Mount Kinabalu Trek (3 Days 2 Nights)

Recommendations

1. Try to spend your first night close to Kinabalu mountain region than the airport. The elevation gained help you to acclimatise.
2. One inner layer and one outer jacket are ok to beat the cold. The temperature at the summit would be around ~2 Celcius. Definitely not under 0.
3. Book your tickets in advance (like 2-3 months). There are restricted number of permits allowed every day.
4. Practice climbing stairs (downwards as well) to strengthen your legs.
5. Use a waterproof hand gloves. You would use ropes and quite a possibility they get wet.
6. One pole is ok. No need to take two. 

Just climbed the highest mountain in South East Asia - Mount Kinabalu (4095 meters above sea level). Though the climb is only 2 days and is far easier compared to climbing Kilimanjaro, you definitely need to train yourself before attempting Mt Kinabalu. I learned through my research that the terrain contains stairs, so this time I spent much time climbing 30 storey building. Twice. Three times a week. This helped me this time but it did affect me a bit while climbing down. Also, I would suggest that you strengthen your arms and shoulders muscles a bit, as towards the top, you need to use ropes as the climb becomes steep.

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Mount Kilimanjaro Trek (6 Days Machame Route)

Recommendation and Tips

1. I would recommend to go for 7 days Machame route instead of 6 days if you have not done high altitude hiking before. If you go for 6 days, then on Day 4 you would be walking a good 8-10 hours (ie cover two days of trekking in one day) followed by 5-6 hours break and then trek again for 6-8 hours summit climb in the night. Not to forget you have to climb down as well. It becomes just too much to handle if you are not trained.
2. Make sure you have your toe nails trimmed. Mine was not and it hurts while climbing down as trekking shoes are hard from inside.
3. Generally people do safaris after climbing Kili. Serengeti has so much to offer compared to Lake Manyara/Tarangire.
4. You could rent most of the trekking stuff from your tour agent. I was booked with Zara Tours and their collections were good quality.
5. I ended up paying a tip of US$250 (in a group of four climbers) plus some additional for an assistant guide.
6. Dinner will be served by 6:30-7pm everyday. Suggest to come out of your tent by 9 or 10pm to view the beautiful sky.
7. Yellow fever certificate is usually required for African and South American countries. It was not required for India or Singapore residents.

What did I train on?

You will find many itineraries, experiences online so I will try to cover something else in this post. This is the first time I did a trip on my own, and mountains and hiking were never close to me. So it would be wrong to say that I was not nervous. I was but I read a lot and made sure that I have a good exercise regime to train up. I was going gym three times a week and spending most of my time on walking treadmill 15 degrees incline at 3.5 km/hour for 45 minutes. Followed by climbing steps up to 30 floors (gradually increasing it to 90 floors). Followed by squats. Now after climbing, I realize that spending time on following will help in your climb - on your shoulders (as you carry nearly 5 kgs everyday), on climbing down and on your back. I would have been better off if I had worked on these.

3 Days Trip to Seattle

Just concluded a three days trip to Seattle. It was not a holiday trip but a short visit to Seattle while on a business trip to San Francisco. It was a great trip, precisely for  -

• meeting my old friend and his family after a long time 
• to be at a place which is the HQ for great IT giants like Amazon and Microsoft 
• visit first starbucks coffee shop of the world, and 
• watching Boeing aircraft assembly line (747, 777 and 787 Dreamliner)

There are lots of things that can be done at Seattle. Tripadvisor lists following activities  - which personally did not excite me at first. I had always thought that since Seattle is in the north, there should be few places which would offer good natural sceneries, and you could see that Tripadvisor does not list them at all in the first page. However, a little google search and talk to locals could offer you advice not mentioned in official pages.

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Starting Conversations, Building Network

Finding a job in Singapore is not easy. Market dynamics are different and things are not easy if you have come to Singapore for employment. Personally, I have witnessed few people coming here, spending time finding a job and then finally returning to their home country. Have seen many NUS MBA students passing through the same rigorous process. I have gone through this process myself at Singapore as well and do believe that perseverance will pay, however you need to gain the art of conversing with others and building your network in order to reach where you want to be. There had been many weaknesses I learned about over a period of time though I now feel a little content that I have become better at tackling few things that I was completely fearful about during and after my MBA time.

