Himalayas are my favouritest (yeah yeah I know, but none of the superlatives in my vocab quite explain my fondness for them, hence favouritest it is) place on earth! The feeling that hits me when I stand at the base and look up at them is incomparable. I am left humbled by their beauty, their magnificence, their grandeur… and feel like a tiny speck on the face of this earth, which I am, my size notwithstanding. How I wish I could bottle them up like my favourite perfume or wine and spray them in small doses or uncork their flavour and take a sip when I sometimes get bogged down by the mundanities of Mumbai life! All I can do right now is bottle up the memory in some corner of my mind - this image of my favouritest place, till I get a chance to refuel my memory chest.
Hampta Pass was not at all on the cards this year. It was an equally beautiful destination called the "Valley of Flowers" in Uttaraknand that was beckoning us. But just one month to go and we got to know that Uttarakhand is unsafe this year too and so the Valley trek stood cancelled. After a bit of brainstorming our team of 6 still decided that we wanted to go on a trek and not to some purely leisure destination… Names of agents who arrange for treks were thrown in – destinations like Dev Tibba, Har ki Dhun, Roopkund were other strong contenders… but finally we zeroed in on Hampta pass, partly cause all websites said it was easy grade trek and partly because the season fit in. The doubt in each of our minds was – how can you easily scale 14500ft? Two last minute drop-outs made the rest 4 of us wonder if we are doing a wise thing by going ahead and trusting a voice hundreds of miles away over the phone! The only reason I decided to plunge in was because the person I was finally dealing with was from Himachal – In my experience locals from Himachal are not conniving in nature… they are simple trustworthy people and also very non – commercial. Secondly they respect women – you will find curiosity in their eyes but never letch.
Our team of 4 (Lamika, Nehal, Vijay & me) were put up in Shuru Heights by our trek organiser Mr. Deepak Thakur (of Sun Ice Tours) - a quaint hotel in Jagatsukh village. Warm people, good food and good rooms overall relaxed us all and the trek started with an easy 2hr acclimatisation climb which I stretched to 5 hours by wandering away and clicking photos and generally soaking in the beauty around. We finally reached our first base Chika. The path was lush green all through. We also spotted the rare cobra lily, Himalayan blue poppy and the himalayan griffon vulture on our very first day! We reached the base camp around 4. The tents were ready and waiting for us and so was hot tea. By 5 we were served soup and appetisers and by 7.30 we finished dinner! Chit chatted for a while and retired for the day.
The next day was supposed to be only ascent… so I handed over my cameras – one to Vijay and the other to Rakesh our guide; else I worried I would never reach the next base and waste time clicking photos of flowers and "everything that I saw just 10 seconds ago" (exasperated Madhu's words on the only trek we did together) It was a beautiful day and even more beautiful climb… One memory that I cannot not mention is of us rolling up our track pants and crossing a freezing stream which was probably not even 50 mtrs in width…Shoes and sacks were thrown across to the other side where our horseman JabbeRam collected and piled them. Lalit our senior guide cum cook had warned us not to let go of the hands that we are holding on either side and not to lift our feet… just glide across the stony bottom.The icy water froze our brains the moment our feet touched the water. The pain was excruciating like someone was torturing us… but we had to carry on. The 2 - 3 minutes that it must have taken us to cross seemed like a good 20 and to top it Vijay had to fall head down into the water and come up sputtering. No time to fuss though. The only aim was to reach the other side… which we finally did and yelped and jumped around quite a bit to get the sensation back to our numb limbs.
There was a lot to gain after the pain – the view was spectacular on the other side. The rains has sprinkled tiny alpine flowers of all shades on every inch. We even came across lone Blue Himalayan Poppies rearing their heads from rocky crevices. So eventually we did pass through the "Valley of flowers" – different but equally beautiful! Again we reached camp at around 3, which Lalit said we did in good time. The base was Balu ka ghera (so called because of the sandy base of the valley). Though all the places we camped were beautiful, I think Balu ka ghera was dreamy & mesmerising. I was hoping to catch a glimpse of the Monal pheasant – but it eluded me even this time :(
Next day was the most crucial and we were supposed to leave early at 8. We had a breakfast of Parathas and started out… We came across an icy patch within 30 minutes of starting to walk… In spite of being verbally taught the technique of walking on it, we learnt the hard way, that compact snow can be really tricky to walk upon especially in regular sports shoes… we all must have landed on our bottoms more than once :D
he ascent was steep… as we gained altitude all of us including the guides started getting heavy – headed. I was hit with altitude sickness… along with the headache, I felt nauseous and wondered if I will be able to complete the trek. Since we were going uphill… gravity seemed to have turned into an enemy and seemed to pull me back for every step I tried to take. I don’t remember the last bit of the climb on this day but finally there I was where the rest were waiting – at Hampta pass – at 14500 ft! A jubilant us opened our packed lunch… but none of us could push a more than a couple of morsels in. I managed to nibble into a cube of cheese, managed to finish a frooti tetrapac and have a plum. Vijay's filter bottle was a life saver that day as I kept pushing in a sip or two of water at regular intervals. After V –4 crossed the pass started the equally sharp descent… Here gravity was on my side :) But it still took us a good 4-5 hrs to reach the next base camp. I realised that human body needs very little to survive… we could carry on for almost 10 hrs on half a boiled potato, half a cube of cheese, a plum and a pack of frooti!
