A long Look Down
A house had two roofs one after another, a tall one and a short one. The short one was connected by a well-maintained staircase with handlebars on both sides. The tall one had only an open sloping railing connecting it to the short one. And, as is common in India, cricket was played outside the house. The penalty of hitting the ball to the tall roof was dismissal but that did not deter the ball from flying onto the tall roof every once in a while. A day it quite so happened that my bat kept sending the only remaining ball to all parts of the ground before finally depositing it to the tall roof. There comes a day when in everybody's life when you just keep on succeeding in whatever you try and there comes a time when you realize that and then is when your audacity has no bounds. Since, my bat has had no memory of such ball-disappearing experiences, I knew that it was my day and so I found myself on the railing between the short and the long roofs. I calmly crossed over to the tall roof, surveyed my realm like the king I was feeling, collected all the balls deposited during the long summer and sent them down to cheering friends. And then I started my walk back to the short side and just before jumping off to the safe roof, I took a short look down and the look just went on and on to be a really long look down. I will not bore you with what happened next other than that I somehow safely managed to get back to safety but time had deposited a layer of dust on that long look down.
And then a few days back on the trek, of course, Khatling trek, there was an immediate flashback. A slope had two tops, one after another, a tall one and a short one. The short one had, what one in trekking parlance, would call a single lane highway. The tall one was connected by a two-lane highway to the slopes higher up but unfortunately, the tall and the short ones were connected by only a sloping railing, that thankfully had handle bars, so to say, on one side. Unfortunately, my courage has only diminished over the years and this small passage between the two tops did not look appealing to me. Fortunately, age has given me one thing to cope up with this lack of courage and as you probably already know, this ego is fairly useful in hiding the lack of courage. And so, with a very matter-of-fact face, I started crossing over to the top slope through this natural railing with fairly high inclination. Inclinations have an amusing habit in travelogues. They are rarely less than 30 degrees and often asymptotically approach 90 degrees. Personally, my experience has been that any slope above 45 degrees on loose ground tests the limit of even the serious trekker and so the high inclinations in travelogues are perceptions, rather than facts. So, let us just say that it was amongst the highest inclinations I have covered with a backpack and the highest inclination covered on a non-road (single lane or multi lane). And, just before the last step to the tall slope, I took a short look down and as you know it, the look became really very looooooooong. The look became so long as to merge with the long look I had taken 10 years back. And, if I were to think of one memory of this trek, it would be this long look.
Well, not quite an interesting memory to take, one would say. So, I suppose, we should now move on to the more interesting one, the one that probably Amol would take away. I used to have this recurring nightmare at some point in time where I go out on an outing and a bhoot would come and we would start running and then I would look back and see that there is nobody left behind me. Other than, of course the bhoot. And no, the dream did not end there. The nightmare ends when I somehow am unable to move my legs (maybe that is what they call freeze with terror) and I had no more courage looking back. Now, replace the bhoot with a giant black bhalu (Himalyan Bear), me with Amol and you have all the ingredients of a Ramsay-film. And yes, Amol even did fall and, as a result, his feet did stopp moving and we all did desert him for a moment. The only deviation from the script was that the Bhalu really did not chase Amol but I do not think Amol is really unhappy about this small deviation.
As you would have probably guessed, this was supposed to be the mother of all treks. The "V.Tough" rated trek from Khatling Glacier to Kedarnath via the 5400 m Mayali Pass. For the benefit of people who may come to my site looking for information, here is a quick itinerary alongwith relevant facts.
Start Day of the Trip:26th September (late night). Nights with sub-zero temperature: Chowki, Masar Tal, Vasuki Tal. Guide: Inder Singh. Porters: Vinod, Prem Singh. End Day of the Trip: 4th October. Members: Rohit, Amol, Ajay (Goldie) and yours truly.
So, now that the facts are taken care of, let us move on to the other stuff. And the one that tops it all is that all pieces fell exactly into place. We did not change even an iota from the planned script. As for any events, it was fairly uneventful the first day, unless a chakka jam at Rishikesh, is your idea of an event. Ajay did manage to make things interesting for him by using every possible opportunity to give his shoes a gangasnan. The next day, things became really interesting after crossing Gangi. Inder Singh warned us of a landlide zone ahead but we had no inkling of what was to come. A complete mountain slope had been swept away by the landslide and there were umpteen chances of taking long hard looks down. However, under the able guidance of Inder Singh, we averted any mishaps and reached Kalyani, the last vilage enroute. There is a steep climb just before Kalyani and the surprise literally took everyone's breath away.
