Routeburn track

Great walks of New Zealand - when I first heard of it all those years ago, I found it amusing that in a land so beautiful and pretty how can anyone classify some walks as better than the others. Eventually after reading more about them and walking sections of a few of them like Abel tasman national park and Tongariro national park, I realised that these indeed deserve to be classified separately as Great Walks. Naturally, the desire to "do a great walk" has been on our list ever since, and so when E asked if we wanted to join in to trek the Milford track, we said yes without having to think about it. K is now 10 years old and will of course join us on a multi day backpacking trek we'd both decided individually in our minds and when one of us said it out loud, the other said "of course, she'll come with us and its still months away in December, surely we can train her for it". So we confirmed yes it was going to be 8 of us and a kid. This was in May earlier this year. In June the DoC huts website opened for booking huts on the great walks for the season and in less than a minute, all the huts on Milford track were booked. E was up refreshing the website on the other end of the world while we were asleep and she booked the next track on the list and that is how we signed up for walking the "Routeburn Track". We were going to start from  The Divide and end the trek near Glenorchy after 3 days somewhere during Christmas is all that registered in my mind. We had holidays and marathon training coming up and I slotted this end of the year activity more as a catch up with E and M after ages than the great walk.Slowly through the months a whatsapp group got created, someone booked accomodation in Te Anau for the day before the start of the walk and someone else booked an apartment in Queenstown for the day after the walk. We all booked our flight tickets to and from Queenstown. Someone booked transport from Queenstown to Te Anau to The Divide and back from Routeburn Shelter to Queenstown. Come December, post birthday celebrations, the walk became a topic of daily discussion at home. K and I watched vlogs and DoC information about the track and that's when I realised what the real deal was going to be... an alpine trek of 33 Km over 3 days, staying in huts without access to showers. Suddenly the brilliant idea of taking a 10 year old along with us did not seem so brilliant at all. Nevertheless, we got into action mode and started planning what needed to be done. Getting hiking shoes, poles, appropriate clothing and a million little things that should all fit into a 40 litre backpack. K and I went and shopped for my backpack and her hiking boots around a week before the D-day, Prash borrowed his backpack from a friend the day before we flew out. We 3 did a few walks in the evenings carrying weights and the others in the group did their own thing to train. A few calls to decide on a few food items we had to carry and a couple of trials later, I made enough dry huli avalakki mix and we bought some packets of dehydrated food bags. Protein bars that K and I tried at home tasted unappetizing and so we stuck to the store bought ones. R and A ordered in what seemed like truck load of methi thepla and we split them to load everyone's backpacks evenly. E and M arrived from Zurich and we caught up for dinners and discussed the logistics of the walk amidst catching up. K was super thrilled and it was feeling festive/communal in a very happy kind of way. Then the weather as always in NZ ,esp Fiordland where the Routeburn track is, started to seem unlike summer. Heavy rain and storm a few days before we were to start was not a very good sign. We now had to be ready to pull out of the walk bcoz it would not be fun for anyone and extremely risky too to take K along if the wet rainy weather continued to stay or got worse. Convincing K that it was ok for her and me to stay back in Te Anau if needed proved to be a difficult discussion but she agreed to it eventually. There was not much we could do other than be prepared for rainy conditions and so we repacked the backpacks which suddenly seemed way too heavy. I was more nervous than excited when we reached Queenstown. K started talking to S, E, M, Ma, A and R on the bus to Te Anau and did not stop till after we were all back and everyone left to their cities. Loading up on carb heavy Indian dinner and catching up as a group after almost a decade it felt like nothing had really changed from Wellington days. So many memories we recollected .... of random drinking parties, karaokes, costume parties, farewells, celebrations, festivals, movies, everyday waterfront lunches and many other things we managed to do as a group. Somehow going on a great walk was never a priority then ;) 

The highlights of the walk - single file walking, M and Prash daring to go below a freezing waterfall and nearly having a brain freeze. Dipping into cold lake and sleeping in bunker beds in our sleeping bags. Walkign over unmarked paths, boulders, mirror lakes and having the longest second day walk as the hut was much farther than what we all thought initially. Breathtaking scenary, never ending chatter, group dance to "juice kudithiya" a few ppl going to a summit trek and reaching late to a hut breifing on day 2. Day 3 in the forest and running to catch the bus back to Glenorchy. Pictures and videos to freeze these awesome memories in our minds. I remember ordering copious amount of food at a restaurant so much that the waitress suggested we hold off till we finishe eating to order more. Going separate ways to the different cities we came from, we made promises to repeat this every few years and choose treks across the globe. Everest base camp may be, Ladakh may be , Milford trek may be or who knows when or where next!