From Dec 14th to 18th (morning) I went on a trip to Mt. Abu. It was a very fun trip, together with my friends and teachers. While it was quite a tiring experience, it was one of the best moments in my life, which profoundly changed me. This trip was mainly about trekking and pushing my body to “limits”. The reason why I chose to take part in this trek, was that I could physically push myself, beyond my comfort zone.

LO1: Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth

When I was going on my first trek, I realized just how much I was ‘in my comfort zone’. It became clearly evident that one of my primary weaknesses was my physical ability to go on longer treks. I felt that I just couldn’t take it further. The feeling of exhaustion kept creeping into my trekking experience. However, once I was aware of my situation, I became accepting it. I somehow felt that I could do it, once I learned that I had no choice but to push my limits further. It is very important for us to know what our strengths and weakness are, as they provide us insight into the things that we should work on. As a person being balanced is one of the most important things to do, and knowing your strengths and weaknesses, allows you to do just that. I did work on my weakness during the trip. I pushed myself further, taking fewer unnecessary breaks, and using better trekking strategies. This allows me to be more capable of everyday tasks, and make sure that I can go on in my routine, without every feeling tried.

LO2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process

The trekking was challenging, considering the altitude and sheer length of the trek. More than that, the trek was quite rocky, which made the trek even more challenging. While I have done trekking like this in the past, however, that was more than 3 years ago. I had simply forgotten the skill of trekking. Ultimately I overcame this challenge by consulting trip leaders, who were doing this for years. It was from them, that I relearned how to properly trek, which allowed me to enjoy trekking more than just dislike it. Having undertaken this challenge, I felt really happy and confident that I can more than just overcome a challenge like this. In the process, I learned skills like rock climbing and rappelling, which is very essential to trekking. This skill can be useful in the future, as I go on new journeys for trekking. I feel capable of learning a previously distant skill, but also quite satisfied and content with myself. It is important, not just to learn new skills, however, to also hone the skills that you currently have.

LO4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences

Trekking was a very tiring activity. Due to the uneven and quite rocky terrain, trekking was quite difficult and required perseverance. It made me feel that I cannot take it any further. I still kept on going through with the challenge, and finally, when I did complete the trek, I felt quite content and satisfied for the same. In order for me to complete the trek I had to commit myself, to not drinking excess water, taking unneeded breaks and keep on pushing myself. There was a lot of internal motivation that I had to get to complete trekking. This is not something that I did on just one hard trek, but I had to do this on every trek for 4 days straight. It wasn’t easy for me to just commit myself to pushing harder. I was so tired that I couldn’t even think properly, however, I thought that this is the one time that I get to do this, so why not just do it? It usually isn’t easy for me, because I do not always get the intrinsic motivation to do things, however, once I do, I can push way beyond. Commitment and perseverance are very important as it gives you the strength to rebound from your shortcomings and failures, giving you a second chance to prove yourself.

LO5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

During our free time on the campsite, we played a game called to save the world. It was a very collaborative game, which involved a lot of concentration and team thinking. Generally, working with others is very hard for me, because people don’t really listen to the ideas that everyone has to say. They just want everyone to hear their ideas, which can be quite toxic. Similarly, in this case, it was hard for me to work with others, who were trying to unnecessarily complicate the game. I didn’t have one particular person that was difficult to work with, however, the entire team was developing quite useless ideas to overcomplicate the game. I did try to convince people to just play the game the way it was intended. Some people did listen to me, but some just argued how their strategy was better than a more practical approach to the game. They did listen to me, after a couple of times when their ideas failed and they had to resort to the only idea left. It is very important to work with people, but rather to listen to them and also communicate ideas effectively so that as a team we come to the best possible conclusion. Leadership in our activity was really important. Whenever we failed, even though it was a mistake of one person, we didn’t blame the entire game on him. Rather the leader talked to him personally. If we won because of someone, the leader appreciates him in front of everyone, which boosted the confidence of the team.

LO7: Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions

During the same game, I discovered that our opponent team was blatantly cheating. I was confused at the time because I could I easily informed the referees and disqualified the team. While doing that gave our team a massive advantage, it also meant that we tried to get an unfair advantage over the other teams. It didn’t really affect us in the long run, but it meant that we took efforts to push down another team rather than to improve ourselves and get more competitive. The issue made me critical of my actions. I will always try to stay true to my principles, which is something that I did this time around as well. Even before this happened, I would still be quiet and become more competitive, regardless of the type of event that it was and the seriousness of it.

In the end, I became more balanced in the end. Even though I am good enough in academics, robotics and other fields, trekking, rock climbing, rappelling and caving allowed me to balance myself out in all ways. It allowed me to take care of both my mind and my body. The best part of the experience was definitely reaching the end of the trekking, as the feelings of satisfaction and happiness blasted in. It brought a sense of accomplishment and enjoyment to me in the end. The main thing that I learned from this experience is to keep on trying new things, meet new people and always stay true to your principles. I consider this activity a success.

Here are some photos: