Himalayan Selection Camp Day 8

Day 8: 9 May, by Shruti & Francios

Happy Mothers Day ?

Oh yes thats what it is today here. And Caroline here is playing the role of a mother, with sixteen children off course ! She has been a wonderful person who is always approachable and helpful. After all the exciting days that have passed with something happening every moment today was a little different. Want to know why ?

Morning Exercise :

This morning as I woke up tired and  sleepy, I saw everyone geared up ready for the morning exercise. Biking. Something which is different from what it is in India. Thankfully, kind Alexis ,came to my rescue this morning. Starting to cycle in bikes this different was a task, and Alexis was so patient and encouraging without which off course I wouldnt have been able to do it. He is another person in the team here who is always ready to help  with a huge smile.Thanks Alexis. I can finally manage to cycle now.

Todays activities ;

Following which we had an interesting session with Ms.Roswitha. She is a geography teacher at the university of Munich in Germany. After all the activities that we had during this camp, that « break » was one of the part that we were all looking forward, finally we were going to learn some stuff about the country where the expedition will take place. It started with an introduction of  Pakistan, its location, culture, vegetation, ethnicity, language, etc. Then we focused on the main part, the Kumarakom mountains.  We learned a lot about landscapes which brought about a new dimension to the aspect of mountains. Then Ms. Roswitha gave us information about glaciers and satellite pictures which she is an expert in.

We compared some sample maps of glaciers that we will pass through and it was really impressive to gain that amount of information that we could get from those maps such as the length of glaciers, lakes formed by the melting snow and the increasing distance between the lakes over the years.

Abseiling :

The evening was something none would have imagine.An overwhelming experience of abseiling.  As we made it to the destination and got all geared up to abseil , iIrealised how scared I was to  go down a mountain with ropes.  It was something that I would have thought of as impossible. Then it struck me  I need to push my limits, and giving up is not something that should be done early. I knew i wanted to do it but the fear set in. Thanks to Lauren, Daniel, Francois and the others I took my step forward to perform the task. Martin and Mousse played an important role for me to actually finish my task succeessfully. It might not be a big deal for many, but at that moment I knew I had done something after learning not to give up. An overwhelming feeling to set foot on the rocks to have managed to the fairly easy task for many.

Evening :

Following the happiness was Pizza and Elisas special Brazilan dessert.While there is so much excitement for the much looked forward Raid there are pangs of fear that pass but then again they all seem to go away after listening to Mike Horn giving his speech with truck loads of motivation.

The day ended with the projection of the promoting movies for the Pangaea Young Explorers program. We were three groups who came with different ideas about  ways to spread the message of Pangaea. At the end, three stories, three ways to film and three amazing clips that you can see soon on the website.

Mike and the team were really happy of the work we did, and they gave us a speech about the raid which is coming and the selecting process for the Himalayan expedition. Get back to the reality, the camp is nearly over and we have to motivate ourselves and each other to make the dream come true.

See you in two days for fresh news of the camp and don’t forget «Pushing ourselves to the maximum is what matters, for its worth it.»