Take a hike

At the top of Devil’s Peak, which flanks Table Mountain to one side, a friend surveyed the landscape and mulled. “I wonder why we climb to the top just to look around?” he asked, as we gazed at Cape Town unfolding below us. “Just an existential thought.”

I only remember hearing his words, not fully absorbing them, as I lay slumped on a rock, vanquished by the beast of a mountain during the course of a tough, four-hour climb. The sun felt like a million watts on a windless day of what was my second weekend in Cape Town.

This was the city that topped the Telegraph Travel Awards. It was the city anointed the world design capital in 2014. It was among The Guardian’s top holiday destinations. And yet, as it lay unfurled below me, my only reaction was a desire to throw up.

Up until I moved from Mumbai to Cape Town, I had very little patience for hiking or running, individual pursuits bereft of complex rules, team play or competition. Give me the sea-level charms of tennis or basketball, any day.

And still, here I was, shedding sweat, along with my hard-held prejudices, on a Sunday morning, in a way only a new place can make you do. My three hiking mates moved rapidly up the mountain, leaving me a good 20 minutes behind. “Bhavyaaaaa,” called out R from time to time, a sturdily built, endlessly energetic 24-year-old, to make sure I was within earshot and safe. The sounds ricocheted off the mountainsides, containing echoes of unspoken censure. “Right behind”, or “keep going”, I’d shout back, ruing the wasted energy I could’ve used walking.

The route began steeply, on loosely held soil, followed by a gentle descent through coniferous vegetation, and then a brutal zigzagging path to the summit. Somewhere near the top, as the noon sun beat down, I stopped three times to ask hikers coming down how much longer it would take to summit. “Twenty minutes,” I got in response, all three times.

The Western Cape is a coastal province containing Africa’s southernmost point as well as the apocryphal meeting point of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. The Cape Town city bowl is contained by the mountains on one side and the sea on the other. Radiating inland is a province with endless hiking routes, biking trails and adventure options.

Why had I adventurously suggested climbing Devil’s Peak to the weekend hiking group at work, blind to its reputation as one of the harder climbs? Perhaps in the time-worn manner, only because it was there. Devil’s Peak took us more than five hours in total that day, a hike whose after-effects left me wobbly-kneed for four days after.

But I wanted more. With both Table Mountain and Lion’s Head — the canonical big guns — done, the following weekend was a short hike in Simon’s Town, a bucolic fishing village an hour’s drive out of the city. Then came Diagonal, a climb through one of the Twelve Apostles, part of the Table Mountain massif. Later there were the mountains around Chapman’s peak. And then Crystal Pools: a permit-only hike that you have to book weeks in advance.

The hike begins at the mouth of a river inside a nature reserve, and is flat for a while before transforming into a rocky climb. The permit system is to ensure there are only a certain number of people inside the reserve at any given time. The reserve itself is only open for a part of the year. The pot of gold at the end of the relatively easy hike comes in the form of not only views, but natural swimming pools near the top.

A group of nine, we slowly made our way through the reserve. When we reached the summit after a treacherous detour through whitened cliff edges, we peeled off our clothes down to our swimwear. I gingerly dipped my toes on the far side of one pool, and expected to slide in slowly. But the pool had other plans. The hike ended in freezing ecstasy.

On our way down, I stayed at the head of the group, a good 30 minutes ahead of the last person. I called out periodically to the stragglers, to make sure they were okay. At one point the three of us at the head of the group sat down for 20 minutes by the side of the river’s mouth and shared the remnants of a sandwich while waiting for the others. R glugged the last dregs of the water. The whole hike, picnic and swimming included, had taken us only five hours.

At the end of any hike, waves of exhaustion keep breaking inside you. The midday sun is a constant adversary. But hiking does have its moments. I had always relegated it to the list of boring and unnecessary sports. But Cape Town tossed out my old self from the very top of a mountain.

(Bhavya Dore is a Mumbai-based journalist)

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