Pune, Maharashtra, India, 31 August  2019, 1645 hours:

Have you ever woken in the morning and wondered: “How am I going to do all this?”

Well, I usually have that and many other distracting thoughts every day. But August has been different. August’s been a hectic month, a hectic month. A Hectic Month!

It’s been a month of typical days of 6 am till 12.30 am daily routine, but it’s been hectic in the sense that I haven’t had the 10 minutes of breathing time that I usually have every hour. The kind of month where I have been going to bed at night and waking up next morning, without having the time to stop and think: “Did I have dinner last night?” It’s been one long, ‘get-the-job-done’ month.

And it’s been the same for The Mountain Walker team as well. Itinerary planning, getting our trademark (yesss!, but we haven’t had time to enjoy this major IPR milestone yet), book promotions, regular sales … Abhishek and Ameen have been working flat out with the support of Abhinav, Sanjay Mehta and our partners.

Abhinav and Ameen have also been working round-the-clock for the launch of The Mountain Walker’s second paperback title in the ‘Diaries’ series: “Left, Right, and then Straight to Spiti”. The printing is complete, the book is now being bound and packed and so on.

Did you know that the photo from your phone that looks so awesome, may not cut it if you want to print it because the dpi (dots per inch) may not be adequate? (I didn’t know my photographs had dots in the first place).

Did you know that you need higher GSM paper for the book cover, but not too high because then there might be creases when they fold the cover? (I haven’t looked up what GSM is).

Did you know … just in case you wanted to know what it takes to print a book, the people involved, what they do, the little things that matter … here’s a photo-feature that might help.

CEO Abhishek and COO Ameen finalising output of initial set of pages.

Offset printing essentials: The Four colour plates

Now I know what it means when they say: Hot off the press!

Comparing desired output with actual result.

Collective evaluation to finalise output before the next set of pages gores into full print-run.

Roopesh gets hands-on to ensure the rollers have adequate levels of ink.

Getting the Cover right is critical: Shashank Joshi of Shail Enterprises makes a call.

All stacked up … now for the print-run of the cover.