Nevis - Day 2

It's already 10 am by the time I wake up, although one can't tell by looking out through the hostel's window; it's still relatively dark outside. Lovely Scottish weather, I think to myself and get ready, which doesn't take much time as the hostel is quiet and almost empty. As I am putting on my shoes the receptionist comes around; he's doing his morning rounds and tells me that it is 10.40 and that the check out time is 10 am.

"I'm just about done here"

"Cool"

It is very cloudy and there's a continuous drizzle. So I leave my bag, including my laptop, camera and phone, with the hostel receptionist. I take the jacket with me, hoping that it will protect me from the impending downpour.

I didn't get anything to eat last night, so am pretty hungry, and walk to the cosy restaurant down the street. As I do so, I realize that the pain in my calves has aggravated, giving me a lumbering walk.

As it turns out, the restaurant is closed on Mondays. Hmm...I lumber back to the little shop next door to the hostel, and buy the only bar of chocolate that they have left. I also buy a half litre bottle of water; it should be enough in this cool weather, and besides I can fit it in the inside pocket of my jacket.

Somehow not nearly as many people seem to be climbing up the Ben today, which, of course, is no surprise, given the weather conditions.

I still don't enjoy the stairs, but take comfort in the fact that I know exactly when they will end.

By the time I reach midway, it is raining cats and dogs and I am drenched. My jacket, which is technically my brother's jacket, which was supposed to save me from the rain is evidently not water-proof and becomes an additional load of water-soaking cotton-wool. Additionally, I am wearing old baggy denim trousers which are large enough to hold two of me, and having soaked in the rain, they aren't exactly light. So, it's getting harder, and I'm thanking my stars that I didn't bring my backpack today. Although there are very few people on the mountain today, I meet quite a few that are turning back.

About half an hour from the summit, I sit down to take a rest, panting profusely. A Spanish family that I overtook several minutes ago catches up with me. I must look pretty pitiful, for the head of the family asks me if I would like to have some water. I accept gratefully and gulp down a mouthful. I'm alive again! Then there are no stops till the top.

While I had spent quite a while at the summit yesterday, today I decide to start my descent within 5 minutes. It's still raining heavily, and the strong cold wind is making my wet bandana feel like it's slicing through my skull.

For a while, every step counts. At one point, I have a very brief giddy spell between two steps. I know I must descend quickly and get out of the high winds and pouring rain. So I hurry down the path as fast as I dare; the path is loose gravel made even more slippery by the rains, and don't want to get injured in the practice match and be disqualified from the final.

After what seems a long, long time, I finally reach the snow patch. Like yesterday, I slide down on my bums, paddling with my feet. Unlike yesterday, though, upon reaching the base of my snow-slide, I pick up a handful of the snow and shove it into my mouth. I remember having read somewhere that the snow won't harm you if you let it melt in your mouth, and that's exactly what I do. For the second time in the day, water has revived me. So I figure it's possible to get dehydrated even in cold and wet weather such as this. And I figure that that's what's been happening to me.

I diligently keep going down. While the slopes are all wet and there are puddles on the path, the incessant rain has finally stopped. I feel less battered, but quite tired. I think I need more water.

"I hope you have a change of clothes down there," says a voice behind me. I turn around to see a kindly, bearded, old gentleman in mountaineering gear.

"Yeah! But right now I am more concerned about finding the spring...need some water."

"Oh!"

So he offered me water from his backpack, and I took a sip. Third lifeline of the day.

Withing 10 minutes, I reach the little waterfall. So I climb up the rocks and drink from the cool, pure flow.

That's all I need. But the Gods seem to like me. They make the wet slippery terrain fall behind me, and make the sun shine on the remaining descent route.

On the way down I pass by a trio of boy scouts - aged around 10, 13, and 14 respectively - asking if they are doing alright. They seem to be just glad to be back, as am I. The youngest one expected some sort of a concessions stand at the top; like me, they haven't even had breakfast. So I give the little guy my chocolate bar as I know it was the last bar at the only shop for miles.

