Personal

    Sandakphu, as seen from Kalipokhri. March, 2020.

    Growing up, I played a bunch of sports: cricket, football, and volleyball to some success; table tennis, basketball, and chess for the fun of it. I caught the running bug in late 2019 (after my disastrous trekking experience) and have been trying to keep it going through the pandemic. I am not very good at it, but boy do I enjoy a run. My short-term running goal is to get back to half-marathon shape but I do hope to run a marathon in the future!

    Apart from sports, I enjoy hiking (2020 was a terrible time to pick up this hobby), portrait photography, and classical (Carnatic) music - here are some of my favourite songs. I sketch and read books irregularly (I really should do more of them).

    I’ve listed my posts on running, trekking, and other miscellaneous stuff below. Click on the title to head to the blog post on the topic and the icon to read its excerpt.

    Running

    I hope to maintain a collection of my race reports and training blocks here:

    • Race Report - Return to Running
      After a 6-month hiatus due to COVID, I finally started running again in September, 2020. It took me 6 months of very slow progress (including a 2 week pause while quarantining in NISER) to build up to a mileage of around 25 KM a week. I decided to use this 8-week beginner 5 KM plan to cap this running season. I ended up running the distance in 27:10 on the 17th of April - not as good as by PB (26:46) from 18 months back, but much better than I expected. Here's my race report.

    Trekking and Hiking

    I want to document my treks and hikes here:

    • Hikes in Finland
      During my time as a Research Assistant at Aalto University in the summer of 2022, I promised myself that I would go for a hike every chance I got. Here is a compilation of hikes around the Helsinki region that I hiked. Pretty pictures and GPX files included!
    • Sandakphu: A Prologue
      This is short read about my first attempt to trek to Sandakphu. This is meant to be read after my first post about my second attempt. My first trek after a break of a couple of years lasted a mere three days and ended in one of the most harrowing days of my life.
    • Sandakphu
      This is the account of my second attempt to trek to Sandakphu - a summit in the Eastern Himalayas. Let us just say that my first attempt... did not go well. This week long trek had me digging deep into my mental reserves while rewarding me with not just great satisfaction but some photographs that I am very proud of!

    Miscellaneous

    I doubt I will write about much else, but if I do, it shall go here:

    • Returning to NISER
      Since I am one of the first people to be back in campus, I thought it would be helpful to pen down my experience so far with the hope that it will help you get a bit more clarity on what to expect and pack smartly. Also because I have little else to do.