Note: A good friend, would often refer to me as "The Great Rambler" so from here on, I make no more excuses :-)

I was born on December 11th, 1973 in Calcutta (the only brother to 2 elder sisters), where my father was working for a British multinational. Not quite sure what to name me, my parents turned to the Calcutta Telephone Directory for options (The Directory I believe ran into a couple of huge volumes) and finally decided on Dhirender - an offshoot of "Dhir" which means patience (I can just about hear a lot of people saying "yeah sure").

My earliest memories of Calcutta revolve around sandesh and daabs, of Park Street and the maidan, of playing cricket in the roads and studying like crazy to get into a good school - I finally got admission to Don Bosco, but you can be sure I hated every moment of the preparation.

After two years in Don Bosco, Calcutta (where one of the highlights was a perfect score in an English Grammar examination), we shifted to Chandigarh - my father had decided to go entrepreneurial and float a business venture.

I completed the rest of my schooling at Yadavindra Public School situated in Mohali - a city next to Chandigarh - where I spent far too many hours in the library devouring which ever books I could find. It was during this time too, that I discovered my interest in trekking and the outdoors.