenzy in approach to their life
style and living. Their seemingly poise and contentment with their own selves
made us wonder what the heck we were doing in our daily lives! Also it was a
pleasant surprise to children greeting us and waving throughout asking us the
following questions
·
Hi
·
What is your name?
·
All the best
·
Bye
I am not sure if they have been engineered
that way as I felt it was more of a spontaneous enquiry by them on seeing funny
strangers, but whoever did that to them was definitely a far decent engineer
than me.
One little girl named Sujata who
was sitting alone under the branch of a tree and I could not see a soul in
sight in a close perimeter, walked to us in confidence, shook our hands, said
all the best to us. Quite frankly, if this is the confidence the villagers are
building into their wards, I thought my fundas are somewhat messed up. Again I
am drifting, but I hope you get the drift.
In one villager’s house where we
stood to take some cucumbers and loads of water (where the lady of the house
was tirelessly giving water to everyone without charging for it!), a seemingly
innocent bystander nailed me with this question. He asked me in Kannada which
roughly translates to
‘Why
are they doing this to all of you’?
I did not have a damned clue on
how to answer it or may be some questions shall remain as questions.
A
note on Check Points (CP)
Check points (CP) were spaces
where one can take a break, get our muscles stretched, get treated for an
injury. These were the points where the support crew pampered their
team(s). Also at each check point you
had to announce your arrival and departure along with the team. Given the
trail, my view is that the check points were reasonably spaced and the
arrangement was the best given the constraints.
Team
Formation
We formed two teams. One was
Johnnie Walker and the other was Road Rollers. A brief team profile is as below
Johnnie
Walker
Syed .
He was the team leader for Johnnie
Walker and most fit from an overall point of view owing to his daily gym
visits. We shall see his fitness being tested to the core in the course of the
walk.
Santosh –
He is the endurance guy for the team. He can stay on and on for hours in any
form of activity. He was in action till CP3. But boils at unscrupulous places
and a personnel commitment the next day made him retire at CP5. We did not try
to persuade Santu, because, if Santu says he is in pain, he is in pain. You do
not see a need to motivate people like him.
Girish –
He sets the pace for the team and he has been asking for a practice walk of at
least 50 kilometres repeatedly before the actual walk. We conveniently ignored
those repeated requests and paid the price as you will discover.
Zunder –
That is me. I am the fattest and the slowest amongst the lot, but steady
though.
Road
Rollers
Satya –
An enthusiastic walker and keeps the team enthused with his steamy one-liners.
Developed an ankle sprain after CP3 and had to retire.
Rajas –
The fastest walker amongst the lot. He was one amongst the first 35 teams to
reach check point 4. He literally ran the course till check point 4. He had to choose
between finishing this run and finishing an exam the next day morning. He chose
to take up the exam and retired after CP5. In the next iteration, he has
promised that his team will be amongst the top 30 teams to finish.
Mahesh –
The team lead for road rollers and a steady walker. He is named Mahesh, but
actually Krishna as he attracts lot of people towards him naturally. By completing the race alone, he was simply
the champion amongst all of us.
Harish –
The Technology Man. He will have all kinds of gadgets around him to measure the
steps he takes as he believes every step that he takes forward is precious. A
personal emergency made him not take one step.
Santosh, Satya, Rajas, Harish
though retired did not let us retire. They were continuously pushing us to the
finish line. Without their continuous support, we would not have made it.
Fundraising
Johnnie Walkers started early the
fund raising objectives, through standard mailers, phone calls and literally
harassing some individuals till they paid up. Interestingly enough some of the
initial respondents donated generously even without checking with us and set
the pace for our fund raising campaigns. We did manage to achieve 140% of our
stated fund raising goal and though we were accused of sugar coated begging, we
realized begging pays! We can pat our backs saying that we have some
credibility left in us and we had to finish the walk, if not for us, but for
the people who contributed to us so generously.
RoadRollers, coming in from
mostly an innovation background did something
very different. If you have heard the Shiva,Parvathi, Ganesha,
Karthikeya story, where Shiva and Parvathi told Ganesha and Karthikeya whoever
goes around the world first and comes back gets the fruit. Karthikeya starts off to go around the world,
but Ganesha feels that the parents are the world, does a circle around them and
grabs the fruit. Roadrollers started negotiating with OXFAM, did something and
scraped through the fund raising round. I have no idea on how they managed it
till now. Johnnie Walkers were more like
the stupid Karthikeya in the story.
On a more serious note, I
sincerely thank the people who funded us. I was pleasantly surprised on the
number of well wishers we had, who not only funded us, but also were eager to
know our preparation and progress about the walk. If I needed help, I only needed to ask and
that is something I will remember. Your contribution would have definitely
benefitted somebody, somewhere. Please be assured about that.