Back at the hostel, I have to wait for 10 minutes or so before the receptionist appears. I collect my backpack from him and request him to call a cab. Next, I
find the restroom and change into dry tshirt and shorts. I wear my shoes again, but without socks.

Soon the taxi arrives and takes me to Morrison's/ station. Since my bus is at 7.10pm, and it's just 4.4.40 right now, I decide to wait at the Morrison's Cafe. Good thing too, as I am really hungry.

At the cafe, I find a corner table where I can plug in my laptop, and take my shoes off and keep them to dry in the light of the setting but still warm sun.

I gorge down a cheese mushroom omelet and tomato soup as soon as they are brought to me, and promptly get another tomato soup, beans on toast and mint tea.

The Slovakian waitress thinks I am from somewhere in the Caribbean, which I guess would explain the long hair and the bandana. The bandana! Hmmm...time to take that off.

As I am working on my nice mint tea, and an Excel spreadsheet, a moustached man comes over and tells me that I can't plug in my laptop in the store's electric socket. I think he is joking till he takes away the waiter in the corner and explains him that they can't let me plug in my computer as otherwise I'd never leave.

What an idiot! The cafe is mostly empty, so there's no real reason he should want me to leave. In any case, if he wanted me to leave, my shoes could have been an easier target. Anyhow, his burning up doesn't matter to me - I have enough battery in the laptop to last me a couple of hours, and I decide that I'll go down heavy on him if he comes after my shoes. Fortunately or unfortunately, he doesn't.

At about 5 minutes to 7, I pick up a plastic bag from one of the tills to put my shoes, and walk down to the bus station. The bus departs at the appointed time.

When the bus stops for a toilet and smoking break, I take the opportunity to get some fresh air, and step out of the bus, still barefeet.

"Can you walk like that in the city?" asks a guy.

"Not really. It's just that my shoes got wet on the mountain today."

"Oh, yeah, I can understand that. You climbed Ben Nevis, eh? Once the strong winds flattened out my tent there."

After a moment, he asks, "So, are you from Peru?"

He obviously drew inspiration from a Cordillera de Los Andes Peru tshirt, a gift from a Peruvian friend, which I am wearing. That said, I've never seen a Peruvian guy wear a tshirt that says Peru (we are not talking about sports jerseys).

"No, from India."

"Wow! So this must be like a molehill for you."

"Well, it' small compared to the peaks in the Himalayas, but it's not as if I've climbed all the ones in the Himalayas, so..." I smile.

In Glasgow, I show the driver my mobile ticket and he tells me that it was for yesterday. What? I check the text message and realize that he is right. Just goes to show how thoroughly I planned this trip.

"For £15 I could fix you up," the driver offers.

"Well, I have £10", I open my wallet, "and some coins." I say, pulling out 3-4 pound coins.

"£10 is fine."

And so I reach London in the morning, barefeet and all.

Nevis - Day 1

There are no direct coaches or trains from London to Fort William. So I decide that it would be best to take the first coach in the morning to Fort William from Glasgow. Since the direct coach from London that reaches Glasgow first in the morning gets there 5 minutes after the first coach to Fort William departs, I decide to book my journey through Birmingham. This way, I'll reach Glasgow with enough time on hand to catch the Fort William coach.

I decide to call my folks in India before leaving London, and somehow that conversation lasts a while, meaning that I am late for my 7pm for Birmingham. Further, after spending a little while at the city bus stop I discover that the buses have been diverted away from this road. So I run down to Westminster and catch a bus from there, and upon alighting at the Victoria underground station, I run to the Victoria coach station. I arrive at the station at exactly 7 pm (or maybe a minute before that), and do not see my coach at the assigned gate. So I go out to ask the uniformed guy outside the door.

As I am waiting for him to get off his walkie-talkie, I see my coach pulling out from behind another one, and wave the driver to stop. But he doesn't and merrily pulls away. This grinds my gears a bit, and it further riles me that the uniformed guy with the walkie-talkie refuses stop the driver, and tells me that he can't change my ticket to get me on the next coach at 7.30. And to get onto that coach, he tells me, I'll have to go to the ticket counter and buy a new ticket.

