Six (mis)-adventurers on a trip to
Roopkund (Garhwal)
Contents
Day 01 - The Arrival
Day 02 - The Beginning
Day 03 - The Killer Climb
Day 04 - The Final Attempt
Day 05 - The Descent
Day 06 - The Return
Day 01 - The Arrival
Day 02 - The Beginning
Day 03 - The Killer Climb
Day 04 - The Final Attempt
Day 05 - The DescentThe first signs of day, were as usual Madda and Redemption making all kinds of funny noises, from as early as three in the morning. We had targeted departure at six, so by five-thirty or so we had to get up. Of course, it had to happen that all six of us felt like doing the big job, as a result of which we ran out of one more item - toilet paper !! Some smart guy of course hid some toilet paper for his own use later, but that story will be disclosed at the appropriate time.
Meanwhile, we were glad to leave that suffocating tent-in-the-hut (refer day 04 for why it was suffocating - basically there was a lot of Madda-inspired laughter in the tent throughout the night). At six sharp our old-man-friend appeared with his ponies and men, so we had to hurry to pack up our tent and everything else. Naturally our photographer turned botanist once again missed an incredible photo-op - the famous tent-in-the-hut therefore has no visual record. Meanwhile the ponies had a party of a lifetime on last night's gourmet dinner of jeera-rice. Dirty utensils were wrapped up in ten metres of polythene and shoved into the rucksacks, which were loaded and then we were off.
The first part of the descent was fairly easy - no one had any difficulty till we reached the top of the killer slope (except, of course, those poor souls who for even some time came behind Redemption and ahead of Naniji). We waited there for some time, and as soon as our ponies were in sight, we began the descent. The descent had looked quite murderous at the start, but slowly we gained in confidence and started moving quite fast. We literally cut vertical short cuts, on ground which was just an inch-thick layer of slippery dried leaves, often sliding on our backsides, and braking by crashing into trees! However, this speed enabled us to complete the descent in under an hour, while the ascent had taken us something like three or four hours. Redemption and Dummy-redemption, however, had taken it a bit easy on the descent, and had preferred (like the sane people they are) to take the normal path instead of the crazy shortcuts. We took a small break at the stream - where we were overtaken by the pony express.
We then began a phase of ascent - it was supposed to be only one kilometre or so; and we didn't have rucksacks, nevertheless it seemed to be quite an effort. We finally reached our camping site No. 2. Madda, as usual, had run on ahead to organize breakfast at the Govt. rest house at Baan village. Sinha kept searching for the elusive poppy that he had been shown a few days ago, but Alas! the poppy just could not be found. Anyway, we reached Baan only to find that the Govt. rest house would not serve breakfast, so we went back to our friend (of the German lady fame) and ordered parantha-sabzi-daal. The little kids who had appeared all the time in the last two kilometres with (Namatte! Mithai Do!) suddenly become a whole group of about eight or ten kids who kept peering into our room with shy smiles and giggles. But then their school started and they left us. Meanwhile there was a six ton dog (or maybe bitch, Madda didn't tell us the sex) which kept irritating (guess who?) Ravi (naturally) by standing on the roof of a nearby hut and barking away. Ravi meanwhile kept irritating Sinha by whistling the same song over and over again (as he would do for the rest of the day) - namely, Bon Jovi's Living on a prayer, while Sinha of course entertained everyone by expounding on how to learn the Harmonium in fifteen days - courtesy a book lying nearby. Anyway, finally the food came and we all had the greatest meal of our lives - solid food after three days.
So after a break of almost two hours, we moved on towards Loharjung pass. Despite our earnest pleas, the villagers refused to tell us a path to Loharjung which would avoid the five or so kilometres of climb - or better still - one that would bypass Loharjung altogether and take us straight to Mandoli. They kept saying there was no such path! So we had to resign ourselves to the original path, and we walked on, dreading the five kilometre climb that lay ahead.
This part of the trek went off fairly smoothly. Dummy-redemption and Madda once again raced ahead. Redemption the botanist meanwhile suddenly got a fixation on the berries growing along the path. He must have plucked and eaten over ten thousand berries on the way - though most of them were not even fully grown yet. They were quite tasty, though nobody else shared his enthusiasm except for some time Sinha. We stopped for a while at a very dense point in the path, but Sinha who took the photo unfortunately opened the camera, exposing a couple of snaps and resetting the counter. Madda, Dummy-redemption and Naniji raced ahead once again, though later Naniji caught up with the rest of us, and even the other two went up a wrong path, as a result of which we all reached Mandoli within five minutes of each other, at around three o'clock. Our pony express, of course, had been waiting there since about twelve o'clock, so we paid them off and took our rucksacks.
We then had tea, and found out about the bus. We were told it would leave at four a.m. sharp the next day, so we made another fruitless pledge to stay up the whole night - with Sinha as usual very keen to get 'Senti'. Much to Madda's chagrin, Sinha used up the last of the toilet paper, so some old newspaper was quickly procured to serve out sudden emergencies. It was then that Naniji was discovered hiding some toilet paper in her jacket - what treachery !!! We tried to go for a few walks, but there was nowhere to walk outside the town, and inside the town we just became objects of curiosity for everyone. Redemption and Sinha did go out for a short walk anyway, sitting inside a small park, where Redemption the botanist did nothing but examine the weeds and expound on them to his hapless captive audience.
