The first days

2 1/2 month I walk barefoot now. Now I want to walk also barefoot on the peace walk incl the 10kg backpack. I am exited if I can manage. From the village of Bhadrash (close to Rampur) I start walking the around 400 km ‚gab‘ towards Haridwar/Rishikesh. I am still in the Himalayas and have to cross some passes of 2000 and more meters, before I come to the lower areas. And I enjoy very much to be in the mountain areas. From Bhadrash I have to walk about three days up towards Sungri. Here are first some serpentine roads. I take a short cut. The second serpentine area I want to take again a short cut, but the locals say, there is none, but to me it seemed managable as far as I can see, and the road goes in  2km zickzacks. To take a short cut here, is a real short cut. After a while it’s getting up really steep and first time I have to wear my slippers. The stones are just to sharp. I am sweating and I ask myself the question ‚is that a real short cut‘ because here I have to walk also sometimes in zickzacks, it’s just to steep. I smell dead animals and later I see, that lots of cows have failed walking this way, to many skeletons. Finally I see a younger cow nearly on the top, somehow scared, but it is possible for her, with a lot of patience, to walk down again, step by step. I don’t know how to help her, maybe she even can find the way up by following me…. I very much hope, that she can manage, eather way.
The rest of the day I continue in slippers.

Next day I try for a while the new fancy barefoot shoes. They are to warm for now, I change to the slippers again, later barefoot. It’s a real challenge. But barefoot walking is so beneficial for my body system and my knee/hip… and it’s so fantastic to touch Mother Earth all the time. Barefoot walking only works by walking mainly on the front feet and is still a way to go, to do it always.

At the following night it is raining hardly, maybe the last big rain of the Monsoon. A wet street is always helping my feet. It feels so much more smooth, the street and stones feels softer. So all day I can manage to walk barefoot.

In Sungri I sleep in the government rest house.  Its on 2.400m. And here I have to face first time dirty blankets. They have even sheets, what is somehow rare, but haven’t been washed for a while. From one minute to the next the temperature sinks so rapidly in the evening, it feels like a wave coming – and I underestimate it, got a little cold.

For the next full week I managed to walk all the time barefoot.