Morning woke us up around 4:45 am without any alarm. We sat in the terrace enjoying the nature. The DDR bridge where we stayed is at the foot of many hills which gives a picturesque view when we look around. The sun had rose but it was yet to be seen thanks to the mountains that were hiding it. One of the things that hits you in Meghalaya especially if you are from the west of India is the early sunrise. We could see a couple of the giant Himalayan squirrels jumping from a branch to the other, colourful butterflies and very interesting insects. Mornings in the mountains are indeed indescribable!
We had breakfast at 6 am and started our trek up to the starting point where our cab would be waiting. While walking down to the double decker root bridge the biggest worry for anyone is – how would they climb back up? As I had mentioned in one of my earlier post on ‘infinite descent’, there are some 1000+ steps at one go that one has to walk down on a steep slope while coming down to the Double Decker Root Bridge. How to climb these back scares some people and they just return back without pursuing the trek down to the DDR bridge. When we started our climb back, we had estimated our time to hike up as 4.5 hours instead of 3 hours that we took to come down. But to our utter surprise, we did it in the same time as our trek down. Initially it might look like we defied the laws of physics but then we realise that it the psychological barrier that one breaks after doing a few hikes. The mind doesn’t think that the body can do it and underestimates the capacity of the body. It is later that one realises that it is not much of the fitness of the body, not much of how much exercise you are use to or what’s your body weight…it’s more about what your mind tells you and how’s your self-esteem. If one thinks more about their body pain, about how incapable they are to do the trek, it is definitely going to be challenging. That is what we realised after we trekked back. None of us were mentally tired and exhausted. Yes, it was physically tiring but not as much as when we had climbed down. While climbing down, our minds were also very anxious, it didn’t know how much further does one have to go, whether it can complete it or not. One can see their own earlier versions in people who are hiking down when one is going up the steps. If the attitude is – one step at a time…not worrying about whether one can do the full trek or not, but just thinking about the next right move, then most treks are doable. As they say, it’s all in the mind.
We reached up with a feeling of accomplishment and we celebrated by treating ourselves with fresh pineapples. It was then time to bid goodbye to the beautiful world down below at Double Decker Root Bridge and the beautiful people down there. To anyone who wishes to come to DDR bridge and would want to explore trekking, I would recommend what we did – stay for a couple of nights and do Rainbow falls as well. If one has the bandwidth, one can also do a couple of more longer hikes from DDR Bridge. For those interested in knowing more about the culture of the natives there, staying for more days is also worth it. As things are dynamically changing in the world and people resorting to comforts, I am not sure whether the natives of this place may also resort to it and may bring more comfortable modes of transportation to the place which will change the landscape and other dynamics. I really hope that everyone gets to see what we saw and experience what we experienced with the amazing little people of Nongriat.
Vinay R.Nair's Blog 