The ticket counter is crowded. The queue is long and slow-moving and there is no way I can get to the counter before 7.30, meaning the exact same thing could repeat itself. There is no point getting the 8pm ticket as then I'd miss my connection to Glasgow and thus miss my next connection to Fort William. So I go back to the gate. I need to try to get an on-the-spot from the driver. Till the last moment it seems like it will work out, as there is one no-show, but then the guy turns up, and I curse National Express under my breath.

So I go back to the ticket counter queue, which is now even longer, and wait for my turn while munching on a greasy vegetable samosa bought from one of the concession stands. I explain to the booking clerk that I am trying to get to Glasgow in time to catch my 7am Citylink coach to Fort William, and he books for me a seat on Silver Choice, which reaches Glasgow a full 30 minutes before the departure of the Citylink coach. God bless him!

After I freshen up at the Glasgow station, I realize that my cell battery is down, and is not even sufficient to power up the phone for a few seconds. This is great as while buying the tickets online, I had opted for a mobile ticket, meaning that the only ticket I have for the next part of my journey is stored as a text on my cellphone.

Nonetheless, I board the bus and explain the situation to the driver, giving him my name so that he can cross-check. He checks his list and nods upon seeing my name there, but insists that he needs to see my ticket number.

So I tell him to hold on and take a seat right behind him. With fingers crossed, I boot up my laptop, which had something like 7% battery life remaining last night, hooking my phone up with it through the USB-firewire cable in the hope that that will provide enough juice to switch it on and show the driver the text message. Thankfully, the plan works and I am able to kick back and relax till we arrive in Fort William at around half past 10.

There are no cabs at the taxi-stand. So I walk into the Morrison's store and buy a couple of Kitkats and a Scottish tablet. The Kitkats I save for the hike, but finish off the tablet as I wait for the cab. Finally one arrives and takes me to the Youth Hostel.

As I pay for the night, the receptionist tells me that I'd be able to check in only after 1.30pm. That's fine, as I plan to climb up right away without wasting any time.

Although the last time around I had vowed not to carry up my laptop, I decide that for this climb it would be good practice to carry up my backpack and everything in it - the laptop, a 2L bottle of water, a change of clothes, toiletries, and a jacket. The bandana I wear right away.

At the foot of the path I meet a pair of middle-aged Scottish men from Fife who comment on how far away from home I am. Well, I now live in London, I tell them, and thus not quite that far.

With that the flight of stairs begins. It is a nice, bright day, just as the forecast on weather.com promised, although there are clouds on the mountains.

One would think that in the better weather conditions the climb would have become easier, but it hasn't. The first half hour is still pretty hard. I don't like these stairs.

Then I see a young guy with a dog on a leash.

"Boy! If this is where you walk your dog every day, then hats off."

"Of course not," he says and we laugh.

There's a German girl vacationing with her friends. And then other. And another.

I don't know if there's something about this mountain, or about German girls, but there seem to be an awful many of them around here.

There is a 60-odd years old Scottish couple taking a slow walk.

Next, I pass by a Czech girl. She is vacationing with her boyfriend, and climbing the hill with him too, but he is somewhere far behind.

As I overtake her, I notice a dancing cloud on the mountain. So I stop to videotape. It is amazing. For about 15 minutes, the cloud forms, dissipates and prances & waltzes around again and again till becomes a thick fog.

On the way up, there are more German girls and German couples. There is also a smattering of Irish and Scottish teens and late-middle-aged folks, some of them with dogs.

It is interesting to see that one needs to cross a little patch of snow on the way, even on this summer day.

Closer to the summit, I run into the Czech girl again. She is going down.

"You are FAST," I say, "already climbing down."

Not the case, she tells me. Apparently, her boyfriend is feeling exhausted, and she needs to go to him and help him walk to the summit. Hmmm...