Preparation
I will keep coming to this time
and again, but our preparation for the walk was abysmal. We kind of had two
trips to Nandi hills, two trips close to Airport, not one of them crossing
totally 25 Kilometres. Looking back, I feel that we made these trips only for
the hogging we used to do after the walk. We had this absolutely astounding logic
of ‘Yes. We are able to do 6 KMS in an hour, so even if it drops to 5 KMS, we
will finish 100 KM in 20 hours’. Unfortunately for us, this kind of
extrapolation backfired miserably.
Planning
As I mentioned before, generally
in life, you can recognize idiots. We were that idiots. Till midway, we did not
even realize that we need a water bottle to carry for ourselves. Putting it
positively, we were the epitome of self-confidence and belief. I was the super
idiot. I was the one who announced at 5 KMS/ hour we would be at CP3 (30 KMS)
at 12:00 PM, CP6 (61 KMS) at 6:00PM and finish at 2:00 AM. In reality we left
CP6 at 2:15 AM. I will not embarrass myself or others further by talking about
our brute force approach, but honestly our tag line was ‘Keep Walking’ and we assumed
anything further than that was unnecessary.
Start
to Finish – The Walk
We started off around 6:10 AM
after the evidence creating photo sessions. We kind of kept good pace. Syed and
Girish took a formidable lead. I and Santosh walked relatively in a relaxed
fashion with Santosh reducing his speed to give me company and educating me
about the type of crops on either side of the road. We also discussed about the
unhurried life style that people were having just 40 kilometres outside of city
life and felt envious. After reaching CP1, we checked in and checked out
relatively fast. We choose to have breakfast at CP2 instead of CP1. At each
check points, you would have to check in and check out as a team. Those were
the rules of the engagement. We proceeded to CP2 again with relatively
consistent pace and this time Santosh did not wait for me. Girish, Syed and
Santosh were kind of racing everyone and I was struggling to keep pace with
them. We reached CP2 in good time and had breakfast. We should have had
breakfast at CP1 as upma had got over at CP2 and we started from CP2 as we did
not want to waste time waiting for the upma. We did take some customary photo
shoots here and there. As we were
getting out of CP2, the Sun was out in its full glory and that was beginning to
take a toll on us. Again the trio took the lead, with me lagging. This phase
was toughest for me and unknown to anyone; there were moments of weakness I
felt in this stretch. Luckily we reached a villagers house, where cucumber and
free water revived my spirits. To add to my pain, here is where one villager
cracked the ultimate question “‘Why are
they doing this to all of you’?” As we were reaching CP3, our bodies were
showing signs of exhaustion. We dipped ourselves into a stream that was flowing
by and crawled our way to CP3.We were at CP3 by 12:30 and we were not way off
from our plan. On reaching CP3, Syed rushed into the medical facility and got
all kinds of stretches done with the help of the physiotherapists out there and
that became a ritual for him at the rest of the check points. The ever
energetic Santosh looked slightly weak. We took some rest, limped back to have
the nutritious lunch. Nutrition and Taste are mutually exclusive. Rajas caught
up with us during lunch and narrated in his interesting way on how he reached
CP3. Rajas is more scientific in walking, running than all of us, educated on
us some essentials and was eager to get going towards CP4. We reluctantly
started towards CP4 with Sun showing no signs of let down. Girish and Rajas
again took a formidable lead, with me following. Syed and Santosh trailed
behind. CP3 to CP4 was a killer for me in terms of the heat, in terms of the
ascent and at one isolated place where I was resting; I was thinking if I
should give up? One gentleman who passed by me, cheered me up saying it is only
3 KMS till the next CP and asked me to keep moving. Finding all my reserves of energy, I reached
CP4, checked with Girish and was thankful when he said that they reached only
10 minutes before. I went to crash. Syed and Santosh joined 45 minutes later
and rested for another 45 minutes. We were literally evicted out of CP4 by the
organizers who convinced us to move towards CP5, as CP4 was getting over
crowded with people resting. Santosh started some developing some boils and
indicated that he would take stock at CP5 if he wanted to continue. The Sun was
setting and we started walking towards CP5. Here we discovered a priceless
asset. We saw people walking with professional walking sticks and we somehow
found remnants of some branches of tree and make a walking stick out of that.
This stick played an extremely crucial role to our finish. We reached CP5
around 7 PM, while according to the original plan we were supposed to be at CP6
at 6 PM. So much for the planning. Girish had developed a headache, I had
blisters, Syed just needed any 6 feet bed to crash and Santosh’s boils had
developed into bigger sizes. Rajas had estimated that he will not make it to
his exams, retired at CP5 and had left for home. Santosh’s boil could not make
him continue; he retired and left for home. I was nurturing my blisters and was wondering,
when Girish came and told me ‘Sir – we have taken money and we are answerable’.
