In March of 2007 I started work for Active Outdoor Pursuits in Newtonmore, Cairngorm National Park. I was living in Aviemore and driving to work in Newtonmore every day. Cairngorm is a grate place to live and work and I liked the Aviemore way of life. However working for Active was not so good and by May I was fed up and ready to move on. The weather contributed to this as after April it rained most of the time as Scotland often does! 
I herd from an old friend who learned to climb with me when I was 16 years old. We were at college together in 2000 now he lives in Inverness. I gave him a call and we met up a couple of weeks later. He was working for World Challenge in India in a few months time and was going on a Himalayan climbing trip after. He asked me if I wonted to come and I had said know; how could I!? It would cost too much and I had a job till the end of September!
 Very quickly I changed my mind, I had always wonted to go there, and I did not like my job it was taking up all my time and I was not making much money. I confirmed that I would go as soon as I got confirmation of work in Hong Kong after the trip. So it was me and 2 couples my friend Maca and his girl friend Deb and another couple, Nidge and Lo (I have used nick names as this is an on line diary).


I did a few training walks with Deb before but did not meat the others till we were in India.
I finely got my ticket and spent about £500 on outdoor equipment. This was a mission; I had to wait till work paid me before I could by the equipment. My avalanche transceiver did not tern up and my sleeping bag was cancelled and then there was a postal strike and my second bag got cancelled to! I changed my travel arrangements to the airport and spent £75 on a train ticket. But it still did not come so I had to go and by one from the shop, at full price, plus the train ticket!
 Eventually all equipment sorted and me on the plain I arrived in Deli India! It was about 1.00 am when I left the air port to try and sort out some where to stay. Cows wondered around the streets and the air was thick with the smell of suers and car fumes. It was quite warm, that heavy heat you get in warm parts of the world. 
I was spotted and scammed strait away as the young and inexperienced traveller that I was! I was taken to the taxi driver’s brother’s hotel and spent 1600rp about £20 for about 4 hours sleep!
 I went back to the airport so as to make shore that I met Deb when she got off the plain. 'I should have just waited and slept in the airport I thought'.
We went back into Deli and found after a wile the bus station to get the night bus to Manali. We took it in terns to look after the bags and go exploring. We eventually decided to get some food from a local street vender who was selling japty and some kind of been curry. It was nice but we wondered if we would get sic or not.We got on the bus and spent the night trying to work out how to stay on the seats and sleep at the same time! I did not have much success.
 We got to Manali which is much cooler, at about 2000 m. We spent one day there and then got a 4x4 over the Rotan pas to Batal in Spity Valley. A French man called Puns joined us for this trip. He runs his own trekking company and is a very competent mountaineer and speaks many of the languages out here including Hindi, Tibetan and some local dialects.

After a couple of hours we came upon a truck blocking the road which was carrying about 50 tun’s of steel! It had broken its axle! Behind it and in front of us there was about 15 Indian Army trucks. The truck had broken down in the worst place on the Rotan pass for mud avalanches. We waited around for about an hour; it was looking like nothing would happen and we would not get anywhere today; we talked about walking to the next village to get some food as nun of us had had any breakfast. Eventually Puns started shouting in Hindi at the army men in the trucks. To his and our amazement they listened and obeyed him! 
It would seem that Indian society is still governed by a strict class system in many situations. He pretended to be from a more important family and because he was authoritative he was listened to. It is crazy to think that shouting at an amy driver would get him to move as no other army in the world could be treated like this. If you shouted at the British army they would laugh at you! But in India if you know what to say you can!
 So the trucks moved, the road was modified, the stupid bus and driver were man handled back up the hill on the other side of the broken truck and we were on our way to get breakfast.

Dropping down the other side of the pass was much better and we took the rain cover off the back of our Gipsy and stood up in the back as the road got worse again. We were going down the other side of the Ro tan pass which means "pass of dry bones". It was still cloudy and we could not see much of the mountains around us. Luckily it had stopped raining; August in India is Monsoon and we were heading for Batal which is in a high altitude desert. As the day went on the weather got better.