The peak (Scots would call it a Munro) is quite unlike a peak; it looks more like a plateau strewn with igneous rocks. The highest point is marked by an Ordnance survey trig point placed atop a large cairn. There are ruins of the old observatory around the middle of the plateau, and right by it on another large cairn is a storm shelter hut made of stone. This hut was airlifted here from Corpach in 1991. The top of the hut is higher than the trig point, making it the highest man-made structure in the British Isles.

Because of the extremely poor visibility I was unable to experience the Ben fully the last time around, and it feels great to see all this so vividly.

The view from the top is beautiful, and to add to the joy, the sun decides to make a rare appearance, albeit just for a minute or two.

As I am soaking it all in, two brothers aged 13-14 jostle up the cairn. I laugh.

"Bet you guys ran all the way up here."

"No, we slogged"

They live in Philadelphia and are vacationing in England and Scotland, as well as visiting their grandfather.

While I am chatting with them their mother catches up. She is Indian. She last came up here when she was 20, and now has come back to show her kids where she'd been. That must feel wonderful, I think.

"Oh, that's a great idea, I should have brought an Indian flag too," she points to my bandana.

On the way down, I want to wrap it up quickly. So much so, that when I reach the snow patch, instead of carefully lumbering through it like all the other civilized people around me, I just jump so as to land on my backside, and slide down all the way, paddling with my feet to direct and accelerate my motion.

And I run most of the way down. It just feels great to step from rock to rock. It' fun, it's fast, and I think it's safer too, as in stepping wide, one widens the base under one's center of gravity.

"Oh, you are faster than the wind," chirps a Bavarian girl I had met earlier at the summit. I laugh.

At the little waterfall, I drink from the cool stream and set down to rest. And as a few people (including the Bavarian couple) pass by me, I mawk (mock hawk) fresh Scottish spring water. After resting for a couple of minutes, I continue my descent.

The Bavarian couple are very jolly, and we engage in banter. I tell them that I had to shut my spring water business down as there no takers.

"Well, people are hungry...you should sell food. That might work better," says the girl.

"Yeah, I could sell some Bavarian food here, and then no one would climb up...they'd eat, and the lie down to sleep."

I tell them that I plan to climb up again tomorrow, and the guy thinks it would be great if I can get out of bed tomorrow - my muscles will be so sore, he thinks. I hope he's wrong.

Walking down the stairs, I realize that for me climbing down is harder than climbing up. While climbing up, I am moving towards a goal, an objective - to reach the top; while climbing down, I'm thinking, "Oh I've completed the task, send a chopper and take me home already."

Just before getting to the hostel, instead of going onto the bridge, I jump over the fences off the track and walk down to the little stream. It feels so good that I lie down there on the pebbles in the shade of the tall, green trees, with my backpack under my head. Before I know it, my eyes start getting heavy.

By the time I wake up, the sun has gone down behind the mountains and the birds are flying back home. So I get up and start walking towards the hostel, and suddenly sense a slight pain in my calves. Hopefully a good night's rest will fix that.

Click here to check out my pictures from Ben Nevis of 06 Jul 2008.

Ben Nevis, vanquished!

The C10 to Victoria Coach Station was late on Tuesday night. In fact, it was so late, that had I known, I could have walked down from my place and reached the station before the bus. Anyway, I was able to run into the 22:30 bus as it was getting ready to depart. Good thing I opted for the mobile ticket!

The London-Glasgow overnight bus reached its destination minutes late and I "just missed" the 7am to Fort William. The next bus is at 10, meaning it would deliver me there only around 1pm. Not good, considering that the forecasted sunset is for around 5.30pm.

"You might be able to get a train", suggested the girl behind the Scottish CityLink counter, and I took from her directions to the railway station. Once I got to the Central Station, I was told trains to Fort William depart from the Queen's Street Station, which thankfully is a short walk away. At the correct station, it turned out that my train would leave in about an hour and reach Fort William a couple of minutes before noon. Noon is better than 1pm...every minute of daylight is worth it.

So I bought the ticket and walked around the station, clicking a few pictures along the way. Glasgow is a fascinating city - cosmopolitan, modern, and working-class.

My camera's batteries died before I could take the 5th picture, and I replaced them with Duracell Ultra M3 batteries (this would be an interesting little detail later on).

