My introduction post- How I fell madly in love with mountaineering and the great outdoors

Namaste and greetings to all you wonderful people on Steemit! My name is Parth Upadhyaya. I am originally from the city of Mumbai in India. Although since a last few years the roads and the mountains has been my home. I am a mountaineer and a trek leader by profession working with one of the fastest growing adventure company in India named DarkGreen Adventures. I specialize in high altitude mountaineering, alpinism, backpacking, trekking, alpine skiing and photography. I am a graduate in Aircraft Maintenance Engineering. I would like to share with all of you a small story on how I fell in love so madly with the world of mountaineering that I left all the comforts, privileges and opportunities that the sprawling metropolis of Mumbai could have offered. I promise I will keep this short, hang around!!

It all started after my 10th grade board exams. It was the vacation time and my dad was watching the news one fine evening. He called me in to see the news coverage of a 16 year old boy from India who had climbed Mt. Everest. Knowing that, made me surprisingly restless, a spark was ignited in me and I felt even I should try trekking once. The very next day I started browsing online and found about a group who had organized a trek to Kalsubai in Maharashtra the coming weekend. I signed up for it and went for the first trek which changed my life and my soul got hooked to trekking there on.

After my 12th grade, I got into aircraft maintenance engineering due to parental pressure. While in college, I used to trek every weekend and made it a point to travel to Himalayas at least twice a year. My passion for mountains was growing with every trek I did. Before the end of the last semester in my engineering, I had secured good paying job offers from 3 major airlines of India but I rejected them all without even discussing it with my parents. I had a different plan for my life blooming in my mind. When they got to know about it, they weren’t very happy. Their major concern was how climbing mountains will earn me money, which is a very genuine concern. But I was very clear about my ideas and was very persistent with my actions and work. They saw my dedication and passion for it. Eventually when I started organizing treks, they saw that I am earning enough to at least fend for myself which gave them a little assurance.

In the past 7 years that I have been trekking and travelling, I’ve had some really defining and life changing experiences. It would be my privilege to share them with all of you in coming future. I would also like to thank @offthebeatenpath for getting me into this world of the Steemit community. I hope I have done justice for an introduction post. Cheers!

You can also follow me on Instagram @ItsParthHi