Again I will not do justice to this travelog if I do not mention how we crossed one snowy patch during the fag end of the trek. We were almost nearing the end when we came across a slope which was covered with snow.. The moment we stepped on it, we started dropping like hit bowling pins…After almost half an hour we had not managed to cross 1/10th the patch. Rakesh had a brainwave… why don’t we slide down? The only problem was after reaching about halfway we had to again start walking horizontally… I was the guinea pig… I sat behind Rakesh & down we slid… He had a wooden stick in hand which broke halfway while he was trying to navigate and control the speed at which we were zipping by. We reached where we had to and Rakesh helped me stand where we had stopped; and just left to get the rest. I turned to see 3 tensed faces staring back and before I knew it, I was back on the ground. Desperately I tried to reach for a rock that was jutting out cause I didn’t want to slide further down cause that would have meant I would have had to walk that bit up again… you can slide down on ice easily but not back up! After a lot of struggle which must have looked like some drunkard trying to reach out and hang onto a broken twig to the ones watching from above, I managed to circle the rock, finally get a grip on it and sit on it. My antics had the rest in splits as I finally managed to break the ice (pun intended ;)
Then came the part where I could sit back and enjoy… after heavy strategic discussions the remaining four decide to comedown together… Rakesh followed by Lamika followed by Nehal and then Vijay… all of them came rolling down as fast as I had… How I still wish I had a camera in hand to capture each one's expression… perfect Kodak
moments ;) Finally all of us were united again and we started the horizontal walk across the face of the mountain…which we completed without any mishaps. It was almost 12 hrs that we had started walking. All of us I think by then wanted to just reach the base at Sia goru and crash out… but there was garlic soup waiting for us as we reached. Garlic by the way is a great cure for altitude sickness. Another lesson learnt. Like magic the headaches disappeared.
Day 4 was to be an easy descent… another beautiful path. All we had to do was reach a bridge across the Chandra river before it got too sunny and the glaciers melted more, sending more water down and submerging the bridge, which we managed to in time. Another icy patch awaited us on the other side which we crossed quickly… did some time pass on the way and reached the base camp at Chattru and civilisation. We saw a lot of campers here along with locals. Chattru is at 11500 ft and has a population of 120 people or so a board there said! No wonder everyone knows everyone here! The campsite was on the bank of river Chandra which meets the river Bhaga to forms Chandrabhaga which flows into Pakistan and is known by the name of Chinab there.
Day 5 we were joined by a 56 yr old people-deprived Spaniard when we were doing some warm-up exercises… He managed to talk non-stop till we finally left Chattru in a Sumo for Chandratal in the Spiti valley - our last campsite. All of us had nightmares he is following us!
We reached Chandratal at 5. Getting the tents up here was a task due to the strong wind currents out there. This is what also made the place the coldest (after hampta – which was due to altitude & snow). Sleep was elusive here as the tents kept flapping and the cold wind kept gushing in but finally it did come. Oxygen levels out here are low as the landscape is barren. A lazy walk in the evening took us to a tranquil turquoise lake called Chandratal. According to legend, this lake is the location from where God Indra’s chariot picked up Yudhishthir, the eldest of the Pandava brothers to be escorted to heaven. As a result, this lake is supposed to be sacred.
Again the feeling one gets here of absolute peace. The next day we left for Manali. The following day was reserved for a wee bit of site seeing, shopping and we also managed to squeeze in paragliding :D Evening we left for Delhi. A landslide on the way delayed us by a good 10 hrs… which made the 14hr journey into a 24 hr loooooong one. So on reaching Delhi all we could do was rush to the Airport and take a flight back to Mumbai with sunburnt bodies but minds full of happy himalayan trekking memories :)
I know I have written a long essay in an attempt to put my feelings into words, but at the end of it, I feel very inadequate… You have to experience the Himalayas yourself… one cannot explain what one feels no matter what the words. They converse with each one on different planes… You only have to listen and assimilate! They have it in them to be super gentle or super ruthless – luckily for us we just saw their super nice side :)