A Picnic in White
White. and more White. White is all around. As I look ahead, white is looking down from the steep slope up ahead, and my long look down finds no color other than white. This is not the wall-like-shapeless white; for dunes carved with meticulous care are scattered all around in an asymetric-yet-pleasing manner. And, then I look up and the featureless cream colored roof ends my dream.
The snowwhite journey is over. My dreams had extended, maybe even enhanced by steepening the slopes, the journey by a few hours. A journey that started off as a trek and then morphed into a picnic. Ok, I am exaggerating a bit; maybe more than a bit. But, this was not the hectic trek that I had meant it to be. The journey was fun, but it was more of a picnic than a trek.
Snow. and more Snow. Snow is all around me. The visual that had led me to plan a trek to chandrashila, a peak just south of the Kedarnath range. The number of participants increased and decreased in a sinusoidal to finally settle at seven. For a change, we had decided to use professional services for the trek and used skylark to organize everything for it. After many sets of long calls in which kamaljit (the boss in skylark)detailed the heavy snow that merited a postponement of our plans and we detailed our we-do-not-postpone nature , we finally settled at the following itinerary: Saturday: Drive 220km to Mukku Bend from Haridwar and trek 4 kms to Duggalbitta PWD guest house Sunday: Trek towards Chandrashila as much as possible and be back to base. Monday: trek down to Mukku Bend and onwards to haridwar. Bus to Delhi.
As I look at the itinerary, it strikes me that this is exactly what we did. We stuck to our plans. Only, we didn't make much headway towards chandrashila on Sunday. Sunday was the chillout-day, the day that transformed our trek to a picnic, a picnic that was a lot of fun but lacked the thrill of a snow trek. But, let us get to the team first. The 7 consisted of the now-a-regular-feature Amol, with two outgrown kids Sreedhar and Pradeep in tow, the soon-will-become-a-regular amitP, upi, vibhuti and of course me. The first day went almost according to plan other than a cut that was not short.
It was about 3 p.m. in the afternoon, there was snow and the sun, both shining bright, the bellies were full, the gaiters were fit, and the moods were high. An obvious shortcut beckoned us and we (I, amitp, and vibhuti) went for it, gaining a good 50 metres lead over others in the process. A non-obvious shortcut beckoned us and we hesitated. Rajuji, our driver, yelled. "Haan ji, trail par aa jayega." That was all the confirmation we needed and we were off, this time dragging Amol and Sreedhar also with us. The much-promised trail failed to materialize, but we went along. The combination of two factors; firstly the one as purohit (amitP) later pointed out, "we never considered the possiblity that rajuji could be wrong" and secondly our stubborn refusal to accept that we made a mistake, ensured that we kept on going for about half an hour. The shining sun was now on it way down, following a trajectory parallel to our spirits. In this game between stubborn-ness and survival, the survival instinct was now gaining and we decided that we will make a last-ditch effort to the top of the hill. If we could spot the trail there, well and good. Otherwise, we will retrace our way back. As it turned out, we spotted the trail way down in a distance but with no reasonably safe-looking way down leading us to the trail. The trail had simply skipped our hill and we were left with no choice but to retrace our way back down the snowed out hill. After another anxiety-filled thirty minutes or so, we could hear the voices of our tour manager and his porter and after another I-feel-much-better-now twenty minutes or so, we were back to the trail and after yet another when-will-the-trail-end 90 minutes or so, we found ourselves at Dugalbitta
It soon became clear that we were not going a long way towards Chandrashila the next day because (a) our tour operator considered it a really bad idea (b) the cut-that-was-not-short had taken a heavy toll on a couple of guys and their boots. After taking the compulsory sunrise shots and a sunday-paced breakfast the next day, we made a leisurely start towards chopta around 10 a.m. Making our way through the knee deep snow, we had covered around 2 kms when Deepak (our tour manager) announced that any further progress was beyond us and we should head back. After the compulsory we-reached-till-here shots at the highest point in the trek, we were back to the base around 3 p.m. In the meanwhile, we did the usual things people do in snow; jumping 10 feet down in snow, sliding down the slopes, and climbing up a pristine white slope for no particular reason. We spent the rest of the day in the Its-a-sunday fashion, lazing in the sun'n'snow. Of course, the sparkling dunes of the snowwhite dream presented themself in the outing and one can check them out in the pics.
The next day started leisurely and slowly gained pace as we frantically rushed towards Haridwar to make it to Delhi in some godly hour. Rajuji's breakneck speed ensured that there was never a dull moment in the drive back and Gods deciding that our time in this world was still not up, ensured that we landed at Delhi around midnight, only to quickly fall into snow-white dreams.