Of course, due to technical trouble the train never departed at the scheduled time, or with the schedules coaches. The one time in my life when I was on time to catch a train, this had to happen! :-) The train finally chugged away about 20 mts late and with only two of the originally planned four coaches, with me inside one of them. This means that I'd need to change over to a conneting train in Crainlarich.

In Fort William, a £5 cab ride took me to the Youth Hostel. On the way there, the driver regaled me with tales of how he does a lot of work for the movies, and how he was the director's driver for the third Harry Potter movie. He told me how the area where we were going is a favorite with movie-makers (Highlander, Rob Roy, Brave Heart, and the Harry Potter movies have been shot in Glen Nevis) because the scenery is beautiful and being a protected area it doesn't have any power cables etc to be edited out later.

They had been having some awful weather for the past week or so but this day was looking good - there was still sunlight at 12:35pm.

Right across the road from the Youth Hostel is the beginning of the ascent to Ben Nevis. The pony track, the sign says, takes most people 7-8 hours to complete, though the record stands at about 90 mts, accomplished during the Ben Nevis race, which is organized every summer. The scramblers' path, I hoped, would be somewhat shorter.

Ben Nevis is the highest mountain in the British Isles, which makes it sound impressive. Ben, of course stands for Mountain, while Nevis is a Gaelic word that can be translated as either Clouds or Poisonous. Thus, Ben Nevis has been variously described as the "Mountain with its head in the clouds" and the "Poisonous mountain". This adds a certain mystique to it. However, as I've been telling everyone who'd care to listen ever since I decided to climb it a few days ago, its summit is a mere 1,344 metres (4,406 ft) above sea level.

The height numbers are slightly deceptive from comparison perspective, though, as here one starts at 50 metres while for many other mountains the starting point is much higher, meaning that at Ben Nevis one has to climb up almost all its height above sea level.

Also, as I dicovered going up Ben Arthur a couple of years ago, the apparent height of Scottish mountains can be deceiving to passers-by going by the foot of the hill. This is because unlike the Himalayas, the Rockies and the Alps which are young-fold mountains and are almost conical, the Grampians are old fold mountains and rarely allow a view of the peak from the foot.

Anyway, enough talk. Down to the action now!

The first half hour was the toughest - with my lungs crying out that they could take no more. Thereafter one gets a bit acclimatized and the rhythm sets in. I suspect that part of it is also that till the time that one can see "home" upon turning around, one's brain thinks it can persuade one to return to base, but once the visual contact is severed, it is psychologically the point of no return.

Since I didn't have the luxury of a whole day of sunlight, and since the skies were getting overcast pretty quickly, I kept going up at a good pace, stopping only to click a photo or two here and there. One of the people I passed by on the way up was really interesting - he looked thin and tired and was making slow progress with his large mountaineers' knapsack. Apparently he was planning to camp in the mountain for the night!

Much faster-moving were the folks climbing down in full mountaineering gear. As we exchanged nods and hellos, a few of them told me about the bad visibility up there. Hmmm...just how bad could it be?

And suddenly, I was at Lochan Meall! While one knows how high above the sea level valleys and lake surfaces can be, it is some experience to climb up a mountain and find a lake up there! It was beautiful there and the clouds relented just about enough to let me click a few pictures.

It was also at that point that I got my first snow. The "snowfall" lasted about 5 minutes along with the gale. I think it wasn't really a snowfall; instead, the strong wind had picked up some of last night's fresh snow from the higher reaches and was depositing it as flakes. In any case, it was so light that by the time I got my backpack off, and took my camera out, most of it had been brushed off my t-shirt by the winds.

Withing 10 minutes or so, there was another strong gale with snow. This one was much colder, faster and longer-lasting. A tiny, little snowstorm, if you will. By the time it subsided, my hair was frozen stiff, which reminded me that I desperately need a haircut. Or a bandana.

Patches of snow started appearing on ground soon after that. I was prepared for this - off came the sport-shoes/sneakers (I don't know the difference), and on the socks went a set of polythene grocery bags before the sneakers went back on.

