'How it all started'- An intro to how I ended up loving the mountains!!!

Namaste (Hello in Hindi) to one and all from around the world!!!!! My name is Varun Rao, from a quaint little town called Mangalore in Southern India. An engineer by qualification, an Entrepreneur by profession and a Traveller by heart makes it very hard to keep me grounded in one place.

The love for travel over the years has turned into a more serious passion in the high altitude sport of mountaineering whereI have been learning the different skills required to complete technical expeditions in the Himalayas. Well, I guess any story needs to start at the beginning, well in my case before I was born. My mom was six months pregnant when she went for a short “supposedly" easy trek to ‘Yana’ with my dad and his friend. It turned out to be a monsoon challenge with fallen trees and leeches making the path a pain to walk. But I guess something from this experience got engrained to me and from childhood I was interested in exploring new places, going on hikes with parents on weekends, longer hikes with school mates in the scouts, overnight hikes with college friends and ultimately expeditions in the last few years.

Having over 70 years experience in the automobile business, my family encouraged me to pursue an engineering degree in Mechatronics from Manipal Institute of Technology (M.I.T). This is where I learnt to be independent, met a lot of new people from all over India and followed the college life rule of “Study hard, Party Harder”.

Manipal was unique to India as it was university town with a huge student population and lots of restaurants and pubs. It also had the advantage of being close to clean beaches, numerous rivers and the mighty western ghats (south India’s largest mountain range). We would often find ourselves taking our bikes out for a ride to these places at the drop of a hat. We did quite a lot of hiking in Kudremuk and Agumbe in between chill trips to Goa and Gokarna.

After that I worked in my family business for a year and it was time to make the next step in life, a masters degree from the Royal Melbourne institute of Technology in Australia. This was where I was exposed to the thrills of skiing and rock climbing when my college adventure club used to have weekend trips to the outback.

Having wanted to always explore the land down under on a budget, this was the perfect place to start. Melbourne was the opportunity I got to go from weekend hiker to rock climber which I wouldn't have done in India given the conceived ‘RISK’ involved in the sport in India. I would go on to explore the whole of the east Australian coast along with sky diving over the great barrier reef, diving in the reef, cross-country skiing, white water rafting and the quintessential Aussie Pub Crawl.

After I got back to India, I started working full time in the family business (we are dealers for Toyota in Mangalore and Udupi) but soon I started getting bored with the routine life and yearned for more. This is when I applied to undergo a course in mountaineering in the Himalayas.

This was a gruelling one month long army type training that makes the most impossible looking peaks a possibility. The course taught me rock and ice climbing techniques, crevasse rescue, first aid, map reading, survival skills, gear and equipment care etc.

This was also where I got to experience the brilliance of high alpine meadows and glaciers of the roof of the world. Ive returned to Himalayas multiple times since then in all seasons of the year (3 times in the last one year).

I would like to thank my parents who have always encouraged my to pursue my dreams an follow my passion. My brother being a national level rally driver is a testament to their encouragement. Although my mom gets really nervous when I go on expeditions as there is no mobile phone range and has no idea if I'm fine or not (usually fine)

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I would also like to thank @firepower for getting me into this world of blogging and the power of the Steemit community. I would have joined way earlier if I had know how useful and informative it was. I hope I've done justice for an intro post. Will be posting stuff related to mountaineering, hiking, travelling off the beaten path around the world, along with gear and destination reviews. Thank you for going through my first post and follow me to my next expedition to a 21000 ft (6400meters) peak in Ladakh in a weeks time. Cheers!!!!!

You can also follow me on instagram @a.varunrao