The Singharh hike

A couple of years back one evening, my daughter all of 21, on the eve of her first weekend at work with a MNC announced to no one in particular “I am going on hike this weekend”. I looked up from my lap top computer with a wry smile. She was all excited at the prospect of an all night climb and the out doors. She has gone on many weekend hikes since.

Years ago, in my teens, I was privy to similar chants at the National Defence Academy. (NDA).  How many times have I heard “I am on singharh hike this Sunday”. But there was not the same enthusiasm in that refrain. And herein lies the difference. You enjoy doing something when it is not forced on you.  The ‘hike’ was a trip on foot from NDA, Khadkwasla to the top of the Singharh fort and back, in field service marching order (to the ounce in weight) starting at 7’Oclock .A.M – with packed breakfast – and finishing by noon or thereabouts. At NDA the ‘Sunday singharh hike’ was awarded for an act of omission or commission! (It depends on who you are -the perspective changes between the giver and the receiver).

But the singharh hike in NDA meant different things to different people.

A hike to anywhere is an enjoyable event if that is your only out door activity in the week. But for us cadets at the NDA any day of the week was filled with physical/outdoor activities.  So on the face of it another day hiking under the sun was no special attraction. For most of us it meant a lost Sunday – half was same as full Sunday, any way; by the time you returned from Shivaji’s citadel around noon, cleaned up and finished lunch, your day was up. A trip to Pune on liberty was a non starter for a ‘hiker’. A movie in the evening meant hiking back to mess on limbs/body parts other than the human way.

If the week was easier than normal a few of us did enjoy the hike. Taking a leaf out of David Livingstone’s life, the veterans were always on the look out for newer and shorter routes to the top of the fort. Some even considered hiring a monitor lizard to climb up the sheer cliff, a la Tanaji Malusare, the General who re-captured the fort for Shivaji in 1670. I am not aware if some one really managed to do that.

At times a group veered off the route and made for the shores of the Khadkwasla lake. By mid day they were on the finish line with the mandatory ‘singharh slip’ from the fort, looking tired and dirty. How that was managed, to date, remains a secret – and rightly so.

There is nothing more refreshing than a drink of chilled Coca Cola along the way on the return trip. Invariably on these Sundays at the mouth of the Khadkwasla dam, coming in from the IAT side, was a make shift ‘shop’ selling just that – chilled Coca Cola from ice boxes! Years later when I was posted at NDA, I met this enterprising employee of NDA, who saw an opportunity and moonlighted on those Sundays! He had since graduated to trading in used cars, one of which he managed to sell to me.

As I drove up in that car along the tarred road to the gates of the Singharh fort with my family, the excitement was missing. That is how time can change perceptions.

Now, I often wonder at my daughter’s passion for hikes – never knew it could be hereditary.