Top five institutes for Basic Mountaineering Course (BMC) in India

NIM

Nehru Institute of Mountaineering:

NIM, situated in Uttarkashi (Uttarakhand), is rated as one of the best mountaineering institutes in India and also considered as the most prestigious mountaineering institute in Asia.

Himalayan Mountaineering Institute:

The Himalayan Mountaineering Institute (HMI) was founded on in 1954. Within no time HMI became the centre of excellence in the field of mountaineering. Darjeeling (West Bengal), being the home town of Tenzing Norgay and one of the most beautiful places in Himalaya, was selected as the location of the Institute.

Jawahar Institute of Mountaineering & Winter Sports

The Institute was established in 1983 at Aru, near Pahalgam (J&K) with a view to provide numerous adventurous activities at one place in close proximity of each other.

  • BMC Course Fee: INR 14,000
  • Approx Waiting Time: Less than 1 year
  • Next course with seat availability: May 2020
  • More details: http://www.jawaharinstitutepahalgam.com/
    • Download PDF file – Course Programme from home page to know about next available batch.

National Institute of Mountaineering and Allied Sports

Spread over an area of 52 acres, NIMAS is located in Dirang (Arunachal Pradesh). Situated on a hill which is at a height of somewhere between 6000-7000 feet, the institute overlooks the town of Dirang and the Sela Pass and boasts of wonderful scenery all around.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute of Mountaineering and Allied Sports

ABVIMAS today is the largest Adventure Sports training centre in the country spread over 20 acres of forested land on the banks of the river Beas in Manali (Himachal Pradesh).

 

Other useful information about BMC:

  • Age requirement: Usually 16/17 – 40/45 years.
  • Duration: 28 days.
  • How to register:
    • For NIM and NIMAS, you can apply online.
    • For other institutes, you have to download their application form, deposit the fee & mail them the application form.

Note:

  • Price mentioned here is for Indian nationals. Check institutes’ website if there is separate fee for foreigners & for residents of the state (where institute is situated).
  • The price & availability mentioned here are as of Sept 2019.

Hyderabad For Adventurers

Hyderabad has a lot of offer for adventure seekers, listing few of interesting activities, places, clubs and more..

Places for Trekking

Hyderabad has a lot of spots for trekking related activities, listing a few:

  1. Khajaguda Hills
  2. Peerencheruvu Lake
  3. Maula Ali Hills
  4. Golconda Fort
  5. Bhongir Fort (Outside Hyderabad)
  6. Gandikota Fort & Belam Caves (Outside Hyderabad)
  7. More at this GHAC Page

Trekking & Bicycling Clubs on meetup

There are a lot of clubs from Hyderabad on meetup.com which are very active. Listing here few of them:
  1. Great Hyderabad Adventure Club
  2. Hyderabad Trekkers Club
  3. Hyderabad Adventure & Trekkers Club
  4. Hyderabad Bicycling Club

Events in Hyderabad

Following are few of events for people interested in events like Cycling, Running, Triathlon, Trekking:

  1. Republic Cycle Ride (Jan)
  2. Republic Cycle Ride (Aug)
  3. Airtel Hyderabad Marathon (Aug)
  4. Hyderabad Triathlon (Nov)
  5. Hyderabad 10K Run (Nov)
  6. Hyderabad Rockathon (Dec)
  7. Brevet Calendar (Long Distance Cycling)

Other fun places in Hyderabad

Following are few of the other fun places in Hyderabad:

  1. Sky Zone Trampoline Park (another center in Kondapur)
  2. Abhinav Parkour Academy (another center in Kondapur)
  3. Ramoji Film City
  4. Osman Sagar Lake & Chilkoor Balaji Temple
  5. Tankbund, Birla Temple, Charminar & Makka Maszid
  6. Sanghi Temple
  7. Anantagiri Hills
  8. Shilparamam
  9. Wild Waters & Wonderla Amusement Park

If you are visiting Hyderabad & up for any of these activities / places, I would be more than happy to host you! Feel free to message me on my couchserfing profile: https://www.couchsurfing.com/people/ram-dayal-vaishnav. See you 🙂

Fitbit Yoga App

Install the app from fitbit gallery application manager using this link – https://gam.fitbit.com/gallery/app/1623658a-d9d6-405e-a09d-70e4fc0c5419

Learn Yoga in English | Pranayams – Yoga Breathing

In this quick 10 minutes video you can learn Pranayams – Yoga Breathing – from Swami Ramdev and then use my fitbit app to practice yoga daily.

