Where is Chakrata?
"Where is Chakrata?", asked Kuldeep, our driver. And I subconsciously started to count the number of times this question had been thrown to us. My parents, my sister, my manager, and most of my office friends had definitely made the query. My mind started to speculate on the multplying factor of this number if I had told all these people that I wanted to go to Mundali, a supposedly ski-spot way off the tourist track. "Kaisa jaana hai Chakrata?", asked Kuldeep, and my reverie was broken. Since I can in mind hear a lot of you asking the same question, let me give you some history followed by the geography. For the last couple of years, the common refrain on my skiing trips has been the crowd at the slopes that swells as the day progresses. A bit of google-ing led us to two possiblities to avoid the crowd: (i) Dayara Bugyal (3000m) on Uttarkasi and (ii) Mundali (2700m) near Chakrata(2150m) that had good slopes to ski on. Since Dayara Bugyal was a bit way off for the long weekend, we settled down to Mundali, because of its proximity to Delhi. Now, as to the geography part of it, Mundali is 40 kms form Chakrata, which in turn is 110 km from Saharanpur, 77 km from Mussorrie and 92 km from Dehradun. Incidentally, (probably) because of the army presence in Chakrata, GMVN has decided to keep its hands of the place and as a result, Chakrata witnesses tourists only once in a while.
Now that the history and geography are taken care of, let us get to the plan and participants. The plan was very simple. Proceed to Chakrata, figure out if the road to Mundali is open or partially open, land at a hotel, demand that we need skis as a precondition to staying there, get the skis, and using a combination of driving and trekking reach Mundali, ski there and head back by evening to Chakrata. Repeat the same proceedure next day, in between do some local sight seeing (that included Tiger Falls, more on that later) and head back to Delhi on the third day. The participant list had many new entries and few old entries (looks like nobody likes my company, especially in the hills/mountains). Rohit and Mohit were the old regulars, with Rahul, Parul (Rohit's wife), Anindya, Joyta (Anindya's wife) making their debut (not debut in the mountains, but debut in the IRL walkers team). Forecasts (from accuweather and cnn) of snowfall, newsreports (from tribune) and holiday (from govt. of India) made the republic day extended weekend an ideal time for the sojourn. Before going any further, let me just get the google-facts out of the way for use by potential tourists. Chakrata is about 300 kms from Delhi and you can go via Dehradun, or Saharanpur or Yamunanagar. Mundali is 40 kms from Chakrata where professionals can enjoy skiing. Deoban is 11 kms from chakrata and offers panoramic views of upper Himalayas. Tiger Falls is 5km from Chakrata and is one of highest falls in the country. The skiing part about Mundali is fiction, going by the locals and because of the fact the unless you are willing to carry your skis (on foot) for close to 40kms or fly over Deoban, there is no way to reach Mundali. Tiger falls and Deoban are worth seeing and Chakrata has several vantage points that offer good views of Trishul, Nanda Devi etc.
Now that facts (and web fiction) are taken care of,I will summarize the routine stuff that happens on most such weekend trips and you can refer to earlier travelogues for details. We got stuck in traffic jams (wherelse but at Khatauli), got detained by the Border RTO (for 2 hours: this was a new record) because we had no permits, got delayed both ways, our driver felt that road barricades were signs to speed through them etc. The bottomline is: We reached Kalsi at 8:10 a.m. and screeched to a halt. We had entered the army controlled gate at kalsi, and more importantly, we had missed the 7:30 up convoy departure time. For the uninitiated, on the Kalsi-Chakrata (42 km stretch) road, traffic is allowed only in one direction and hence there are specific times at which the gate is opened for traffic. The gate timings were 7:30 and 10:00 a.m. and for 2 hours, we had a hard time trying to find out something of even passing beauty at Kalsi. We finally reached Chakrata around noon time and enquiries revealed that let alone Mundali, even the road to Devban was not open for vehicles. Not so surprisingly, the news did not dampen the spirits simple because Chakrata was covered in snow and snow, I have always seen, keeps your tempo up.
