Back in January 2025, I took my first hike with the intention of hiking every month. Well some good intentions just do not eventuate. However, it is never too late. So as we are in November 2025, I took my second hike on 6 November 2025.

Within minutes of starting the hike, I regretted not doing this more often. It was wonderful to be surrounded by nature and just being on my own walking, observing, breathing in the nature and most importantly just being present in the moment. Parts of it were dense forest, others were beautiful working along the creek. It was amazing.

For details:

Mullum Mullum Trail | Manningham CouncilAn 18.5 kilometre nature lover’s trail from the Yarra River in Templestowe to the EastLink Trail in Donvale. Suitable for walking and cycling.

Stats as per Alltrails app:

It wasn’t a long walk but it was beautiful.

For this hike, I took my:

• Bellroy 2.5L sling
• Pixel 10 Pro Fold
• Apple Watch Ultra
• AirPods Pro 2.

In hindsight, I probably could have gone without the watch because I didn’t use it at all. The Pixel Pro Fold was handy with navigation (after all, one does not want to get lost) and AirPods were great for podcast listening.

I took lots of pictures too where I must say the Pixel Fold was incredible. At the time, I could have chosen to take the iPhone 17 Pro Max but decided against it. My thinking was, I will benefit from the larger screen on an unfolded foldable. Surprising, not once, I unfolded the phone. I used it as a slab phone.

The temperature on the day was in low mid twenties (in Celsius) and the Pixel Fold got warm, not hot. Having said that, it is expected considering AllTrails is continuously using GPS and I am taking pictures etc. Perhaps, with the vapour cooling on the 17 Pro Max, it would have been better. Well, we wont know anytime soon because as off yesterday, I gave it to my wife. Her iPhone 14 Pro Max had terrible battery life and since I had two phones, I felt terrible about it while my wife is struggling with her iPhone.

People say men do not communicate. My wife isn’t much better when it comes to complaining about technology. She basically just lives with it. In her mind, it doesn’t matter. In my mind, I am thinking the worse when I hear her battery life is terrible, battery health is 81% and she is using 126GB of her 128Gb storage on the iPhone. Long story short, I miss my iPhone 17 Pro Max but I am much much more happier it is put to better use.

This also means, I am back to one phone lifestyle for now. This may be a good opportunity to live an android only lifestyle for a few months. After all, how attached can one be to a mobile phone.

Some pictures I took:

I felt a bit scary at the following point, mainly in fear of snakes

However, further along from this, I saw these wonderful white parrots which made it all worth it (5 seconds of video):

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Note: I used the telephoto camera a lot in this hike which I would have missed terribly on the iPhone Air. The above video is a also a good example. A terrible telephoto lens is still better than no telephoto lens.