This is Part III of the account of our trek up the Himalayas right in the middle of the torrential rains that hit Uttarakhand in June. Please find Part I here and Part II here.
We ravenously devoured our dinners in record time on the night that we reached the Base Camp at 14,500 feet. It had already darkened and started steadily drizzling by the time we were all done with our usual communal dinner in the kitchen tent. Obviously, there was going to be no acclimatization walk on this night - climbing any higher would have meant summiting a peak and that was not a feat to be attempted in cold, wet and zero visibility conditions. By novices. Besides the day's climb had really taken it out of all of us so there was no problem falling asleep inside our tightly stretched, green plastic tents.
Day 5, June 16th, dawned bright and sunny... not. We woke up to bed tea and a heavy knocking sound beating against our plastic tents. Our initial fears of being attacked by a mountain lion were soon dispelled as we saw the reliable silhouette of Kunwar Singh moving around our tents scraping off something solid from its sides. A careful peek outside the tents revealed whiteness all round. It had snowed through most of the night, and now the snow was weighing our poor little plastic tents down. And Kunwar was gamely walking about from tent to tent tapping the snow off them as well as from the the huge, canvas kitchen tent. He kept it up for about an hour, before poking his head into our tent and smilingly announcing, "Tent tootne wala hai" (the tent is about to collapse).
For a bunch that had been lying around all somnolent till that point, watching the snow forming clear dark patches on the tent as it fell incessantly, that statement galvanized everyone into action as if the Chinese were coming (though even they wouldn't have, not in that weather). Within exactly seven minutes, everyone was all dressed up in four layers of our coldest gear, as well as neatly packed up with our backpacks and all. And then we were all shepherded into the sole surviving kitchen tent, to begin what would end up becoming fifteen people, three stoves, two kerosene cans, steadily dwindling rations of potatoes, eggs and rice, fifteen backpacks and one pack of playing cards all huddled together through 30 straight hours of snow. This was Survivor, Live.
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| Survivor Tent. Also, only surviving tent. |
This was to be the day when, according to plan, we were supposed to summit the ridge that would take us above the Bagini glacier, from where we would be able to see our spell-binding views of the surrounding peaks including Changabang, Trishuli and Rishi Parbat. As it happened, all we did was to play the most poker I have ever played in one long stretch, interspersed by the occasional lifting of the flap to check that it was still snowing like there was no tomorrow. It almost always was. The minor inconvenience of not being able to get to the summit was very quickly replaced by a slightly more major inconvenience. We shall call that inconvenient act 'Singing in the Rain'. Except it was of course, in the snow.
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| 'Singing' in the snow. No, it didn't freeze as it came out. |
To be fair, we didn't really notice the twelve hours that we spent boxed up in a 20 feet by 6 feet space. There was enough intellectual discussion on the nuanced differences and merits / demerits of poker and teen patti to occupy everyone's mental space. Every three hours there was some type of meal or beverage to occupy the culinary space. There was not really much physical space to begin with. And the occasional discharge of kerosene fumes occupied the rest of the... well, space. Finally, just as the poker was beginning to drag just a little bit towards late evening, a miracle. The snow stopped! That was it, everyone's cue to get out (with the greatest trepidation though, your faith in the weather takes a bit of a hit when it's not gone your way for 24 hours) and finally see what we had climbed all this way up for. We weren't disappointed.
We poked around outside in the snow for another twenty minutes, making the most of the little snow-free window we were having and trying to get the blood flowing again in our legs. The temperature, as informed by our trek leader's very handy thermometer-altimeter-but-not-GPS device was apparently 0.5 degrees C. In the peak of summer. This is where there would be a climate change reference if this was the New York Times. Unfortunately it's not, it's just a poor, little barely-hundred-readers blog, so we'll let that be.
After our half an hour of freedom, we made our way back into the tent just as it started snowing again. Given this was our 'summit' day, we were still on schedule as per the original plan, except that we had just not summited. So after another round of potato and boiled egg, or dal and roti, or some such combination of all of these (food was basically just to help the body maintain the 25 degree temperature differential at this point. We weren't exactly being all Masterchef on our chef), we all gathered around to hear what the plan was. It was still snowing like there was no tomorrow, and would snow like there was no day after tomorrow as well. So were we still going to descend in those conditions?
The answer was Yes. For two simple reasons. Firstly, you don't just sit around at 14,500 feet in 2 feet of snow, waiting for things to happen. Secondly, we were running out of kerosene. Which meant no heat. So it was decided, and we settled in for the night in our tight fifteen-in-one-tent formation again. As expected, it snowed all night, again. Adding to the mild pitter-patter of the snow was the occasional much-louder-than-pitter-patter sound of parts of the glacier breaking away and falling off. When you're on top of a mountainside in two feet of snow, and there are other parts of the mountain breaking and falling away with a great big rumble every half an hour, it gives you perspective in life (this is the moment in movies when John Williams and the London Symphony will be in full flow). It really does. We survived the night of course because we were on stable camping ground, but speaking for myself, there wasn't much sleeping happening.
We got up the next morning and checked to make sure that the weather was still horrid. It was. So this was it. We were going to take on the snow and the mountain together, with a little bit of ice-cold river crossing thrown in just in case it was going to be too easy. The target was Dronagiri, though there was also a clearly-much-less-preferable option of going to another village in case the river was too cold / fast / full to cross. We set out fairly late in the morning for a 'normal' trek day, surrounded by white. And of course, promptly got lost (well, a little bit). "Yahaan raastha hi nahin dikh raha".
