Tulika

zweiindians

Tulika


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I am from India. I lived in Seattle, US for a while and loved hiking in the NorthWest region. Now I am in Switzerland, enjoying hiking in Alps and traveling all over Europe. I love to travel and wish could do it full time. I usually travel very backpacker style, take local trains, stay in hostels or camp when possible. Recent trip = camping in Greece. Upcoming trips - Austrian, Italian and French Alps, New Zealand and Iceland summer once more and finally the Himalayas (fingers crossed).
Here is my older travel page - https://sites.google.com/site/tulikatravel/
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Europe » Slovenia April 19th 2019

Today was cave day. I got up early and headed to train station to take train to Divaca. The plan was to walk down from there to caves, about 45 min walk. I bought my tickets and then off to train. In train I met 3 guys who were also going to same place. We exchange some information and notes of the trip so far. At one of the stations, a school group entered. They were on a school trip to see a WWI museum, obviously not too thrilled about it. 3 of them sat near me and started a game of cards. It was interesting, cards were different. I watched and mostly got it. Then they asked if I want to play. Why not. They told me the rules and we started, complex but manageable. ... read more
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Asia » India » Jammu & Kashmir » Ladakh » Leh September 10th 2017

The day of marathon has arrived. I am still not confident that I will make it, but there is never a question of turning back. After 4 days of relaxing, I am feeling strong. We started at 5:30 in the morning in taxi to get to our starting point. There were quite a lot of people, more than I expected. Many groups from Delhi, Pune etc. We did our usual pre-race preparation, bib, sunscreen. Then after seeing many groups warming up, I decided to join one of them to warm up. Then it was off on the course. Starting strong, I soon overtook quite a few people. Usually it is a sign that I am running too fast at an unsustainable pace. But I was feeling fine, so I carried on. Once slightly out of town, ... read more

Asia » India » Jammu & Kashmir » Ladakh » Leh September 8th 2017

Every year I try to find a nice exotic place to run a half-marathon (21.1km / 13.1miles is standard half-marathon distance). This year it was Leh, Ladakh in India. Sitting at an altitude of 11,000+ ft. (3,350m) where you have only 60% air compared to sea level, even walking is a challenge here. Add to that the fact that the run course had 1600 ft (480 m) cumulative elevation gain / loss, this became a perfect challenge for me. I had already run the Winterthur half-marathon, so I knew that I have the distance part nailed down, but elevation gain would require lot of training. The good part about that is, I can do that in gym on a treadmill. Continuing distance training in India was very difficult for someone used to running in the clean ... read more

Europe » Switzerland » South-East » Davos January 1st 2017

New year's day, so I decided to go on a winter hike. This year just like last year there is no snow in the mountains. So in the end after looking at many webcams Davos seemed like the best option. It is not one of my favourite places, too famous for its own good. But at least there are webcams to show state of snow and being a popular destination during holidays, more trails are built up here. The train to Davos Platz costs about 30 CHF (with half-tax) and it is a 2 hr 35min trip with a longish 15min stop at Landquart. In the Ziegelbrucke valley there was snow on the ground and none on the tree tops and mountains, it was an interesting phenomenon, probably caused by the fact that this valley does ... read more
Almost there
Towards Davos

Asia » Nepal » Namche October 22nd 2016

Lobuche - Pangboche Start of the trek back, can't say I am not glad that we are headed to warmer altitudes with more air. Also given that fact that we did manage to reach top of Kala Patthar had made the mood jolly. It will mostly be retracing our steps, and given that we had great clear days on the way up here, most photos have already been taken. So now the full focus will be to gather all the remaining strength and trek down as fast as possible. Due to not stopping at Gorekshep, we had also gained day. I was thinking of what could be done with this day - trek to Ama Dablam base camp, or take longer higher route towards Namche, not sure. First order of business is to go down to ... read more
Pangboche lodge
Namche lodge
Namche

Asia » Nepal » Himalayas October 19th 2016

Finally made it to Everest base camp - been on my dream list for years. First I heard about this trek in 2001 from some people who had been there. At that time I had no real hiking experience, never really seen snow capped mountains and was not even aware there is something called altitude sickness. That is when I first thought how wonderful it would be to do the Everest Base Camp trek. Of course at that time it was a dream that I thought would never come true. And 15 years later, here we are ... To be more precise, we made it to Kala Patthar (5550m) the highest point from where you can see the base camp, Everest in its full glory and peaks with 360 deg view. A true Himalayan view. We ... read more
Mid-way Kala Patthar
Kala Patthar
Everest

Asia » Nepal » Lobuche October 18th 2016

Day 6: Dingboche Rest day, only had to hike up to a 5000m peak and down. haa haa. Now not able to eat much, so no more daal bhaat. Instead I though of picking some coconut biscuits. The day started off as cloudy in the morning which was disheartening. We slept in till 8:00, and then lazed around a bit. At 9:30 the guide came to check on us and advised some garlic soup. It sounded yuck, but I though to give it a go anyway. It did make a difference. I had some pancake with it to keep the pungent taste in check. This would become quite standard meal from now on, lots of garlic soup. Feeling a bit better, it was time to go on acclimatization hike. The weather was also getting a bit ... read more
Finally at pass
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Lobuche

Asia » Nepal » Pangboche October 16th 2016

Day 4: Pangboche It was time to move ahead into higher altitudes. We started from Namche early around 7:10am as we were feeling quite well. We had discovered that starting early means having the trail to ourselves for a while and less yaks to cross. The start of this trail is slight up, same part that we went to yesterday and then long flat as we traverse the side of hill (actually a 3000m mountain but looks like a hill here ;) ). Then the drop down to river level as in most previous days. We were at the river by 9:30. The view of Everest became clear for a bit, and after that Ama Dablan was constantly in view. Behind us were the mountains of Gokya valley. It was finally feeling like we are in ... read more
Pengboche
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Asia » Nepal » Namche October 13th 2016

Day 1: Our guide picked us up from bright and early to take the flight to Lukla. The airport was kind of a chaos but the guide handled everything. The flight was an hr or so late, but no one was bothered. When we were taken to the plane, it was a small, reminded me of one I took in Alaska. That was a harrowing VERY cold flight. I was a bit apprehensive now. It was like a 9 seater, I sat in and stuffed my bag under the seat. The steward gave us toffees and cotton to stuff in the ear for the noise. The flight was thankfully uneventful. I was sitting on the wrong side, so did not really see the mountains approaching, just the valley below. It was a scene which I thought ... read more
Hanging bridge
Everest
Everest View Hotel

Europe » Switzerland » South-East » Andermatt July 16th 2016

http://www.wanderland.ch/en/routes/route-0676.html This weekend it was off to Overalppass and then over a 2400m+ pass. This was also a perfect weekend for that, warm and sunny. There was a big storm that came Wed - Fri. This storm apparently dumped tonne of snow in the mountains - in middle of July! This became clear as soon as the train stopped at Oberalppass. The snow was visible right at the bottom. At the trail there was a huge map showing the Vier Quelle trail. Unfortunately there was no mention of Tomasee which was our first stop. There were a bunch of people going on this trail, so we started on it too. The trail instantly started climbing steeply and had snow from the start. This was all wrong, the trail was suppose to be flat, slightly downhill for ... read more
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