Avimore....

Today is 14^th January, 2012. The morning is magnificent, mysterious and wonderful unlike my most busy mornings. The sun is becoming mighty fearing the clouds away in the horizon. As we looked out of our train window, it felt like watching some earth program on discovery channel. Why all my mornings are not like this?? Few hours back, I was expecting it to be horrible at the Aberdeen railway station when we nearly missed the train. And look what a great day it is turning out to be. As we reached Inverness, it all looked beautiful. Inverness is the gateway to the Scotland's great wilderness, although Inverness itself never looked wild at all. In fact, it’s a small historic city sitting between the western highlands and the Cairngorm Mountains to tell people the story of 400 million years old mountains since the creation of Scotland, well before the life evolved on the planet Earth. Inverness lies on an active fault line (a strike slip fault) called the Great Glen. The creation of this fault is a major event in the history of dynamic earth process. Along this fault line today lies several fresh water lochs formed by erosion due to glaciations, one of them is the famous Lochness. If you heard of Lochness monster, this is it. Although the Monster proved to be a hoax, but the volume of dark water it holds is not less than an intimidating monster. It was freezing cold, as we progressed towards the end of the day. We had a descent boat trip in the Lochness and some dirty food at Jimmy Chung. Enough for that day, but I was worried about tomorrow. I'm must plan for something more exciting, that's what I told to myself. And off course what could be more exciting than going to the snow covered greater rugged mountain range... So, we must enter this world. We wake up around 5 am in the morning, decided to go to Fort Williams. We set out soon, when the rest of the world sleeping. It’s just us now. As we reached the bus stop, it was even more disappointing. All the services to Fort Williams closed. The tourist information center closed. No hope really. This is f*** world, that’s what I thought. After we did some enquiry at the bus stand, finally settled for more feasible Avimore, a small tourist attraction to the south east of Inverness and 1 hour drive. But, with no expectations, I was fairly clear that this is not going to be exciting. As we ride the distance and for next couple of hour what Avimore provides us is something I can’t put in words here. When I did a short vacation in last December, I had a glimpse of some great mountain paradise. But, I always wished during that time, if could touch, hike, trek them. And go as close as I can. Well, here it is, I’m standing on the western Cairngorm Mountains.