On Hiking and Going Out
As the sun gets meaner, my impatience with things starts reaching new heights. This is also why I try to go out as often as I possibly can, besides wanting to leave my shanty 9 square meters. This Friday I was courageous enough to go hiking alone at Mount Puget, just beside where I live — I was quite happy that I climbed that high on the mountain, and could see the entirety of Marseille from there. This time, I did take some water with me, and I did find out that it was necessary as I drank too much of it. While my fear of heights was overwhelmingly present, I found myself wanting to continue climbing until the summit, simply because I was the only person there.
I had escaped! I had left behind the chaos that human interaction brings with itself. I had forgotten about all the administrative obligations that I had to take care of to apply for my residence permit here. I had forgotten about the work that I was supposed to do. I was just walking, admiring the Provencal fauna, the pine shrubs and the occasional bird visits, which would become more frequent the higher I got. I had never thought that I would develop a liking for everything that is hiking, but here I am. Does that mean I am a great hiker? Very likely not. But you don’t have to be great at something to enjoy it.
Continuing with the tradition of hiking, a friend of mine, Thomas, and I decided to go to an archipelago just outside the city for a picnic. This was a massive event for me because every time that I had tried going to the islands before, the plan would somehow get cancelled. So, I was fully prepared for it not to go as planned again. This is also why I was stressing about it. I prepared everything the night before, well, when I say everything, I usually mean just food. I woke myself up very early in the morning so that we would have the time to catch the boat even in case there are some hiccups in the plan, and off I went.
And since it is indeed my life, things never go smoothly. The place from where we had decided to take the boat was closed. Undefeated, largely thanks to Thomas, we went to the old port to catch the main boat. With all said and done, we actually made it! We sat on top of the boat where it was windy enough to make my nose go numb, but I didn’t care! It was my very first time on a boat in France, and I was ecstatic. I could not stop smiling, and exclaiming, “I am so happy!”.
We went first to the château d’If, a château that was a prison for a very long time, where all the major criminals were sent throughout French history. After about an hour and a half, we took another boat to go to the adjacent island, where we hiked a little before sitting down to eat the food we had brought. Me being the Indian that I am, I had taken chawal-daal with me — a very humble ensemble of rice and lentils that I had prepared the previous night.
While Thomas found the heat to be almost abusive, I was fine. I was used to much worse I guess. I found the small gusts of wind pleasant, notwithstanding the direct Mediterranean sun. We ate, talked, rested, and continued with our small hikes to a fort on top of this island. Unfortunately, there was no mention of any kind of history of this fort, so we were left to our own wild imaginations of what it could serve as. Thomas finally concluded that it was likely a fort that was used for checking if there were any enemy ships coming. We came back to the port of the island just in time to catch the incoming boat back to Marseille. In the boat, Thomas dozed off while I was fascinatingly looking outside the window, the way the water splashed against the aggressive motor boat was beautiful to look at, and I had a new point of reference for Marseille since I had never looked at the city from the sea.