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...