It has been long since I've been meaning to write this, and there has been a lot happening, in my world at least. But as life would have it, procrastination and action have long bridges to be crossed between them. I'm sitting by my bedroom window, looking out at the overcast sky, listening to some music and waiting for the skies to pour again. Perfect weather for nostalgia.
My thoughts take me back to the mountains that I explored over two weeks, a couple of months ago. The trek started with a day-long rafting trip in Hrishikesh, located at the base of the Himalayas in northern India. Even though the city is regarded as a holy place for pilgrimage, along with the many temples, shrines and communes, there also exist exciting adventure opportunities such as mountaineering and rafting.

The Laxman Jhoola at Hrishikesh
After a few hours of rafting, a couple of hours of swimming in the calmer part of the Ganges and diving from the highest rocks on the banks of the river, I set out on a walking tour around the holy town. The place has a pristine touch to it, with prayer chants buzzing into your ears as you walk past every nook and corner. Monks, real ones and beggars sporting saffron outfits, walk around the city along side hippies and the spiritually curious from all over the world. Even though the environs and lifestyle in the town remain nearly rural, its surprising how the place attracts people from the most developed parts of the world to seek solace.

A monk reciting the Geeta
The next place we set out for was a village close to the Indo-Tibetan border in the Garhwal region. Mandoli, the base camp for our trek is a small hamlet with hardly fifty families living there, plenty of naturally chilled water and no power. The flowers, vegetation in the region are exotic but for food, they grow only potatoes! So, the first thing we were told was that for the next couple of weeks we'd be having a highly potato-intense diet for all our meals.
The average temperatures are usually single digits, and the water freezes you head-to-toe. People in that region are the friendliest possible, kids the most innocent. Women have sharp features and a shy, dreamy-eyed look when they stare at us urban creatures. Even though they may be used to seeing hundreds of trekkers, they themselves must've conquered the mountain ranges a number of times in their lives they don't fail to express surprise and awe when you tell them you plan to climb up to Bedni Bugyal or Roopkund. It may as well be coming from their knowledge of the vulnerability that urban residents are subject to, and the luxuries they crave for.


Local women walk miles to collect fire-wood, at times climbing many trees on the edges of cliffs. The pictures were taken in the evening when our bus broke down on the way to Mandoli and these ladies were on their way home.




Sunshine all day long!
Life in these villages is nowhere close to easy. The villagers migrate from one place to another depending upon rainfall, snowfall and the intensity of winter in a given year. Farming is done on the steep slopes of the mountains without any modern means of transport barring a few trips to the nearest city in a jeep or a state transport bus over the year. Markets for their produce are far away from their villages, so they have to rely on intermediaries who make more money for their produce than they themselves do. Despite all the difficulties, these villagers seem to know some secret potion of happiness to keep up their mysteriously innocent smiles.





The many faces of innocence





Smiles from the mountains
By this time, I had already left behind my life without emails, phones, newspapers, television, music, and everything modern to keep me busy. The only hint of technology I had with me was my camera, which attracted brilliant smiles from the villagers – kids and grown-ups alike.
I could wake up at four in the morning and see the sun rising up to the world, covering the entire landscape in a golden hue. The view was addictive, and one can't stop clicking pictures of the same frame over and over.

The small temple, from which the God escaped...
...and perhaps, went this way!


Colours!