We arrived at Batal which is at about 3900 M. We sorted our stuff and me Maca and Puns crossed the river and scrambled up some loos cliffs to look at the CB range where we planned to climb. It was my first encounter with thin air and the loos delicate chose piles that make up the mountains in this area. I could not keep up with Maca or Puns, they were very acclimatised having spent months up here already this year.
 We came back for tea and eat doll, rice and japaty our staple dirt for the next 10 days. I was still feeling well when we went to go to sleep. We were staying in a stone hut with a tarpaulin roof. It was quite spacious and comfy for us.
I could not sleep very well as the altitude hit me combined with a bad stomach. I began feeling more and more ill. I eventually thought I would be sick and woke everyone up and told them I was going outside to be sick and to come and look for me if I was not back! I felt bad about waking them up, nun of us had had much sleep in the past 7 days. I sat outside for a bit breathing very fast but was not sick!
From then on for the next 2 days I felt constantly sick and found eating and drinking a difficult chore and with the stomach upset I was starting to get week. Maca gave me some Soperflocsin for the stomach upset and Aspirin and some stuff to help acclimatise which I was gland not to no the side effects of. I was very reluctant to take this, but it was definitely the right thing to do.
 The next day we headed up to bace camp for CB13a which is about 6020M. I was by far the slowest and it took me all day without carrying anything to get to the bace camp.
I now had no motivation I new I could barely walk around up here and climbing the mountain was out of the question.
 After some good food cooked by Puns and a sleepless night I told the rest of them I could not continue and would head down to Batel. I took all my stuff this time and a tent. I gave my axes boots and crampons to our sherpa to use on the trip to advanced base camp and my helmet to Puns who did not have one.
Two days before Maca, Puns and the sherpa had carried a lot of the equipment up to bace camp well me and Deb did a short walk to try and acclimatise.
 It was a good thing that I gave Puns my helmet as the next day he was hit on the head by a very big rock and got a bit of concussion at about 5900M on CB13a.
 I struggled down to Batal; it took me about 8 hours to de-send and was one of the hardest and most unpleasant walks I have ever done! I was in hot sunshine, dry scry and rock littered the ground in all directions. I had know food and only about 1 and a half liters of water. I was covering about 300M an hour!
 I got down and was invited into the bace camp of an India team who were going to climb CB13 from the other side. They gave me Chi tea and biscuits; I do not like chi tea but it was the best thing I have ever tasted after a day like that. I slept well that night and got up the next day with the plan to go to Casha for few days and come back and meet them after the mountain climb.
 In the end the bus I was getting on had the other two team members on it Nigde and Lo. I by chance overheard them talking and told them where they were. I then stayed in Batel to look after them as Lo was very ill with the altitude and a bad stomach!
 The next day the rest of the team came down and it rained washing the road out in both directions. Puns had to leave so he and the porter started to walk out hoping to hitch after the land slide.

I felt better now, everyone else when to Ladac and Me and Maca went back up the mountain to try and climb CB16. What had taken me all day now toke 2 hours! We had a lot of time to make a good bace camp as we had walked fast. 
We were going to solo our route as there was no chance of finding any good gear on the loos chose pile that makes up CB16!
 We got up at 4.30 and walked up the glassier. Maca went on and climbed strait away. I sat down, eat some food and thought about the climb. It was basically a rock shoot starting at about 40 degrees and steepening to 70 at the top. Small lines of ice and snow ran up the sides and a thin shallow ridge ran up the middle. The loos rock lay everywhere else and at the top there was a steep hard pack of snow which was about 200m hight. After that the ridge brakes out to the right which leads to the summit.
Every step on this route was the highest I had ever been. I felt like I did not deserve to be there as I had not climbed any big mountains before. 
I put my crampons on toke off all the cloths I did not need. I looked up and started to climb. Maca was about half an hour in front of me by now, a tiny speck moving slowly up the mountain. I climbed and it felt good, know rocks were falling and I felt strong at last. I got to the thiner and steeper section that reared up into a much narrower gully above. The snow was packed very hard here in small ridges which was nice to climb but the evidence of falling rock was everywhere. I stopped to take pitchers every 100 m or so. Soon some small rocks rumble past and I hid in under a small overhang. I climbed on but was very worried about the falling rocks.
At the moment I could follow the side of the gully and find places to hide as the rock fell. Soon this ran out and I had to climb up the middle as this was the only place with snow. I did not like this and tried to get as much of me as possible under my helmet as the next rocks came down. 
I nearly turned back at this stage, but went on and was soon on water ice. When the next rock fall came I could not move out of the way as you can not move fast on ice! One small rock hit me on my arm and a big bolder flew over my head. I thought "if that had hit me on any par of my body even my foot I would have been knocked back down the mountain. I then decided to turn back and quickly climbed back down the route. I sore Maca had got onto the snow and thought it was not nice to abandon him but as we were climbing solo and this was his preferred style. It felt ok to climb back down and wait for him at bace camp. 
I reach the glassier with relief and watched as Maca climbed up the ridge to the summit and disappeared. I went back to bace camp and eat food and looked at the view. I slept till about 5.00 and sat around till 6.00. Then I sore Maca coming back up the Glassier I was glad to see him alive. He had gone down the other side of the mountain and walk about 20 k to get back up the bace camp to tell me he was ok.
The next day we went back to Batal and the day after everyone else came back. We were hoping to go and climb CB20 but Nidge was ill. 
That was the end of our climbing in India! It was now a tourist trip and we got a local bus back to Manaly which was ok compared to some of the storeys I had herd. Some of the local bus drivers are very crazy.


We now began to eat lots of nice food and sit around not doing very much. After a cupel of days we went to Dalamsala the wettest place in Nathan India. The home of the Dalalama and quite touristy.
In my opinion it is not a very nice place, except for the local food there. There are many beggars and persistent street sellers and lot of lepers and people with all sorts of other illnesses and disfigurements. Most of the people and tourists here are Buddhists and give readily to beggars, so many beggars come here.
It rains most of the time and more than once we were wading through the overflowing open suers. Nidge was ill the whole time here, it was cold also and wet, we did not do much.
 As soon as we could, after about 6 days we left and went back to Manarly. There are some good cliffs here and we hoped to climb them. Nidge had been so ill with diarrhoea that all we got dun in the end was some bolder problems.
 I went running and did some exercises and pull ups to try and get back a bit of fitness for the next trip in China. I eventually left and traveled back to Della with a Chinese girl who works as a tour guide in China. She gave me some good info about places in China and I eventually arrive in Hong Kong. Yay Yay Yay! For me this was like coming home as I had worked here last year and HK is still very British, I think. I was meeting a friend from Ireland to go climbing in China and was looking forward to it. So fare well 'amazing India'.