When people win the Tour-de France, they don't celebrate..
They ask themselves, Why did they have to do it?
-Lance Armstrong

All I did when I read this quote in 'It is not all about the bike' (Armstrong's autobiography) was comprehend it to be an arbit, just another glam quote.. the kind of quotes which ppl write in their book to make it sell.. the 'sensation' creating kind...

Destination: Mullainagiri.. (Chikmagalur district, around 251 kms from Bangalore).
Date: 9th Feb
A sudden rush of blood to get out of bangalore for the weekend.. No plans made.. Quick decisions taken and there we were amidst the beautiful hills at seethalangiri.. The starting point of the trek... The trek to mullainagiri was awesome.. 3-4 kms of moderately challenging terrain although the enthusiasts could carve out their own route instead of the one already existing.. That said, we were there on the top of the best that karnataka could offer and it was an amazing feeling.. Little did we know wat we had in store for us a bit later.. next stop we thought should be another moderate trek to tower that we could see from mullainagiri.. It looked pretty close from where we were standing.. but so did the sun..we had estimated it to be around 3-4 kms away.. 5 kms max.. the journey began post lunch...lots of energy during the initial part of the trek.. we decided to do it in record time and set ourselves a deadline of 2 hours to do so..plus we had this idea of not touching the road at all cos we felt that the 'real' men wouldn't care to walk on the road.. 'Only Mountains it shall be!!!' was what was decided...the terrain was slightly harder but on the whole was manageable..a pal was repeatedly telling us as we crossed one hill at a time that the tower was not getting any closer.. in fact he had a feeling that it was being pushed farther and farther.. seemed like god was playing a game with three loners just like how he derived sadistic pleasure in teasing weary travelers in the sahara with the bait of a beautiful mirage.. nevertheless, we continued on our journey knowing that we were almost there and it is quite natural to crib about the target in the course of approaching it.. that was the motivation for us.. we went on and on.. and suddenly over we were there down a cliff when we noticed that the tower had gone missing.. the mirage had gone... :) or was it there in the first place? or had we come on a wrong path..there was no path quite frankly and all we did was use our common sense and some basic skills of directions ..but then the tower had gone.. we then decided to move on and not fret cos the tower was just behind the cliff that we were about to climb now..that gave us new hope.. we were almost there.. which made us climb the cliff all the more quicker.. but then once we had scaled the peak.. we were both happy and sad.. happy because the tower had reappeared.. sad because it seemed to be the same distance from us as it was when we started the trek.. though we were all mentally strong, our legs were giving up and we had to summon our last ounces of energy..the irony was.. the road that we had disrespected till now was now way behind us and was mocking at us, calling us losers.. no way of turning behind, even if we wanted to.. Ha ha.. we felt like conned maggots.. no other way other than move forward.. suddenly the pain started showing.. the heads began to drop.. the happy trip was suddenly turning sour... it seemed like an ordeal, an endurance test now.. we trudged on only to be bothered by countless cramps, tiredness, torturous uphills and all the possible things which could pull us down.. After numerous breaks, we did manage it to the tower and yeah.... that quote above did seem true.. very true...