People say that the most important aspect one learns in a MBA program is Art of Networking. “How do you come across as a personality to other people, how do you sell yourself in a job event, how do you make an interesting conversation that could lead you to where you want to be”. These things are exceedingly important in one’s career as he/she will be evaluated more and more on personality aspects rather than technical aspects as one gains experience. And I was not good at this at all the time I joined my MBA school. I, definitely, was not one of those who can get along with anybody in minutes, actually far from that. I was not confident of speaking in public, I had problems continuing (or even starting) a conversation on anything, etc to name a few. Furthermore, my career experience post undergraduation after IIT Bombay was in a technical domain, as a software developer, which is more like an inward job where one gets evaluated more on technical skills than anything else, and does not expose much to interacting with customers often. Moreover, getting a job in IIT does not inculcate that very skill which is so much needed in a career growth. IIT students are given a silver spoon and companies line up to get the best available student, unlike any other university in world where students understand from very start that they need to sell themselves to a prospective employer.

Boracay Island - 3 Nights/4 Days Trip

Just completed a 4 Days/3 Nights trip to beautiful Boracay Island. Here goes my recommendation

Recommendation and Tips

1. Try to arrive at Caticlan aiport instead of Kalibo. 2-3 hours can easily be consumed while traveling from Kalibo to Caticlan jetty port where you will be taking a boat ride to the island. Caticlan airport is just 5 minutes ride to the port.
2. We made end-to-end journey reservation from Kalibo airport to our resort via Southwest tour. It costs ~560 pesos per person. You could buy tickets on arrival as well.
3. We loved station 2. Reserve a hotel that opens up to the beach. We chose Boracay Regency.
4. Take a mat and lie down at the beach in night. You will not regret the view of the sky.

We loved Boracay Island for two reasons - Phenomenal Sunsets and Excellent White Sand. Both of these things made our journey quite memorable. Although, reaching Boracay Island is not so straightforward. From Singapore it could take anywhere from 9-11 hours (end-to-end time). So I feel that you should plan for at least 3 complete days to enjoy the beach.

There are lots of sports activities available in Boracay - you could go para sailing, island hopping, banana boat, snorkeling, sunset sailing etc. We did not do any of this as we have done all in some other trip. Just relax on the beach, take a dip in the water, drink and read a novel. Just destress ;)

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Places/Countries Visited in the World - 2

It is time for some update. For the past one year, we have traveled a lot and here are the places that we visited, last being Boracay Island in Philippines. Will write about my experience in Boracay in some time, but here is the travel we did last year

Vienna, Salzburg - Austria
Zurich, Jungfrau, Interlaken - Switzerland
Rome, Florence, Venice - Italy
Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia
South Island - New Zealand
Boracay Island - Philippines

5 new countries. All of them offering a unique charm. If it was breath taking scenery in Switzerland and New zealand, it was the churches and histroy in Italy. If it was the sound of music in Austria, it was one of the most amazing beach in Boracay. It is good that world has so much to offer.

Here is the new updated map. 16 countries and counting.

11 days visit to New Zealand - South Island

Recommendation

1. Choose good AirBnBs (which are a bit high on a hill, we chose at Fernhill and Frankton (both in opposite direction to get diff views) in Queenstown. You will not regret it
2. If taking helicopter ride on Franz Joseph, chose the one which drops you higher (HeliHike) for further hiking. Glaciers are receding.
3. Lake Tekapo and Lake Pukaki offer unbelievable views. It should be there in your trip.
4. Going to Puzzling World (in Wanaka) on a hot day could lead you to frustration when searching for routes in the maze.
5. You should book a good car (higher power) as many drives pass through mountains.
6. Accommodation in Milford Sound (only one lodge) gets filled up pretty fast, so book them early if planning to go during festive season.
7. There are lot of scenic routes in South Island, so you would want to stop at every point to take pics. At most places, you would find look out point which will anyway offer spectacular views. So follow the signboards.

New Zealand South Island journey has been the most spectacular journey thus far. Routes are most scenic, first time on glacier - hiking, different color lakes, milford sound, seals, beautiful views of queenstown, gorges etc etc. We avoided Sky Diving and Bungee as we have done it before. But in all, driving south island is a ggreat package. I'm listing down my journey route, nights we spent at different places and costs etc to plan your own trip. We landed in Christchurch and decided to go anticlockwise as shown in figure below. From my research, it didn't appear that we should be spending anytime in ChristChurch so we left directly from airport and stayed at Hokitika.

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