The subjects of the photographs are, after all, three ordinary-looking lads. They sit around an ordinary table laden with hot food and are engaged in a very ordinary activity - lunch. As well-fed, unwashed lads are wont to do, they look inordinately pleased with themselves. They sit in a rolling meadow against a pretty backdrop (it may even at least a little prettier than the usual ones but that just makes the photographs pretty ordinary ones). Perhaps they are having a picnic?

And then, you look again. There is some strangeness to the photographs. Is it the juxtaposition of the bodies and heads that are well-armoured against the cold against feet scantily clad in slippers and sandals? (cold though it may be, Singaporeans just have a penchant for being underdressed in footwear more appropriate for the beach) Might it be the incongruity of the three lads who have spent almost all their lives at sea level being merry, as if they were in their natural habitat, in an environment that could reasonably be called the rooftop of the world? Or you may wonder: where did all that food come from? For that matter, what about the tables and chairs? Surely such things are not readily found on mountains? If everyone's in the photograph, who is taking it? And ohmygod are those yaks I see in the background?

In answering your questions, we begin with the simplest. Yes, those black blobs that you see are yaks (actually they're dzos - a hybrid yak-cow species - but for narrative expediency we will call them yaks). Three of them followed the boys around on their trek. They carried they boy's personal effects and other supplies, such as fuel, food, tents. An impish-looking man, whom the boys affectionately titled yak-boy, was their lord and master. Together with a guide, assistant guide, cook, assistant cook and two porters, he formed part of the sizeable entourage that kept the three lads well sheltered, well fed,

and all in all well taken care of during their march up highlands of Sikkim, India. (You must have surmised by now the contribution of this entourage to the otherwise inexplicable sightings of hot seven course meals and furniture on mountains.)

It is not hard to imagine that it was one of them who took the photograph that began this post. Indeed, it was Bikash, the guide, who took the photo. He is 26, experienced, and has a 5 month old son. As evidenced by the photograph, he obligingly doubled up as a photographer. At every viewpoint, he encouraged liberal phototaking. The assistant guide was Tula. He is an earnest 24 year old man whiose trek with the lads was only his second. He's good at soccer and has a mean chess game (he beat Tim twice). The cook is good at soccer too. The assistant cook usually looks dour in a broody-handsome kind of way but that's probably because he is shy. The 50 year old porter is incredibly strong. Like the other porter, who is young and looks androgynous, he put the three lads to shame, traversing treacherous trekking routes more skilfully and quickly than them while beaming cheerfully, singing Nepali songs in yellow fishmonger boots and carrying a 20 kg load more than half his size. But their job titles are quite nominal. Everyone helps out with load carrying and preparing meals. Yak-boy chops vegetables, porters collect water and was dishes, guides serve hot food to the table. As a unit, they molly-coddled the three boys and kept them alive and well.

So, it might seem that the three lads had a ball of a time on their trek (for it was actually a trek that they were on and not just a succession of merry picnics in picturesque locations, which you might have guessed they were doing by just looking at the preceding photographs). With such a support team, how bad could things get?

But the vivid idyll of the photographs belies a cold, difficult, sometimes even cruel reality. To reach that seeming eden, the boys had to trek over more than 30km of unfriendly terrain. They went through forest, across rivers and over hills and mountains. As established as the routes are, they are dangerous all the same. Narrow paths demanded careful treading. The fresh, steaming yak and horse dung that littered the paths did not help, save in assuring the boys that they were on the right trail. Ascents were thigh and calf busting, descents were knee shattering. A misstep or loose foothold could cause a twisted ankle, or worse, send the hapless lads tumbling down a mountainside to certain doom. Rocky slopes were slippery at times; rocks could come loose.

The boys had to climb with care. The strain on their backs, legs and knees was almost more than they could bear.

The effects of the altitude and general discomfort compounded the physical fatigue to also make parts of the trek mental ordeals. The boys all had headaches and fell somewhat ill sometime during the trek. Acutely aware of these symptoms of altitude sickness and highly cognisant of its potential implications on their own mortality (frighteningly fatal at more than 3000m!), the boys' morale and focus suffered. The paralysing cold and suffocatingly thin air retarded recovery. When fog descended and blotted out the sky, there seemed to be no reason to carry on for what then was there to see? Indeed, at Dzongri (4000m), the boys woke at an ungodly 3 in the morning and climbed relentlessly for an hour in blustery wind and a near zero temperature only to be greeted by a smothering fog where sweet mercy would otherwise have rewarded them with a glorious Himalayan sunrise. Nights promised respite but delivered it not as frigid temperatures, hard floors, cramped conditions

and the competition for scarce oxygen with candlefire, respiring vegetation and fellow trekkers conspired to make sleep fitful and restless.

Despite the suffering, the lads, in their masochistic delirium, moved at a punishing pace. Where a trek would typically take four hours, they would be at the rest point in two or three. 10km of mountainous terrain (from Tschoka to Yuksum) was covered in an almost ridiculous 2.5 hours (it was albeit downhill). They delighted in outrunning their guides (not the porters though - they moved supernaturally), seeing them knackered after each record-breaking trek

and speculating on how crazy the guides must have thought Singaporeans were.

Strange trekkers the boys assumed themselves to be indeed! When they were on the move, it was with athletic speed and military discipline. When they were not, they ate massive heaps of food and slept. Other trekking groups were observed to move more leisurely and spend their free time reading, chatting and drinking tea. The boys disavowed tea (due to its supposedly dehydrative and diuretic effects) and spent their free time sleeping or moving around even more (like by playing soccer at 3500m above sea level. The boys lasted only 20 minutes.).

The guides were pushed so hard they fell sick as the boys did (one had a mild fever, the other a cold).

But despite the demands of keeping up with the boys, the lads imagined that the guides imagined themselves tremendously too. After all, did the boys, against all common sense, not drag them along to ascend a previously unnavigated path and climb a vertically craggy edifice completely unequipped? And at four in the morning, before breakfast too! What was supposed to be a short half an hour long climb to a simple viewpoint turned into an unending series of peak scaling with mere hands and legs. The boys and their guides literally climbed rocks and perched precariously on a mountaintop just because they could.

The views were awesome, the experience grand. The boys rampaged over dirt tracks, forded rivers, bashed through forest (in what was supposed to be a simple afternoon of "birdwatching" but turned out to be a hunt for the elusive red panda in thick forest), explored otherworldly landscapes and traversed lush, rolling land.

The weather was incredibly kind. Though the boys had all sorts, from rain to hail to fog

and sunshine

for the most part, the boys were able to take nice photographs as and when they wanted to.

Why do these boys abandon comfortable lives back at home to do such silly and heroic things in such random places?

The boys have asked themselves that question and they don't really know. People have called them insane when they learn about the epicness of a 7 week long jaunt to such crazy places. Perhaps it is the folly of youth? Stories for the grandchildren? Perhaps it is not as much insanity as hyper-sanity for in staking their lives on such thrillingly dangerous activities and reclaiming them back the boys reaffirm their own humanity? Maybe it's just to have the chance to take silly photographs in exciting places. Doing ordinary things in unordinary ways.