A Festival Of Colour
B
eing a rider, birder and wild-
life photographer, I tend to
look for occasions that can
leave me with a world of ex-
perience that I can share with
people around me and update
my travel diaries too.
This November, when India was
celebrating the festival of lights, com-
monly known as ‘Diwali’, I was on my
bike exploring Nepal, a country that
also celebrates Diwali interestingly,
probably due to the influence of
Hin-
duism.
I have extensively explored and
experienced the Himalayas from
Leh Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh and
Uttarakhand in India but going to a
country that is home to the highest
mountain in the world; Mount Everest
and seven other peaks that are part
of the ‘eight-thousanders’ (mountains
above 8000 meters) is a different expe-
rience all together.
TRAVERSE 61
Just to put things in perspective, Ne-
pal is divided into three physiographic
areas (i) Himal (the mountain region
containing snow), (ii) Pahad (moun-
tain region that does not generally
contain snow) and (iii) Terai (valley).
Geographically, Nepal has seven prov-
inces and I managed to cover five
of them in ten