What goes up, must come down - Part II

This is Part II of the account of our trek up the Himalays right in the middle of the torrential rains that hit Uttarakhand in June. Part I can be found here.
 

Kunwar Singh scanned the snow-covered landscape as the ten of us stood waiting in a single file anxiously behind him. This was the first time he seemed momentarily unsure of his bearings, and not without reason. The landscape was such that a mountain goat wouldn't know where to go. The continuously falling snow was not helping either.

A fairly accurate representation of what we were faced with

Suddenly he stopped craning his neck, turned to us, smiled and nodded towards a ridge to our left. 

"Pathar dikh gaya"

He was pointing to a group of stones neatly arranged on top of each other, still strongly sticking up above the two feet of snow. The top-most stone was clearly pointed, placed there to show direction. The famed cairns, used and assiduously maintained by the mountain-folk for a situation just like this, would now lead us home. We quickly backtracked the little distance that we had gone down the wrong way, and trekked up towards the cairn.  From then on every sighting of the next set of stacked stones was further validation that we were on the right track towards dryness, civilization and all that good stuff. Remember that little game called Seven Stones that we played as a kid? That game will never be the same again. 

Weighed down by almost three extra kgs of wetness, we trudged along with the overall objectives of losing altitude and getting below the snow line, which seemed to have gone all the way down to almost 12, 000 feet. The path was wet and slippery, but at least we were not fighting gravity anymore so the physical effort was restricted to the carrying of our backpack. Half-walking, half-sliding down our increasingly more visible path, we first cleared the snow line, and then finally saw a familiar sight that we all remembered very well from our onward journey. 

The river.

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We woke up to wet grass and our first instance of bed tea (i.e tea before teeth-brushing) in the Ruing meadows on Day 3. The night's sleep had been sporadic - the rain had been clearly audible on the tightly stretched covers of our tents all through the night, and any impact sounds quite loud inside an enclosure of four feet by six feet. Nonetheless, everyone set off bright and chirpy on a glorious, sunny day towards our next destination - Dronagiri.

The path from Ruing to Dronagiri was for the most part 'standard trekking fair'. The single-person path wound its way around mountains while gaining altitude very gently. Basically (because every sentence begins with a basically), it was going to be like batting through overs 20-35 in an ODI game - keep the scoreboard ticking and don't do anything silly. There was apparently enough stamina and sensibility in the group to do just that, and we reached the lone proceed-with-caution part of this leg in good time. This part was known as The Landslide.

The Landslide - A very WYSIWYG name

The deal with the landslide, if you haven't already guessed, was that there was a huge landslide at some point in time. Unfortunately this landslide occurred right across the path to Dronagiri, which is of course, annoying. Therefore what does one do? Well, one walks right across the landslide by the same path, of course, because it would take far too long to go around the mountain. So that's just what we did, slipping and sliding across mostly loose rocks on a thirty-degree incline for the same reason that the chicken crossed the road. To get to the other side. Very impressively for all of us, we made it again with the minimum of fuss.

On the other side, in all its mountain-enclosed glory, was the village of Dronagiri. Legend has it that those mountains were the remnants of the mountain that Lord Hanuman took to Lanka during the Ramayana. The medicinal value of our surroundings, coupled with the fact that we got permission to stay in the solid structure that had been built on the outskirts of the village for trekkers, had us hoping that we would get some good sleep for that night. That and the fact that we had done as much physical work in a day as we would have in a whole week of our collective lives meant that all we had to ensure was that we climb high before sleeping low so that the altitude issue was taken care of. So we sauntered up with the mules into the surrounding mountains before retiring for the night.