It seemed like I didn't have much daylight left - the sun had been playing hide and seek for while, showing its face for short and infrequent bursts of time. So maybe it was time for some final pictures before the summit.

The camera refused to work and said the battery was dead. But I had just changed the batteries in Glasgow, fewer than 100 photos ago! My hypothesis, later to be proven correct, was that the alkaline batteries had stopped working due to the cold and would work once again once it got to room temperature.

Before I knew it, I was walking in almost knee-deep snow. My loose-fit denim jeans, that I have overused and abused for almost 2 years, have taken a lot and I was sure they'd take this too.

Additonally, though, it started to get pretty foggy. One can see how one may lose one's way around these parts.

As for me, I followed in on the tracks made by others. It is relatively safe to use the tracks, especially the deeper ones as the snow locks your legs and makes the movement steadier and, dare I say, easier. One should take care while using the shallower tracks on not-so-fresh snow, though. The pressure caused by the body-weight of the person who created the tracks melts a thin layer, which freezes again when the pressure is released, i.e. when the person has moved on. However, this refreezing process yields slippery ice, not nice, powdery snow. So there!

Climbing up, I crossed paths with a kindly-looking man and his teenage son. They never made it to the peak and had decided to turn around as it was cold. Hmm...good point, maybe it's time to get my jacket out from the backpack now, I figured. As for the father-son duo, I think that had I been climbing with my son, I would probably have turned back too, considering how quickly the weather was becoming more and more inclement and the light was getting less and less.

As I kept gaining altitude, the snow started to get harder and slipperier. After a particularly tough portion, I decided I had earned a gulp of water. The water was surprisingly warm - perhaps because in my backpack it was insulated from the outside weather by an insulated vest (see? I went prepared), and an extra pair each of socks and shoes (in case the ones I was wearing got wet and cold). It felt good that I was doing well on the water - of the 3L I was carrying, this was my first sip.

And suddenly I saw it - my notebook computer! Why in the world I took it along for the ride, I still don't know. Here's what I do know though - never ever carry a laptop on a climbing trip, unless you really really really need it. And even if you must, get a light small one. But please never carry a huge 17" one that, combined with the power brick, forms a dead weight of 5kg on your back.

The terrain kept getting tougher, and I kept trudging on till I met the group of five professional mountaineers in impressive gear, the kind that one has only seen in movies like Vertical Limit, probably about a third of a mile from the top.

"You're not getting anywhere in that, mate", said the leader of the pack, presently pointing to my sneakers though I suspect he was referring to the whole of me. He went on to show me his spiked snow-boots, and said that as we were going up, we were leaving behind the easy powder-snow and getting into hard-ice territory, which is why they needed ice-axes and such. Of course, I had noticed that the climb had been getting harder for a while, but the tracks had been helping me along even though they were getting shallower and shallower.

"About time to turn back around, mate", another one chimed.

I turned to have a look down. I was not about to drown after reaching the shore like the gypsy.

"Folks, at this point, I think you'd appreciate that it's harder to go back down than it is to go up. I don't think we're that far away from the top. If you could help me, I'd be very grateful."

They grudgingly accepted, and I happily became a dead weight for them. I was given an end of their rope, and the nice Welsh guy in front of me stomped his steps really hard in order to make good foothold tracks for me.

The top of the mountain is not what one would expect. It's a large, open, almost flat area - quite like a plateau! The visibility was so bad that I could barely see the outline of the Welshman in front of me, though he wasn't more than 3-4 ft away. Thankfully the mountaineers had a map which we followed to find the "summit", which is essentially a point, on the almost flat surface, marked with a few rocks and a sign. Stupid Scottish old-fold mountains!

It would have been nice to have been able to take pictures at the summit, if only just to show how one couldn't see a thing. Woe be unto alkaline battery manufacturers, especially to Duracell.

My mountaineer friends advise me to climb down quickly, at least up to Lochan Meall, as there seemed to be a storm gathering. They themselves were planning to camp for the night by the ruins of the observatory whose walls would provide their tents some cover.