That one sentence changed my frame of mind. After that I just made up my mind,
we are going to finish this one. I realized I became a robot after that.
Thankfully some hot pongal, idly and vada rejuvenated our spirits and we chose
wisely to proceed towards CP6 instead of halting at CP5 for the night. We
decided to stick together for the night journey. Also some wisdom set in
finally and we bought bottles of water for each of us. Also owing to the
presence of elephants in the original trail, the organizers arranged an
alternate route with the same number of kilometres. Thanks to Girish’s advice ,
all three of us took a pain killer and made our way to CP6 in record time. This
was our fastest pace in the overall trail. We just walked seeing the beautiful
stars in the sky, ignoring the stars our body was going through. This walk
rejuvenated Girish’s belief in himself and he said we shall finish by 10 AM the
next day. We will be proven wrong again. Once we reached CP6, we went for some
juices and I went for my usual dressing up of the blisters. The medical
facility looked like a refugee camp and I felt every third person had a blister
of some sort. I waited for my time and the wonderful people there nursed my
blister and I was set. By the time Girish who had never done a stretch, got a
stretch done with the help of a physiotherapist. Syed had disappeared. We did
not bother to hunt and crashed for 30 minutes.
We started the hunt for Syed around 1:15 AM and realized he was sleeping
in the resting area, but we could not figure out who was Syed. As all the bed
sheets to cover were of the same nature and everyone was sleeping with the bed
sheets wrapped. We were in a fix. We realized Syed had pulled a fast one on us
!. Girish became Sherlock Holmes and I became Dr Watson in the search for Syed.
Finally, we nailed him down. He had taken a V looking branch as a walking stick
and that was next to him. He did not cover that. We hesitated a nano-second
before waking him up and the look on Syed’s face said it all. If he had a Gun,
he would have shot us both down. But since he was used to handling irate
customers for the most part of his life, he asked us ‘What is the plan?’ Girish told Syed ‘We have to get going’ with a
straight face and I think I lacked sensitivity when I said ‘Banana leaf Lunch
is being served. Let us get going’. Syed pleaded for one more hour of rest, we
negotiated with him for 30 minutes and then started walking him again at the 25th
minute. We gathered finally and started our walk towards CP7 at 2:15 AM. CP6 to
CP7 proved to be the most monstrous stretch. It had pointed gravel all
throughout and made our walk as miserable as it can get. Only positive thing
about the whole walk towards CP7 was we choose to do it in the wee hours. We
were one hundred percent sure we could not have done it with the sun torturing
as well. Even Girish’s resolve was being tested in this path. But he will bring
out sudden war cries of ‘Amma’ and ‘Shiva’ with such intensity; I was worried
he will bring some animals towards us! When we reached CP7, each one of us ran
for our respective beds and any guesses who won the race. Syed. We woke up
around 7:30 AM and grudgingly acknowledged the need to carry on. I got my round
of blister packs done. We had become animals by then. We started having our
breakfast. Nothing like brushing teeth or equivalent. Each one of us tried in
vain in our own way to get our morning biological system normal and we did not
succeed. The stink inside was also increasing! We started towards CP8 and the
shining sun started. I and Girish were tagging along each other with Syed left
behind. After a point we were worried as his mobile also was switched off. We
caught hold of an organizer car, asked them to go and check on Syed and relayed
a message to switch his mobile on. We had schemed also saying that at CP8, we
should not let Syed near a bed! We failed in that. He managed to find a bed and
vehemently refused to start with the Sun right above his head. He said ‘ I will
start only in the evening’! However Sun God proved to be merciful and Syed
agreed to start with the condition that we will not leave him and go. We agreed
to that and started our limp towards CP9. We hydrated ourselves with plentiful
servings of coconut water, followed by nutritious and tasteless lunch. Luckily
GOD balanced our Karmas and we were helped by a cool breeze instead of the
scorching sun we had 24 hours back. Syed was regaining his jovial self and was
walking like Moses of Ten Commandments. Our crushed spirits of the CP6 to CP7
walk was getting revived and though every kilometre looked like two, we managed
to get our cheer back and in this stretch were cheered by little children who
kind of posted us a standard questionnaire. I also pitched in with my doses of
borrowed philosophy like ‘Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional’ for which
Syed quipped back ‘Everything is inevitable’. We did check on Mahesh and as I
had assured all of them, Mahesh was with good company. I kind of put an analogy like ‘If I say Hi to
people’ they will turn their back on me and wonder why they ever greeted me,
while if Mahesh says ‘Hi’ they will never go away from me and that has proved
true. We reached CP9 and in any case it was a small check point. There were no
beds to Crash and Syed did not need any as well. Girish and Syed refilled with
Maggie Noodles and as Girish was about to sip on his Maggie Noodles, I accidentally
knocked it off. To cover up my fault, I gave a futile lecture on ‘Marshmallow
test’ and ‘Delayed Gratification’ to both of them. Girish got a replacement cup
and both of them finished their noodles and were geared up for the home run. We
started towards the finish line with ‘Insha Allah’ (God Willing) and like all
check points Girish’s enthusiasm did not reduce a bit at all. He said we will
finish it in 75 minutes, I said 120 minutes. The home run did not prove easy as
well. Syed raced us and gave us the punch line of ‘For once, I am waiting for
you guys’. We were happy to see him like that. We got past the 98 kilometre
mark and 99 never seem to come. Syed was saying we will hit directly 100 ,
Girish was saying we are nearing 100 and I maintained we have not hit 99. Finally I spotted 99 pinned at the end of a
tree and showed it to Syed. Both of them cursed me, but took a snap near 99 and
resumed the final , final , final kilometre. We kind of asked everyone who was passing by
on where is the finish line and finally we saw it. We reached it together and
the clock read 36:05:42 .