Chilling with the mules

The night at Dronagiri was a wet and thunderous one as well, but possibly because we were inside a steel and concrete structure this time, everyone seemed to have got a reasonably solid night's sleep. This was important, because we had to start quite early on that cold, misty Day 4 morning to get to The River. We were politely informed by our trek leader that the later it got in the day, the more the snow melted and the more the river rose. Needless to say, there would be no bridge across this river. So, if we could all please wake up early so that we were not swept away by ice-cold water. Fair enough. Heading off 'early' at 8AM (after planning for a 7AM start), we still made it on the scheduled time of 10AM at the river. Mostly because Geology 101 was in our favour and we had to walk downhill to the valley floor to get to the river. Along the way, we also had some practice streams to cross, just to check our footing, capacity to bear cold and overall familiarity with gushing, freezing water.

About 1/10th the size of The River which was coming up.

The River, when we finally got to it, appeared truly massive for sure, but not full by any stretch of imagination. It was flowing along in split-up streams, with patches of rock like above in between to take a break during The Crossing. It was suggested that we go barefoot across the river, to avoid plodding along in damp shoes for the next six hours. This would normally be a great idea and everything, except that this river was at approximately minus 100 degrees temperature and it didn't have a sand bed. It had a stone bed. On the plus side, there would be no illegal sand quarrying on this river.

No sand here, no sir.

 As soon as we stepped into the river, we lost our toes. Not literally, but they were definitely not under any neural control of our respective legs, such was the cold. We formed a human chain and were 'helping' each other across the river, but mostly we were hanging on to each other for dear life. Slipping and falling on one's arse was simply not an option, the river was not kind to human contact of any form. We moved from rock island to rock island, wading through knee-deep water and feeling blindly for the next stepping stone on the riverbed with our non-responsive toes. The crossing took a solid hour before we finally reached the other bank, where we all settled down for a session of Kill-Bill style 'Wiggle your left toe' to try and recover our toes. It was largely unsuccesful.

Wiggling our left toes

Post-river, our route started climbing straight up to the Bagini glacier. This was the longest and steepest day by far, with an altitude gain of 1000 meters on the day and a total distance of 12 km. The path took us straight up the Himalayas with mighty, snow-covered ranges revealing themselves every time we crested each consecutive mountain. As the day wore on, we had to start battling two factors - the fatigue and the impending darkness. The physical effort was starting to show on all of us and the impact of the river on the toes was not helping. Every consecutive ascent we came up against took progressively longer for us to cross, and daylight was rapidly fading. As is evidenced by the lack of photographic evidence for this section, we weren't really stopping and enjoying the view at this point. The situation wasn't helped by the ominous dark clouds that were increasing in the skies with every step. We finally came upon a particularly steep ascent, which we were informed would be our last one before we would reach our camping spot for the night.

With our last remaining reserves of will (which was all that was keeping us going, the energy had long since ebbed away), we crested this final ascent to emerge on to our Base Camp for the night at 14,500 feet. We had just half-Everested, if that was any achievement. It was suitably cold for the height, and there were multiple snow-covered peaks all within literally touching distance now, rising majestically to our left. To our right was the glacier - a stream of ice and rock just sitting there unmoving, except occasionally when a large piece decided it had done enough handing about and just broke off. It was a sight to behold, as we were to find out later in daylight, but we did not have the time to behold it just then. For just as we reached the meadow hoping for some rest, it started raining.

This was the night of June 15th.

What goes up, must come down - Part I

"Yahaan raastha hi nahin dikh raha"

My heart skipped a beat. The usually inscrutable face of our guide (and 'Man of Steel' award winner) Kunwar Singh now had a nervous smile as he said these words. He wasn't kidding. He really couldn't make out where our path was.

I looked around. All I could see was white with some spots of brown - places where the mountain still had the might to raise itself over the 6 inches of snow that had been falling over the last forty hours. The same snow that we were trudging through at that time, walking down from a glacier to hopefully warmer, drier climes. It was a beautiful, picturesque, DSLR-worthy scenery - as long as it was viewed from hundreds of kilometers away and thousands of feet lower in altitude. When you are right there, facing it head on, it's an entirely different story.