Climbing back down really did prove to be very tough, especially when at one point I lost the tracks. But then, the clouds parted a bit, and I could see the tracks some 20-25 ft to my left, down a slope that led into a cliff. I tried lumbering towards them, but kept slipping and falling. I was losing daylight quickly, so I decided I needed to use the slippery surface to my advantage. I sat down and slid towards the tracks, ready to dig my heels in were I to slide past the tracks - it would be painful to ram my heels again and again on the icy-surface, but the prospect of sliding into the cliff wasn't too appetizing either.

Thankfully, all that concern was dissipated as I made a perfect landing and fixed my foot into a comfortably deep track. Some swift progress, and I was out of the woods (icy snow?) before I knew it.

The jacket came off pretty quickly as it was restricting my movements. Upon reaching Lochan Meall, I took a break and celebrated by ravaging both my granola bars - the first food I had had since the morning. It's good that I climbed on an empty stomach - I was travelling light. It would have been impossible to do on a full stomach.

Further down, I met the father-son duo from earlier, sitting on a boulder sipping coffee.

"Did you make it to the top?"

"No, I turned back", I lied. A father is not just a human being to his children. He's a hero, an idol. He's strong and wise and capable. I'm sure my little lie made both the father and the son feel much better about their trip.

On my way down, I saw 3 black sheep grazing, evidently oblivious to the darkening skies - maybe this is an everyday affair for them. Bemused, I made a bleating sound, and the one closest to me looked up, startled. So I repeated the sound and the confused little thing stopped grazing, looking at his other two companions in turn to see where the source of the sound was. Very amusing. I had had my entertainment for the day.

Once at the bottom, I used the Youth Hostel phone to call a cab which arrived in 10 mts and took me to the bus station. I don't think there is an evening train to London from Fort William. Besides, the trains are pretty expensive compared to the buses.

The timetable said the next bus to Glasgow would leave in about 1 hr 40 mts. A little hungry, I went into the Morrison's store, whose back serves as the bus stop by the way, and bought myself some unhealthy, fried, greasy Indian snacks.

As I was walking out, I realized I was out of cash! I needed cash because I needed to buy the ticket from the driver in the bus - no ticket counters around here.

No problem! I was sure I'd be able to get it from one of the two ATMs outside the store. Neither turned out to be in working order. Hmm...so I walked back in to Morrison's to figure out what cheap stupidity I could waste some money on. And found the perfect one - I like Ice Age and Chicken Run, and Robots was alright, so I bought the £6 triple pack, and got some cashback from the store.

Back at the bus stop, I started to enjoy my cold vegetable pakoras. Arrghhh! Cold! She didn't warm these up. Oh, well! There was no way I was going back in just to get the snacks heated - the trip from the bus stop to the far end of Morrison's is too tiring, you see?

Just after I got done with the food, a girl with a familiar face came over and sat down next to me. Oh, I remembered - I saw her on the train while coming here. So I asked here if she communted from Glasgow, which would have been pretty odd if it were true. No, she told me, she had just come over for a meeting. She was born and brought up in Dublin and works as a project manager for a communications company in Skye. She had had a morning meeting in Glasgow and an afternoon one in Fort William and was looking forward to returning home to Skye. When she had checked a half hour ago, the driver had told her to come back around now, but when she tried getting into the bus just now, she was told to come at 7.

"You do realize that this bus in front of us is going to Glasgow?", I had to say.

"Oh! Oh, that's right! My bus is that one a few stances further down."

"Alright! Have a safe journey."

My bus left punctually at 7.10 pm. Evidently not many people like to travel from here to Glasgow at night. At the Buchanan Bus Station, I was able to find a London-bound bus ready to board. By the time I had breakfast at Dnister Cafe by the Victoria Coach Station, I had slept for a whole 11 hours - throughout the 3 hr journey from Fort William to Glasgow and the 8 hr journey from Glasgow to London.

Nevis, you are a tough little brat, but I beat you!

Click here to check out my pictures from this trip of 27 Feb 2008.