© 2010 pinaki pinaki-blog-82

October 2004

My knees buckled when I first saw the path on the inside edge of Oman’s Grand Canyon that I had to walk and get a story out of. I was fresh in the country and fresh on the job and too ashamed to tell anyone I’d never really hiked any mountain in my life. Or written about one.

I had two instinctive reactions: to run away and hide, and to leap off into the abyss in a glorious post-vertigo gesture. I guess they sort of evened each other out. So I sat down and tried desperately to focus on what I thought were my cool hiking boots but were really cheap oilrig gear.

I wrote a bit of a mindless story here, perhaps a bit too melodramatic. But it had created an impression and the path was a hell of a lot scarier in those days before it was repaired by a sun-scorched Austrian and his group of Pakistani day labourers, who hammered it into submission. If I’d known I would’ve waited.

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3 Comments

  1. Brinda
    Posted February 25, 2010 at 1:10 pm | #

    Scary stuff…kudos to the mr.brave-heart for standing on the edge so cooly..

  2. Nancy
    Posted March 4, 2010 at 2:40 pm | #

    So… when are we going? Yalla, get the Babushka experience in your pocket and get back here. Stop fastpoking around.

  3. Harini Kumar
    Posted March 6, 2010 at 11:33 pm | #

    The landscape is so breath-taking…and your write-up pretty heartfelt, I almost feel like I accompanied you on this trip.

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