I, Me and the Artifical Climbing Wall

Shutdown time at the plant means near to empty roads, silent production lines, a sudden calm and quiet compared to the hubub of activity. It also means a holiday like atmosphere(well for 95% of employees it is indeed hols) and a general tendency to take it easy.

Add to this the sudden splendid weather (30 max 22 min) and you just don't feel like staying in office.
Just then I had this terrific urge to do some climbing. Checked out the net for artificial climbing walls in Delhi and courtesy google, found one in Delhi, at the Indian Mountaineering foundation.

A call and we were ready to go. Me and Bhatia. A special mention about Bhatti, he proved his climbing prowess last year at Potter Hill when he took on a sheer cliff as if he were climbing up an ordinary ladder and I expected that he would cream this as well as he's a mountain goat in human form!

we reached IMF at arnd 5.00 PM. set against the DU south campus, it had a great feel. Two 30 feet Tata-IMF walls with a great pulley and rope mechanism that could be set for an easy as well as a terrific and challenging climb. varying the angle between 0 to a 180 degrees!

But what took the cake was the artificial "bouldering" roof, where you would literally have to do a spiderman. Imagine crawling on the roof of a room with your back to the ground! sounds impossibe?? well believe it! Cause that's what I saw chaps doing. Holding on to the grips on the roof with bare hands and pushing with their toes, I saw them move across the roof. A real tough feat. Just knocks your breath away.

Coming back to the main story, as you would have guessed, by the time I was thru with 2 walls, one with a negative slope(which means you have to traverse a overhang kind of a slope) I was dead, just couldnt lift a matchstick, whereas Bhatti did 4(yes four) sorties, climbing up and down!! Man he's one amazing guy to watch in action.

With sore and almost numb arms we made it back to pavillion and when I got up in the morning just couldn't feel my arms anymore!

Well a great experience, worth every sec. watch out for my next blog. Special feature on my Austria trip!