Those picturesque snow-capped mountains. Up close and personal.

This is it, I thought to myself, this is the point where we become a movie script. Hopefully with a happy ending.

                         

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Six days ago, our motley crew of about 14 people had flown in from practically every major metro of the country into Delhi to begin our trek up to the Bagini glacier -14,500 feet above sea level. From Delhi, we took a much delayed overnight bus to Haridwar with a driver who insisted on regaling us with the complete works of Beethoven on his horn throughout the journey. All through the bloody night. The only time he stopped honking was at check posts, where the lights were bright enough to take over the job of keeping a person awake, as well as making them wonder what power crisis everyone was on about. As an aside, the good people of Delhi now use the pillars that hold up their groundbreaking Metro as landmarks. So next time you hear 'near No. 7' when you are in Delhi, look for the nearest Delhi Metro pillar with the No. 7 on it, and not some house number.

Blaring horns and metro pillars later, we finally reached Haridwar where our group of intrepid trekkers piled into two Maxi Vans - the preferred mode of transport in the mountain terrains - and headed to Joshimath. This was the first 'official' day of our trek but we still had the help of mechanized transport and other comforts such as regular food breaks. Given that our driver insisted on using every bit of the winding mountain roads 'and a bit more', to quote Steve Slater, the drive alongside the Alakananda sped by without a moment of boredom, pun intended. We reached Joshimath just before dark, to settle into our beds for our last night of sleep in a solid structure for the next five days.

We woke up the next morning to the bright, mountain sun and to being in the clouds. It was also around that point that we realized we were now truly in among the mountains. Because really, it is quite hard to miss mountains. They are right there, and they are quite big. And they are all around you, all the time.

The mountains. Just, there, all the time.

Once we got over the whole mountain-awe, we finally set out to actually climb a few of them. We were still not physically tested straightaway, as the day began with another short drive to Jumma over roads built by the intrepid BRO. Jumma is basically a bus stop, which leads to a bridge, which crosses a very fast flowing Dhauliganga river. We finally alighted from our mechanized transport at this point and felt the weight of our backpack / survival kit on our shoulders for the first time. Six days  later, I would get so used to the weight that I overbalanced and stumbled forward for the first few times that I walked without the backpack.

The first steps of the real trek was a fairly steep descent (as it seemed then. Now of course, I could go down it blindfolded while juggling three crystal balls) down to the river to cross a suspension bridge. A couple of slips on that descent and an encounter with what shall henceforth be known as the 'itchy leaves' were enough to convince me that sh*t just got real. Once across the bridge, we started on the trail to Ruing, a little village nestled halfway up the mountain. This was a 3km trek which is done by the locals on a weekly basis and should really be no biggie, but which was a good enough start for the bunch of novices that we were. For the most part, the track was well within control for the fit, young people that we were, but there were of course stretches where you wished you had taken the advice to do practice walks on a 45-degree incline. Such as these...

Road to Ruin(g)

Nonetheless, the 3km was covered without incident and apparently in really good time, as we were informed by Sandeep, our trek leader. Very proud of ourselves for this accomplishment, we poked about for a while in the meadows of Ruing and soon enough, got our first look at the tents which had been magically set up by people far more competent than us. Satisfied that we now had a green, plastic roof over our heads, we wandered off some more towards the more scenic spots of the meadow and soaked in the serene calmness of the whole scene. There is something to be said about watching a river which has been flowing through the same spot for centuries on end, incessantly carving a path for itself without stopping for night, day or the cow in the middle of the road (if it was a Chennai road).

Incessant. It's the only word.

The rest of the evening was spent staring down at this river, and staring up at the stars. There were millions of them, revealed in their full glory without the constant smog of the cities' pollution to cover them up, leading to more philosophizing about how insignificant the individual is and other such good stuff. By the time we were ready to retire on the clear, cool night, the trip had already become worth it. But of course, we had only just begun...