I have just spent bloody ages manually changing every hyphen and quotation mark in this piece so I can post it up. If anyone can explain to me why "slanted" quotation marks as produced my MS word are not acceptable for putting on the web, please tell me how I can avoid them in future!!! Anyway, here's one of my attempts to re-write my travel tales to send off to magazines for publishing... pleae let me know what you think and offer critisism...


Mountain Man Billy:

The skies were truly awe-inspiring. I felt like a Greek god, standing up in the clouds and unleashing rain and lightning on the tiny villages in the valleys below. Then a fresh flurry of rain hit me in the face and I was reminded of my real place in the scheme of things: I was a tiny, soft, defenceless mammal, stranded on the top of an unforgiving mountain with only a sleeping bag, a Swiss Army Knife, a box of matches and an overhanging rock for protection.

We had set off early that morning from the village of Daramkot, in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas. My travelling companions were Shevach, an Israeli guy who stayed in the room next to me, and Sunil, the owner of the guesthouse we were staying in. Shevach had never been trekking before, and was a little nervous about whether he was fit enough to make it to the top. Sunil, on the other hand, was the fittest man I had ever met. He was incredibly skinny, but every ounce of him was constructed from hard, wiry muscle. His dream was to join the army, and he would run miles every day and practice "nun-chucks" in the front yard for hours. He told us that he used to be a mountain guide, so when he offered to take us on a trek for free we were happy to accept his offer. The plan was to head to Triund, at the top of the first pass, camp the night in a cave there, then head to the snowline and the main cave the following day, before returning on the third day. We headed off after a quick breakfast, despite Shevach and I having serious reservations about the state of the weather. It was completely overcast, and in my rather experienced english opinion, looked like rain. Sunil, however, assured us that it definitely, 100 percent, would not rain, and seeing as he was local and had grown up in this area, we took his word for it. After about 4 hours we reached Triund. The view is incredible. Behind you is the valley stretching down towards Dharamkot, McLeod Ganj, and Dharamasala, and in front of you tower the Himalayas, snow capped peaks reaching up into the clouds.

Almost as soon as we reached Triund, the sun came out. Feeling foolish for not having trusted Sunil's mountain wisdom, we lay in the sun eating instant noodles and marvelled at the panorama before us. Then, in the space of about five minutes, the sky turned black and the first drops of rain began to fall. Shevach and I forced our strained legs to propel us full speed up a very steep and rocky slope to the cave in which we were to spend the night. By the time we got up there the rain was coming in strong and we only just got our bags into the shelter of the cave in time. I say 'cave', but really it was just a rocky overhang, at the side of which some shepherds had built a simple dry-stone wall to keep some of the wind out. It was starting to get really quite cold and I was very glad to have my thermal long johns with me! The storm continued to get worse and the wind was becoming gale force, but the view from the cave was so epic that we didn't really mind. You could see the mountains behind, the valley in front, and directly below us, a small group of ancient looking trees, their branches festooned with buddhist prayer flags. Buddhist prayer flags are strings of flags in all different colours, like you might see at a village fete but square instead of triangular. Each flag has a prayer or mantra printed on it, and Buddhists believe that when the wind blows, it carries the positive prayers with it. As I watched from my cave, the flags looked as though they were going to tear free as they fought with the wind to cling onto their string, and I thought to myself that there must be a sizable ocean of good vibes streaming off of those flags at that moment. As we sat in the relative shelter of our cave, I thanked the many gods for making the wind blow across our cave rather than into it. We may have been missing out on a shower of positive prayers, but we were also being spared from a pelting of freezing water! Shevach had decided to bring everything he didn't need and nothing he did need. He had, for example, a CD Player and portable speakers, but no coat. I have to admit though, having "ambient ethnic chill out" music playing in the background as we watched the storm through the wide rectangular entrance of our "cave" did give the whole experience a very movie-like feel!

Then the rain turned to hail. The sky was so dark by now that we had to use a torch in order to see enough to light a fire. The temperature was dropping faster than the price of a sarong on an empty beach. We really were incredibly exposed up there, but thankfully the wind kept it's course, and the 45 degree rain continued to hurl itself past our cave rather than into it. At one point the storm eased up slightly and we were able to venture out of the cave in search of nourishment. Finding food wasn't hard, as the only structure on the mountaintop was a small wooden shack run by a young Indian guy that sold chai (indian tea), chocolate, biscuits etc. When we arrived, he was busy preparing rice and dahl for a small group of bedraggled looking foreigners who were huddled around a small fire in front of the stall. Once I got closer I realised I knew them from Dharamkot, the village where I was staying. After hearing their story I started to see my sleeping arrangement in a totally different light: there were seven of them squeezed into a tiny cave with no bedding at all!

I slept fairly well despite the intense cold, but was awoken just before dawn by Shevach snoring. After a few failed attempts to silence him with my elbow, I gave in and decided to get up. Sunil had been telling us the day before that it definitely wouldn't rain, then that it would stop after 20 minutes, then that it would stop after a few hours, then that it would be clear tomorrow... Well, it was tomorrow now, and although the rain had stopped, the sky was still looking ominous. We lit the fire and thawed ourselves for a while before heading to the small chai shop further down the mountain. The wind was still very strong, and it was miserably cold. We looked over towards the snow-covered mountains that were supposed to be our destination. Sunil assured us that it was no problem, we could continue to the snowline, and that the rain would not return. I was starting to have doubts about Sunil's ability to accurately predict the weather, and after about fifteen minutes of trekking thru the gales and biting cold, Shevach was the first to stop and say he was going back. Sunil asked me if I wanted to continue. I looked up at the snow-covered peak and saw the thick white clouds of snow and hail moving purposefully across it.... "Not into that!" I said, and we decided to head back before the worst weather returned.

As we walked away from probable death and towards hot cups of chai and cold bars of Cadbury's chocolate, Sunil began to make a rather sudden about turn in his attitude to the weather as well. "Billy, you're a very clever man!" he said, "You're a real mountain man! To continue into that would have been very stupid I think, no?". "To be honest", I said, "I don't know anything about mountains really, because where I come from there are no real mountains. But one thing we do have is rain. Lots of it. I am something of a rain expert, and that...", I pointed back at the monstrous grey cloud that had been blocking our path, "looks like rain to me". Sunil looked back at the cloud and then stared at me with something approaching awe. "Mountain man Billy...", he muttered. Feeling a little uncomfortable with all this undeserved praise, I hurried ahead to check on Shevach.

As soon as we started to descend into the valley, the weather made a complete U-turn. The clouds disappeared and the sun blazed down from a clear blue sky. Fleeces and windbreakers were lashed onto packs and sunglasses dug out from beneath dirty bedding. But instead of being uplifted by the sun, we were actually feeling a bit depressed. Maybe we should have continued... Maybe my english rain predicting powers weren't so powerful after all... We trekked most of the remainder of the way in silence, trying to pretend we weren't disappointed to be going home. When we finally reached our guesthouse in Dharamkot and pulled off our dirty boots and socks however, we were so excited to be back in civilisation (a hot bucket of water to shower with and no toilet!) that we forgot all about wanting to sleep in caves and climb mountains and settled back to eat unhealthy amounts of chocolate. Then, only five minutes after arriving back, the sky suddenly went black and unleashed the most torrential rain I had seen since arriving in India! Two days of it! Feeling thoroughly pleased with ourselves, we sat back and watched the paths become rivers from the dryness of our front porch. Perhaps "Mountain Man Billy" wasn't such a bad name after all...