The next day turned out to be farirly monotonous with an occasional waterfall raising expectations a bit. However, our camping place more than compensated for this lack of excitement. Our camping place at Bhumak was a stone perched over a slope, threatening to roll down any moment. And, well the stone was not a stone but rather a huge rock and would have resembled the Leaning tower of Pisa, but for the squarish shape. The squarish shape, however, ensured that under the rock overhang, there was enough space for two tents to be pitched in and tied to small stones. The overhang provided us double benefits. We could survery the entire slope from the perch, like the Rajkumars we felt. Also, any wind was cut off by this huge overhang. The next day was to be our day free to rest and/or explore as we had only 6-8 kms to reach Chowki. The rest of the day was free to explore the Khatling glacier area. However, we had no inkling of the adventure that was to come. We had decided to stick close together mainly because of the frequent landslide zones and since the trail was also not so well marked. However, as happens quite often, Amol ran down a slope and so was about 15 metres or so ahead of us. Since, I had only a balcony seat available for the 'Bhalu' show, I can only guess what had happened. Amol heard a loud roar, looked up to see a huge black Bhalu on the tree over him jumping to another branch and looked back to see that Rohit, the one following him, had already started hi retreat. Ajay, third-in-line, in the meanwhile rushed back and promptly fell down, thankfully on the covered side of the trail. Amol tried to cover the ground between him and the rest of us but, as they say, the ground slipped under him and he fell. The 'Bhalu', on the other hand, had probably had enough excitement for the day and retreated deeper into the woods. And if you are concerned about my reactions, I did not react at all. What I heard was just a loud roar and what I saw was just people in front of me running back and what I realised was that there was some danger. By the time I could decide, if I should move back or front, it was all over. And then it was resumption of the journey, only that our battle gear (ice-axes) were drawn out and we made all kinds of battle cries untill we were out of the woods and in front of the bridge that would take us to Chowki. Crossing over the landslides and sleeping under rock overhangs had made us brave enough to cross this bridge over the Bhilangana without second thoughts. That it indeed was an achievement was made clear to us by our porter Vinod who refused to cross the bridge alone and Inder Singh had to carry his load while escorting him over the makeshift bridge. If if were not for the "Bhalu" incident, this bridge story would have been much more interesting.
And, finally, we reached the point from where we had to decide if we wanted to turn back. I had noticed a distinct difference between the trekkers at Khatling and those that I met during my Roopkund trek. In roopkund, every group we met looked less prepared and less likely to reach Roopkund than us and in Khatling, everybody was more prepared and more likely to complete the trek than us. The reason is probably not hard to guess. Even reaching Chowki, the base to the climb for Masar Tal is tricky because of the landslides and those that have made upto Chowki have already cleared some kind of screening. And so we met a group at Chowki, that were carrying ropes, harnesses and oodles of confidence. Since, we did not have ropes and other stuff, we also lost whatever confidence we had, then and there. However, chatting with their guide and instructors livened up our spirit a bit as they felt that all such equipment would be unnecessary. Moreover, they promised us that in the eventuality of such a need arising, they would also allow us to use their stuff. Since the "Bhalu", the "bridge" and the landlides did not make the return journey promising, this promise raised our spirits a lot.
The next two days are almost like a hazy dream in my memory, where I am climbing up one steep slope only to realize that a tougher slope lies ahead. Masar Tal, that was hardly 7 kms away took us 4 hours to reach and once I had reached Masar Tal, I knew that there was no looking back. The long hard looks down that I needed to take while going down from Masar Tal to Chowki were not something I was looking forward to. So, it was onwards to Mayali Pass, the next day. The climb from Masar Tal to Mayali Pass can be divided into three parts, Masar Tal to Masar Top, Masar Top to base of Mayali Pass, and the climb to Mayali Pass. The second part is supposed to be the easiest, although it involves a glacier crossing. However, I was not carrying any dark glasses and I had to cross the second stretch, using Ajay as a shade from the sun and the bright light reflecting from the snow all around. However, as they say, "yeh subah kabhi to aayegi" and after 4 hours of relentless slog, we were at the top of Mayali Pass that offers a commanding view of the whole Himalayan range from Kedar to Nanda Devi. Needless to say, my lack of sunglasses prevented me from savouring those views for long period of time. After that, it was downhill all through during which we crossed Vasuki Tal, Kedarnath (next day) to reach Gaurikund and I am not going to bore you any further with what happened on this downhill journey other than that I still have dreams of needing to walk down another slope to reach a bus terminus. All in all, it was a trek of excesses, excess climb, excess cold and excess downhill walk. By the way, did I tell you that tears have a lower freezing point than water. The water that fell from my bottle froze when it hit my shawl at Masar Tal but somehow the fluid from my eyes did not. We also had some unnatural experience of plates freezing together right after washing them, water turning into ice right before our eyes and some other things that are better not described here.