Somebody really smart then got the idea that we would spend our time playing Flash !!! So we procured a pack of cards, and started play. Dummy redemption didn't know how to play so he watched for some time and joined later. Naniji was explained the order of combinations for the first of about a hundred times. Then the great gamblers began. It started off quite innocuously, with our usual rule that the max bet would be twenty units + boot, and then there would be auto - show for all. Redemption, however, found this too suffocating, so he suggested that we remove the limit. So we went into no-limits mode. Ravi, who was the dealer, chose precisely this moment to play some really crazy variant where apparently everyone ends up with a triple-Ace, so the winner is usually the one who has triple-Ace and the Ace of Spades. Ravi, being the only one who knew this dirty secret, immediately packed. That left four of us - Madda, Redemption, Nani, and Sinha - all with triple-Aces. So the betting began - and sky rocketed very soon to forty units at one go, for a total of something like four or five hundred units, before people began side showing and trying to reach an end. Finally Madda and Naniji were left - and it finished with Madda having triple-Ace, Ace of Diamonds, and Naniji having (you guessed it) triple-Ace, Ace of Spades !!!!!!! That was a total booty of about one hundred and twenty rupees at one go !!!!! The idea of limitless bets was immediately abandoned, and we reverted to our old system. Madda and Sinha never recovered from this great loss, though Redemption was able to salvage quite a bit, and the other two, of course, were not affected. This however, did not prevent anyone from sinking deep into the red - Naniji was finally the only one in black - that too with an increased fortune - and she kept asking all through - "Just tell me once more - is colour higher or sequence?" That was some round of gambling!!
Anyway, we had a lovely dinner -
that too at just twelve rupees a plate - and then despite our best efforts
to stay awake and get Senti, we did end up going to sleep for a few hours
at least, bringing an end to day 05.
Day 06 - The Return
As was by now characteristic, day 06 too began at about two-thirty in the morning, this time the wake-up leaders being Naniji and Shashank. Meanwhile a slight drizzle was on, leading the sleepers among us to hope that the bus would be delayed so we could get some more sleep. Alas! that was not to be, so like zombies we got up (Ravi and Dummy, as usual, being the last ones to do so), packed, and moved towards the bus. None of us had brushed; however, just as the bus was ready to start, Madda got a fit of cleanliness and decided that he needed to brush after all. So he climbed to the top (where our rucksacks were), and was trying to take his brush out, when the bus started. As Anji was below, Madda started screaming frantically to him to tell the driver not to start, but Anji was on a different trip and just kept staring blankly into space. Finally Dummy or someone rescued Madda by asking the driver to stop. The crisis blown over, we hurriedly gulped own our tea, got in the bus, and were off much before daylight.
The journey began quite uneventfully, just a few passengers in a Tata 709 hurtling down a goat track in near-total darkness. We reached Debal, by when the bus was nearly full, including two eleven-foot foreigners who had to literally touch their toes to enter the bus. We left Debal, with the driver adjusting his cap on the rear-view mirror - why should he look at the road, there was hardly likely to be any traffic; so what if the road had twists and turns that made a pile of noodles look like a straight line in comparison! Suddenly we realized that we were traveling up the side of the mountain instead of the road. The driver quickly returned his attention to the road and brought the bus back on it; don't even contemplate what could have happened if we had strayed to the river side rather than the mountain side. A few minutes later, there was a loud bang followed by series of rattles, forcing the driver to stop. Upon inspection, it was found that the gear-box transmission shaft connection had lost all its screws and disconnected! After a few minutes we heard the conductor shout from under the bus - "Hey, there are five screws there and only two here, take out one and give it to me." Thus the bus was repaired and our journey continued.
Our entertaining driver kept punctuating the journey every half an hour by putting on a cassette of loud Garhwali music. He would immediately get shouted at by almost the entire bus, whereupon he would make a face and stop it, only to repeat the charade half an hour later. He proceeded at one point to drive about two kilometres with his left foot on the bonnet - i.e., without using the clutch. We finally reached Karnaprayag, which we were about to bypass, when Bang! a tire blew. So we entered the town, and took a break while the tire was repaired (obviously there was no such thing as a stepney). Breakfast was nothing out of the ordinary, but then suddenly all six of us developed a craving for choolates. So Anji led us to one specific shop which he knew, and we bought a large chocolate there. Naturally that was not enough to satisfy us, so Madda and Sinha went out again to buy another large chocolate, in the process picking up a Hindi newspaper as well. Our first source of information in six days informed us that a ferocious cyclone had smashed into Gujarat, perhaps that was why the weather here had also become bad. While we were struggling to read the Hindi newspaper, the bus moved on.
Ok guys, this needs a lot of formatting, intro etc, which I will do when the text part of it is complete. Meanwhile if anyone can get access to a scanner, please scan some trek photographs and send them to [email protected], and I'll set them up here.
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