Freedom!
From Mandoli, our group of forty climbed up to Tolpani, an even tinier village with a small plateau on the mountain where we could camp. We stayed the night there, and witnessed new colours of the sunset we had never seen before. The next morning, we started off for a long trek up to Bedni Bugyal passing through Ali Bugyal. Bugyal, in Garhwali language means a meadow. Bedni Bugyal is known to be one of the largest meadows at the height of 12,000 feet above sea level in Asia. Tall trees cease to survive after the height of about 9,000-10,000 feet above sea level. We visited the place by the end of summers, just before it starts raining – or rather, snowing heavily. The place was covered with short grass, and I was told that by September the meadows will be colourful with various kinds of flowers and shrubs growing all over.
The meadows have no civilisation, except for the occasional hermit living in one of the many stone-houses built by the villagers living at the base and more recently, trekkers. We camped at Bedni Bugyal for three days, because we were planning to climb up to Roopkund at a height of 17,000 feet above sea level from Bedni, and return to the camp. For Roopkund, there is a legend saying that a king and his pregnant wife were passing by the lake at Roopkund with their cavalry, when a snowstorm struck and everyone died. We were told that when the snow melts, one can still find skeletons of 11-foot tall human beings, belonging to the king and his soldiers. The story continues: since then, whenever a woman tries to climb up to Roopkund, there is a snowstorm, no matter which part of the year.

On the way to Baguabasa, signposts are put together showing the way
We were also told that the trek from Bedni Bugyal to Roopkund is tougher than the mountains that we had climbed so far. So we eliminated 32 out of the 40 guys, and only eight of us started for Roopkund, via Baguabasa, which is situated at a height of 15,500 feet above sea level. Of the eight, only four of us reached Baguabasa, the other four returned mid-way. Until then, the weather was quite sunny with strong wind threatening to blow us off the cliffs. Suddenly, as we reached Baguabasa, clouds gathered in so thick that we couldn't see a few feet in front of us, and lightning struck as if right next to our feet. Within a few seconds, piercing bits of snow hit our skin, and we all had to run downward, back in the direction of our camp.


On the way back, we hopped and jumped our way down the boulders without even looking behind. Suddenly, I realised that I was alone, far ahead of everyone with nobody around. My footsteps made echoes, and the occasional strike of lightning still made me shudder. There I met a family of four – husband, wife, and two daughters, who were planning to climb up to Roopkund by the end of the day. I was spooked. I wished them luck and started walking back again, thinking over the now not-so-superstitious legend. When I reached the camp, I realised I had climbed down the terrain in an hour and a half, which had taken me six hours to climb up!


Through the rest of the day, I snuggled in my sleeping bag trying to bring some warmth back to my frozen body. The next day, we climbed down to a shy, picturesque village called Wan, about 40 kilometres away from where we had started climbing up.



Our guest house in Wan
People in this village were even more reclusive, perhaps in proportion to their distance to the larger world outside. But they turned out to be friendlier when they got talking. One little girl, barely eight years old, followed me through the village as I went on clicking pictures. Later, she asked me to send her all the pictures once I print them off but she was unable to help me with her own address!

This little girl wanted me to send her pictures back to her, but didn't know her own address...

On our way back to Delhi via Nainital, we traveled through a small town called Kausani, which is an old-style hill station. The town also has an old ‘ashram’ established by Mahatma Gandhi, back in 1929. The ashram has a viewing gallery, from which one can see peaks like Kanchanjunga and Neelkanth. After spending one night and one day at this calm hill-station, we headed to the noisier and more crowded hill-station, Nainital.
A mosque in Nainital
Though popular, Nainital is quite urban in its texture, and comes across more as a shopping destination for visitors than a place to unwind. Some parts of the city have an old colonial touch to offer, but the cycle-rickshaws and an occasional horse-drawn buggy make one contrast the past with the future pulled fast-forward by a six-cylinder V8 engine.
In the last leg of our trek, we ended up in a boiling New Delhi, where our skins peeled away because of the quick transition from the snow to moderate heat to scorching sunshine. I had now returned the world of buzzing phones, impersonal emails, quick conversations, coffee vending machines and junk food. Just then, I received a message.
Although I was sad to leave behind the tranquil world of innocence and was looking forward to my return to urban life, an ultra-urban surprise awaited me in the two words of the message: Hong Kong.
Maqtoob!
Labels: Bedni Bugyal, Himlayas, Roopkund, trekking