Allow me to ‘roll’ back to this same day a week back in time: Camping under an adolescent moon at Balu-ka-Ghera, a trek of 2 days on foot beyond the exploited hills of Manali. Allow me another 3 hours of rewind, and you will find us all crammed inside our little 2-man tent: the 5 of us tossing about in search of a warm, spacious
foothold asshold to station ourselves permanently for the evening Panchayat, a war in verbiage, a war to out-cool each other; scraping away any baked beans or peanut butter we could find in their respective cans, to layer it on our bread slices and savour the only worthy taste we would find for most of our trek; the magnetic flux of whiskey bottle (Royal Stag) at my end drawing everyone closer, tempting us into opening its plastic lid; masala one-liners that seem to stimulate our tastebuds; illuminating misconceptions that would go into our travel accounts; banter without stop. There’s not much audience this evening for music, owing to blown-out aging JBL speakers, plus a narrow collection of music on the iPod – Sigur Ros, Kraftwerk, Beethoven, Delhi Belly, David Bowie, Dev D…
Allow me to ‘roll’ back to this same day a week back in time: Camping under an adolescent moon at Balu-ka-Ghera, a trek of 2 days on foot beyond the exploited hills of Manali. Allow me another 3 hours of rewind, and you will find us all crammed inside our little 2-man tent: the 5 of us tossing about in search of a warm, spacious 
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