Footprints on the Mountainside

Wide Aware is doing well and moving away from the original type of work. Most of our work is now related with the construction of artificial rock climbing walls in India and particularly near Mumbai. The diversity of the clients we have truly reflects how adventure in itself is slowly becoming an important part of the lives of the people of India. Current projects include a fiberglass rock wall as a part of an exotic adventure sports resort and a humble plywood wall for a college.

Raka is busy and happy with plenty of enquiries for the development of more and more climbing walls, and I am delighted to see this new social awaerness in India.

Old and new resorts near Mumbai seem to now see rock climbing as an interesting facility to offer guests who have arrived in search of adventure, and colleges seem to want to offer this as a constructive sports option to their students. This is a far cry from the time when the first question people asked when talking about climbing walls was - “what’s the use?” and thought of climbing as something only dedicates crazies did.

Rock climbing wall builders are also coming up every where. Strangely, the actual number of people making walls has hardly changed. Last month, we got an inquiry for a wall in Virar from 4 different sources, all of them for the same wall, and 3 different “agents” and the owner of the property himself approaching us. Wow!!!

Adventure tourism in India is at a high and soaring higher, with people heading out wanting to explore options beyond the ordinary and have experiences that are created from their own efforts. A sense of achievement has been added to the list of things people want from their holidays, and I see this.

Leadership training activities for corporates also call for climbing and rappelling, so that’s yet another front. As a soft skills training manager put it, “These days, participants want to experince high adventures and test their own strength and become heroes for that amount of time. I do it, because it shows results in my training.” Talk of win-win.