Notes from
the trail and the forest

Field Note 01

What Does Turiya Mean?

Every language has a word for waking life. Fewer have one for the state you fall into when you stop performing, even for yourself.

Turiya comes from the Mandukya Upanishad, one of the shortest and oldest texts in the Advaita Vedanta tradition. It names the fourth state of consciousness, the awareness underneath the three we already know: waking, dreaming, and dreamless sleep. Those three come and go, each replacing the last as the day and night cycle. Turiya does not come and go. It is the constant that is aware of all three, and it is usually the last thing anyone notices about themselves.

This is not a religious claim. Nobody is asking you to believe in Turiya the way you would believe in a deity. It is closer to a description, a name for something you can check for yourself in a quiet moment: the awareness that was present before this thought started, and will still be present after it ends.

Most people spend their days moving from one task to the next, mistaking the noise of thought for the whole of who they are. A forest does not argue with you about this. Neither does a night sky full of stars, some of which are, by the time their light reaches you, already gone. Slow exposure to either tends to loosen the grip of that noise a little, which is the entire mechanism behind everything we build treks around.

We did not name this company Turiya Trails because it sounded evocative. We named it that because it is the most honest description we have for what a good, slow walk through these hills can actually do.

Field Note 02

A Beginner's Guide
to Your First Himalayan Trek

If you have never trekked in the Himalayas before, here is what actually matters. Most of it has nothing to do with fitness.

Layers beat a single heavy jacket. Mornings in the Kumaun hills can be cold enough to see your breath, afternoons warm enough to want short sleeves. Two or three thin layers you can add and remove work better than one thick one you are stuck with either way.

Broken-in shoes matter more than expensive ones. New boots on day one of a trek is how blisters happen. If you have bought new footwear for this, wear it around your house and on short walks for at least two weeks first.

Pace yourself against your own breath, not the group. On a slow forest walk this barely matters, but even at moderate elevation, walking a fraction slower than feels natural is usually the right call. Nobody is timing you.

Water and food, small and often, work better than one big meal and long gaps without either.

Altitude affects people unevenly, and fitness does not fully predict who feels it and who does not. If you notice a headache, nausea, or unusual fatigue, say so early. It is far easier to adjust a plan than to manage a problem that has already become serious.

None of this requires previous trekking experience. It requires paying attention, which happens to be the entire point of the trip anyway.