A trickle of sweat runs down in a single line on the right forehead from the temple to the neckline, the line breaking briefly at the cheek. 'Just another km more to go and then the path will level out', I rationalize to myself. The thighs and the ankles, the shins and the calves, and all else that make my leg are filled with gratitude at the rationalization. The ankle lands on an uneven boulder, sending another sensation of pain right through the shin onto the thighs. The calves try to reduce the impact by breaking the step and get part of the pain in this bargain. 'When will the path level out?', I ask myself realizing that I cannot take another step down. Five minutes later I find myself asking the same question and having the same realization without realizing that I will be walking down for another half an hour before the path would level down to Hadsar. I start to wonder when was the last time when walking down a slope had been so painful and give up after some deliberation. The walk down Mayali Pass was tiring but probably the legs were too numb after the arduous climbs to feel the pain. No, I was sure, this was the worst situation I had ever landed my legs into. I had landed my legs into the hard ground of the ManiMahesh trail, the yatra to the tarn of Manimahesh, the trek to the base of the chamba kailash, the unsurmountable manimahesh peak. A short trek was decided upon to commemorate Atri's des-coming and in order to use the weekend, the mandatory-jetlag-overcoming-night was required to be spent on a train. This kind of restricted our choices to trek starting from Pathankot and the pics of manimahesh I had seen in a HPTDC brochure sealed it. We would make a small trek to manimahesh lake situated at the base of Manimahesh peak.There was a slight glitch: our trek coincided with an annual yatra to the lake. The bright side about it was that we did not need to carry tents and food, which meant saving a whole lot of time. The dark side was, of course, wading our way through the flood of pilgrims. The relative toughness of the trek gave us the impression that pilgrims would be few and far between and so, we decide to take our chance. Before I lose my way in the now mist-covered-memories (it has been abt 2 weeks now), I should get the facts out of the way. So, the team had four members: Amol and Goldie (Mayali-seasoned trekkers), Rahul (a relative fresher), Atri (of course) and me. No tents/food implied no porters. The habit of self-dependence forced us to carry our sleeping bags for the just-in-case-no-tents-are-there scenario, but overall it was a much lighter backpack this time around. and well, the chart for Manimahesh is as follows: Pathankot- Hadsar (approx 200 km, 7hrs driver) Hadsar - Dhancho (6 km) Dhancho-Manimahesh (7.5km) Total altitude gain: approx 2000m. Max altitude: 4000m. So, one fine saturday morning, we found ourselves at chakki bank (pathankot) with our backpacks in company, negotiated for a 4-day-Sumo for 5000, hauled us alongwith our backpacks into it and were on the way to Hadsar. Before the start of the journey, I had, as always, compiled a list of what all could possibly go wrong. To start with the train could be late, which it was but less than an hour. Then, we could face landslides delaying us in reaching Hardsar, and halting our progress to Dhancho on the same day. But, you all are in for a major letdown. Almost nothing went wrong for the full four days. In fact, we had more than our share of good luck. So, the sumo reached hardsar within the promised 7 hours and we set off to Dhancho. Soon, it was immediate that we were completely out-of-place with our colorful backpacks and the even-more-colorful sleeping mats tied to them standing in splendid isolation to the crowd that had, at most, a small bag for company. There were mothers carrying kids on their backs, college boys with schoolbags, well-to-do middleaged with hands hanging like deadweight around them and very-well-to-do-overweight weighing down underweight ponies. The common element unifying the thoughts of this diverse collection of people was the faith of shiva, who makes manimahesh (or chamba kailash) his home for the fortnight. Faith, something in which my faith has decreased as my age has increased, was a real thing for these people and a crippled man working his way tirelessly up the steep trail marked the contrast in our beliefs. By the time we reached Dhancho, we had become accustomed to the faith that people have in their faith. Of course, we were thankful for the free food provided by the various langars sprung by many faithbearers. The trail to Dhancho is fairly routine with a waterfall breaking the monotony. Dhancho itself resembled a mini-town with tents sprung all over the place. Nothing out of ordinary happened. We booked a tent, had dinner at a langar, had a simple round of gossiping, cribbed about the devotional songs being sung in the nearby tent and slept away neverthless. The next day was the arduous day with fairly steep climb all through the way to Manimahesh. We had handled many a steep climbs but the terrain there was more forgiving on the legs. At Manimahesh, one is simply straved for soil with rocks dotting the way all through and that spells disaster for the knees and the legs. There is one interesting stretch on a shortcut to Manimahesh that has small overhanging regions, nothing to get excited about but the small rushes of adrenaline still add that extra zing of thrill. After a 3 hour toil, we reached Gaurikund, were disappointed with Gaurikund, climbed (more like sleepwalked) up the remaining 1 km to manimahesh, were disappointed again with the shallow lake and the multitude of shops around. After we had time to discuss our disappointment over a lunch of overpriced Magi, we decided that we need some thrill and the serenity of silence to go alongwith it. So, with Amol opting out of the sojourn, we set our way to the glacier source of Manimahesh through a jutting of rocks, which we surmised would be the shortest way to the glacier. Wading our way through the cracks on the rocks, we made all the way up the rock face forgetting the simple mountain adage of not going up when u don't know the way down. But, finding our way down with Rahul stuck midway on a jutting with the mountainous river roaring in the background provided the much needed laughs that we knew would be heard by nobody other than the winds and the rocks and the mountains and the river. We had finally found a place of our own where the mind was free to contemplate only the next step up or down, the view on the slope over the next jutting, a place with no distractions, a place that was throbbing with activity, but serene at the same time. The serenity of action, an action that you control in totality, an action that shuts your mind from the rest of the world, an action that provides the calm for which we rush to the Himalayas. The wrong guesses about the shortcuts and the fog shrouding the way to the glacier aborted our sojourn and we trudged back through a more obvious route to Manimahesh. We again had our dinner-followed by gossiping-followed by cribbing over devotional songs-followed by sleep routing and set on the way down next day. By this time, the hard terrain had started to take an effect on the calves, and the knees and the thighs and everything in between. The long walk back led me to the thoughts that I had never thought before. Thoughts of going upslope instead of downslope, thoughts of how good it would be to have level ground instead of the torture of going down. The legs complained and cribbed but did their duty and brought us safe and sound to Hardsar. And, then it happened. Part of the plan went out of the window. googling had suggested that there is a 80km route from Hardsar to Dharamshala and that was supposed to be our exit point from himachal but enquiries did not provide us any pointers to the route. So, after some driving round, we decided to nighthalt at khajjiar for a paneer-loaded dinner, laze around at khajjiar, do some mal-road walking in Dalhousie the next day and head to Pathankot. So, we did all that, got really lucky and got reservation in a delhi-bound train, celebrated it with a long lunner (lunch+dinner) in an airconditioned restaurant and were back to the hustle and bustle of delhi the next morning with one scene that will remain embossed in our minds all our life. The scene of a man, crippled in one leg, holding crutches in both hands, looking up at the Manimahesh peak, swiping sweat on his brow with the shoulder-sleeves, chanting "jai mahesh" and taking the next faltering step up the slope. Home page for travelogues