 

 

Sideloading Oculus Go with Firefox Reality

Update: As you can see from tweet above, the Firefox Reality app is directly available on Oculus AppStore now and you do not need the sideloading anymore, however if you still want to play around with latest version of Reality, here are basic steps. Few of the steps mentioned below are described in detail at Firefox Reality’s Sideload github wiki.

Prerequisites:

  1. ADB setup on laptop
  2. Oculus app on mobile
  3. Account setup on https://dashboard.oculus.com
  4. Firefox Reality APK – it can be downloaded using instructions given below –
    • Go to https://github.com/MozillaReality/FirefoxReality, click on  ‘Build results’ at the bottom of README.md
    • Click on ‘Firefox Reality for Android – Build – Master update’
    • Click on ‘Run Artifacts’ tabs
    • Click on ‘public/FirefoxReality-oculusvr-release-signed-aligned.apk’ to download APK

Steps for sideloading:

  1. Start Oculus Go
  2. Connect Oculus App on mobile with Oculus Go
  3. Turn on Developer Mode from Oculus App
  4. Connect Oculus Go with laptop via USB cable & make sure its appearing in list of devices shows for ‘adb devices’
  5. ‘adb install /path/to/your.apk’
  6. Look into ‘Oculus Go’, go to Libary -> Unkown Sources -> Click on firefox-reality & boom! You are done!:-D

Troubleshooting:

  1. Your Oculus Go is connected to someone else’s account? – If you want to connect it with your account now, then you will have to factory reset this device by following these steps –
    1. Turn off the Oculus go by pressing the power key (look in the display where it shows you the confirmation for shutting it down)
    2. Turn on by pressing Power button & Volume – button together & follow steps to factory reset.
  2. The Oculus Go is not able to recognise the controller? – You can go to Settings tab of Oculus app on mobile & find currently linked controller with your connected Oculus Go’s information. Just Unpair it and use ‘+ Pair New Controller’ option.

Investment tips for beginners

Its good to start investing as early as possible, even with very small amount. You can plan your investments for one(more) of these goals:

Tax Saving:

ELSS Fund or Tax Saving Mutual Fund is best option to save tax under 80C. Also this amount is usually locked for 3 years and more and can be used as medium/long term investment. Other options to utilize 80C are PPF / EPF / Tax Saving FD etc. You can choose from ‘Top Rated Tax Planning Funds’ on value research website. E.g. ABSL Tax Relief 96.

Park short term liquid money:

  • Debt-liquid category funds are safest for this, transfer money above a threshold from bank account to this fund. You can take out this money whenever you need easily. E.g. Reliance Liquid Fund.
  • Arbitrage fund is also good option, specially tax efficient for higher tax bracket people. E.g. Axis Enhanced Arbitrage Fund.
  • At least convert you bank account to sweep account for better returns. E.g. Saving plus account in SBI.

Index funds:

One of safest options, these funds are very good in other countries and getting better in India. For long term planning, these are being considered as good option. E.g. ICICI Prudential Nifty Next 50 Index Fund & UTI Nifty Index Fund.

Different ways to invest:

  1. Direct investment: Go to individual fund house and invest, with added benefit of lesser expense fee. You can track investments from different fund houses at KTrack & myCAMS apps.
  2. Regular investment: You can go to your bank’s mutual fund portal & go for regular (indirect) investment. It has benefit of ability to track all investments in a single screen, but the downside of having higher expense fee.

Other suggestion: Go for a term insurance as early as possible in life.