We congratulated each other and
somehow we seemed to be devoid of any feelings. Not of ecstasy, not of pain,
not of relief. Nothing at all. We got our certificates, got our medals, went
home. We heard from Mahesh that he also completed in 42 hours which we were
sure he would.
Lessons
Looking at our timings, we feel
we could have done it easily within 25 hours, but quite frankly we were in a
race against no one but ourselves. So we will not kill ourselves on that. The
other things that could have possibly helped are
1.
Better plan. We had no plan except the extrapolated plan.
2.
Better training. Not the ad-hoc one we used to.
3.
Better Equipped. We did even have a water bottle to ourselves for the
first 50 kilometres
4.
Actual Support Crew. While the virtual support crew helped, the physical
support crew brings in the right interventions.
5.
Extrapolate with Evidence. 5 KMS in one hour does not get you 100 KMS
in 20 hours.
Knowing our own selves a little
bit better, do we think we will take care of it in the next walk? Not a chance.
We like the label of idiots and remain the eternal optimists that we are.
Tailpiece
Murakami says “You have to show
your muscle who is the boss” and guess we did that, though blisters came close
to ruining it! Though the above statement tantamount to some kind of arrogance
on ourselves, We actually became a trifle humbler than what we started the walk
with.
When you are thinking about doing something and it feels scary, when it
feels like this big lion is waiting at the finish line and he’s roaring and
he’s ferocious and he’s going to tear you apart… you should just run toward
that lion anyway. Run to the roar - –Tina Essmaker
Timing Analysis
Check
Point (CP)
|
Destination
|
KMS
|
Reached
at
|
Left
at
|
Walking
Time in Minutes
|
Wait
Time
|
Speed
(KM/Hour)
|
1
|
Govt
High School, Barona Doddi
|
8.8
|
7:40
AM
|
8:00
AM
|
90
|
20
|
5.87
|
2
|
Govt
High School, Uyyambhalli
|
8.1
|
9:35
AM
|
10:05
AM
|
95
|
30
|
5.12
|
3
|
Nallahalli
|
13
|
12:30
PM
|
1:45
PM
|
145
|
75
|
5.38
|
4
|
Govt.
Primary School Kokkrehosahalli
|
10
|
4:00
PM
|
5:45
PM
|
135
|
105
|
4.44
|
5
|
PU
College Rampur doddi
|
6.6
|
7:10
PM
|
9:15
PM
|
85
|
125
|
4.66
|
6
|
Chokkanahalli
|
14.7
|
11:40
PM
|
2:20
AM
|
145
|
160
|
6.08
|
7
|
Govt.
High School, Maralawadi
|
13.2
|
5:30
AM
|
8:15
AM
|
190
|
150
|
4.17
|
8
|
Avaremale
Rampura
|
10.2
|
11:00
AM
|
1:30
PM
|
165
|
150
|
3.71
|
9
|
Gottigihalli
|
9
|
3:50
PM
|
4:20
PM
|
160
|
30
|
3.38
|
Finish
|
Nettigere
|
6.4
|
6:05
PM
|
105
|
3.66
|
|
Total Walk Time
|
21.92 Hours
|
|
Total Wait Time
|
14.08 Hours
|
|
Average Speed
|
4.65 KM / Hour
|
|
Average
Wait Time Per Check Point
|
1.56 Hours
|
Pictures
Both of our teams managed to get one photo with Rahul Bose
as well. He was cheering the team which
collected the money from the largest set of sponsors.
Have Fun
Zunder
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