* * * *
After dealing with snow-weighted bags and slight confusion of paths on our descent, we finally had one thing go our way when we reached The River again. We were approaching it from upstream this time, so we could tell exactly where the broader parts were, where it was flowing faster and other such life-saving details from the mountainside that we were descending. It was a no-brainer to not remove our shoes this time - they had seen 4 hours of snow already, how much wetter could they get? Besides, we were sure none of our toes would survive that rock bed again. Better wet than bruised was the decision. Such was our concern with The River that the idea of rappelling across at its narrowest point was also considered at one point. But the leadership took the executive decision that it is better to keep novices on their feet than suspending them mid-air, and set out to chart the shallowest, slowest-flowing path across. This was not necessarily the shortest route across, but that's what you learn about Himalayan rivers - speed is their real danger, not volume.
It felt like everyone was a lot more, well, assured during The Crossing this time. Maybe because the river was now a familiar foe, maybe because we had our shoes on, or maybe because we had just trudged through four hours of snow so heck, what is a little river. We still struggled with our footing, lost our feet to the cold, and held on to each other for dear life, but the mood was almost celebratory. A round of heart-felt applause followed once we all completed the crossing, because it just felt like that was the last big test. Next stop would be civilization.
It wasn't quite a walk in the park from there on though (all these idioms start to make sense now. Try walking in the bloody mountains!). We were supposed to have lunch once we victoriously completed the crossing, but we all ended up choosing shelter over food and continued to plod along. Since we had crossed the river fairly upstream from where we had crossed it on the onward journey, there were now a few more hills to traverse along the way on the other side. But hey, what's a few more hills when there's the promise of covered space and no snow coming. It was still steadily drizzling through all of this, and we once again started to battle fading daylight (a la Michale Clarke in the third Ashes test. Apologies for the very-involved heavy cricketing reference). But finally, just as the last wisps of sunlight were fading away, we crested our last hill of the day and there it was, in all its forty-house-glory. Dronagiri. We practically rolled downhill towards the little trekker's shack and collapsed against the walls, bags and everything. We were trying to catch our breath, but also generating significant amounts of inadvertent groaning and other suspicious noises.
But at least we had made it. We were in shelter, we didn't have to walk anymore and the bag was off our backs. Tomorrow's problems could wait... little did we know.
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| That's it, the glacier. In all its glory. |
After our half an hour of freedom, we made our way back into the tent just as it started snowing again. Given this was our 'summit' day, we were still on schedule as per the original plan, except that we had just not summited. So after another round of potato and boiled egg, or dal and roti, or some such combination of all of these (food was basically just to help the body maintain the 25 degree temperature differential at this point. We weren't exactly being all Masterchef on our chef), we all gathered around to hear what the plan was. It was still snowing like there was no tomorrow, and would snow like there was no day after tomorrow as well. So were we still going to descend in those conditions?
The answer was Yes. For two simple reasons. Firstly, you don't just sit around at 14,500 feet in 2 feet of snow, waiting for things to happen. Secondly, we were running out of kerosene. Which meant no heat. So it was decided, and we settled in for the night in our tight fifteen-in-one-tent formation again. As expected, it snowed all night, again. Adding to the mild pitter-patter of the snow was the occasional much-louder-than-pitter-patter sound of parts of the glacier breaking away and falling off. When you're on top of a mountainside in two feet of snow, and there are other parts of the mountain breaking and falling away with a great big rumble every half an hour, it gives you perspective in life (this is the moment in movies when John Williams and the London Symphony will be in full flow). It really does. We survived the night of course because we were on stable camping ground, but speaking for myself, there wasn't much sleeping happening.
We got up the next morning and checked to make sure that the weather was still horrid. It was. So this was it. We were going to take on the snow and the mountain together, with a little bit of ice-cold river crossing thrown in just in case it was going to be too easy. The target was Dronagiri, though there was also a clearly-much-less-preferable option of going to another village in case the river was too cold / fast / full to cross. We set out fairly late in the morning for a 'normal' trek day, surrounded by white. And of course, promptly got lost (well, a little bit). "Yahaan raastha hi nahin dikh raha".
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| "In 400 feet, turn... um... sorry guys, you're on your own" |
* * * *
After dealing with snow-weighted bags and slight confusion of paths on our descent, we finally had one thing go our way when we reached The River again. We were approaching it from upstream this time, so we could tell exactly where the broader parts were, where it was flowing faster and other such life-saving details from the mountainside that we were descending. It was a no-brainer to not remove our shoes this time - they had seen 4 hours of snow already, how much wetter could they get? Besides, we were sure none of our toes would survive that rock bed again. Better wet than bruised was the decision. Such was our concern with The River that the idea of rappelling across at its narrowest point was also considered at one point. But the leadership took the executive decision that it is better to keep novices on their feet than suspending them mid-air, and set out to chart the shallowest, slowest-flowing path across. This was not necessarily the shortest route across, but that's what you learn about Himalayan rivers - speed is their real danger, not volume.
It felt like everyone was a lot more, well, assured during The Crossing this time. Maybe because the river was now a familiar foe, maybe because we had our shoes on, or maybe because we had just trudged through four hours of snow so heck, what is a little river. We still struggled with our footing, lost our feet to the cold, and held on to each other for dear life, but the mood was almost celebratory. A round of heart-felt applause followed once we all completed the crossing, because it just felt like that was the last big test. Next stop would be civilization.
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| Civilization. Coming Up. |
But at least we had made it. We were in shelter, we didn't have to walk anymore and the bag was off our backs. Tomorrow's problems could wait... little did we know.
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