'The Land of Moonlit Snows': On your marks, get set, hike!

The phone beeps while you are hard at work in office. It's a Facebook notification from a friend holidaying in Ladakh. You ignore it, and the phone beeps again, this time it's Instagram feeding you with a stream of photographs of sunrise, sunsets and mountains.

It's hard to ignore now. The Himalayas are calling, loud and clear, not for a staid, laid-back holiday but a rugged expedition to higher, hard-to-access reaches. And the problem, apart from meeting work deadlines, is you have no experience of trekking.

That's the gap author Gaurav Punj hopes to fill with his book "The Land of Moonlit Snows", which is a guide to climbing mountains both for the novice and the pro.

The recently launched book, said Punj, is for those who want to travel and trek in the Himalayas but feel it needs "herculean levels of fitness and preparation".

"Whether you are a perpetual traveller or procrastinator, the message that the book gives out is -- exploration is for everyone," Punj told PTI.

He claimed there are "over 2,500 treks in the Indian Himalaya" but tourists explore less than 10 per cent of the routes.

"Trekkers are still a small percentage of the total tourists that are going to the mountains.

"We want to be adventurous and explorers, but we don't take that extra step of going to new places. Having said that, I am sure trekkers will soon realise the need and obligation to spread out," said the experienced trekker, born in Uttar Pradesh and raised in Punjab.

The book shares with readers the must-dos for trekking, be it planning hikes "in small groups (less than 12)" or why it is so important to opt for local guides, cooks, and drivers.

"Easy availability of right information, sharing of trek experiences and local contacts is the key. The reason I write books on the Indian Himalayas is to do exactly that (induce interest among people towards trekking)," said Punj, who has also written "The Land of Flying Lamas", another book on trekking in the Himalayas.

What about those who believe that trekking is an expensive hobby?