So, it was decided that we would take a walk in snow to Deoban after taking a quick bite at the hotel. The hotel manager was not enthused with our idea of walking to Deoban as according to him, it was impossible. We made the realistic assumption that his perception was guided more by the fact that we are Delhites and not by the condition of the trail to Deoban. However, google-ing had given us some wrong facts, and the important ones were: Nobody skis at Mundali now becuase of the wild bushes that have grown up and most importantly, Deoban is only 11 km from Chakrata. A delayed start (at 2:30 p.m) and the fact that Deoban was actually 16 km ensured that we had no chance of making it to Deoban and back before sunset. To brighten our chances, we took our Qualis to as far as possible (which turned out to be only 2kms where the Qualis started slipping in the snow). We decided that our lives were more important than the savings in time and proceeded on foot for the rest of the journey. The narrow road to Deoban bifurcates from the highway 3km from Chakrata and as is typical on most short treks, the locals dicouraged us from going any further than the bifurcation. Sometimes I did wonder why nobody stopped us from going to Khatling, few people advised us against going to Roopkund and everybody advised us against going to a VoF or a Chakrata and then one day I was enlightened by the tough ==> professional theory that states that locals perception of a professional is proportional to the toughness of the trek. So, they consider you a professional if you are doing a tough trek and will assume that you will be ok even in an avalanche prone area and if you are on an easy trek, you will find innovative ways to harm yourself. So, it is their duty to ensure that such amateurs do not find ways to put them in harm's way.
Theories apart, the practical considerations of heavy snow, multiple trails and worsening weather forced us to retrace our steps back at around 5:00 p.m. With some practise behind us, the descent was made in quick time and we were on the highway by 6:00 p.m. To rub it in, even the weather cleared leaving us to wonder if we should have gone the whole hog. However, as the queries of "ab kitni door bacha hai?" became more and more frequent, it became obvious that turning back was not a bad decision. At the hotel, the possiblity of a night trek to Tiger Fall was discussed and summarily discarded. A bonfire followed by a game of DumbC ensured that the tired bones did not crash to bed when the first oppurtunity presented itself. As I suppose you all must have guessed -:D, our team won the DumbC inspite of the biased timekeeping by Kuldeep. Kuldeep later disclosed that he cheated to ensure that his new friend Mohit :-)) could win.
The next morning was reserved for Tiger Falls, 5 km on foot and 20 km on road. Inspite of the fear factor induced by Kuldeep's driving on snow, Anindya and Joyta decided to take the jeep. The rest of us decided to trek one way and take the jeep on the way back. The start of the trek was interesting :-) because of a combination of the ice frozen previous night on the narrow trek and a reasonably steep fall on one side. However, very soon the slippery ice gave way to slippery soil as we entered forested area. Since the risk of any serious injury was considerably reduced, I gave my lecture on the Pocket in Hand theory which states that the perfect tradeoff of balance and speed in a trek is maintained by keeping one's hands in one's pockets. The proof of the theory is not hard to obtain because of the observation that one becomes less conscious of the slippery soil and walks naturally when relaxed and pockets in your hands are the surest sign of relaxing. Rahul immediately proceeded to try it but where we could say "oh ho", there was an earthquake. Rahul was flat on the ground with his hands nowhere near his pockets. The threat of bumps looked real to me but the fact that the fall preceeded the actual test of the theory saved the day for me. Having learnt my lessons, I refrained from discussing any more of my theories during the trip. And of course, we did reach Tiger Falls and I would just say that it is phenomenal. And why is it phenomenal? Simple because you can not capture the whole height of the waterfall in one snap using a 28mm lens and that is phenomenal, in my dictionary. It is also phenomenal because with high probability you will have the waterfall all to yourself since it has a 'khufiya' raasta and one needs to trek at least a km even by the road route. Finally, to repeat an oft quoted phrase, it is simple 'Paisa Vasool' with its roaring sound, slippery rocks that you need to cross to get an upclose and personal view and the rainbows that form on the fall.
Our walking aspirations not completely satiated, we proceeded to a place called Ramtala Garden with packed Aloo Parantha and had a wonderful lunch on top of a meadow with snow covered peaks all around us (make that 270 degrees around us). A walk to the top of the garden followed by an afternoon siesta completed the pretty picture. We spent some time snow fighting at Chinmiri neck (actually chinmiri top) before retiring for another round of bonfire and a game of antakhsari. No prizes for guessing who won the game:-D. Finally, we tried to recreate the night madness of Dhanolti (refer to the earlier travelogue; of course by the same name as the place) by taking an after dinner walk without torches. Unfortunately, the stars were out, the snow was notout and as a result the light was not out. After about 15 mins, we realized that the light reflecting from snow would never allow the fear factor to build and we headed back to the hotel. And of course, we went to bed, woke up early next day, took our customary sunrise snaps, drove north, picked a snow slope for a short walk, transformed the walk to a snow fight, drove down, did not try to find anything of passing beauty at Kalsi, got stuck at traffic jams and RTO road blocks, missed Nitendra's engagement as a result, reached Delhi and went back to answering the question, "Where is Chakrata?" And yes, few of us did make the customary snow man (s).