The great himalayan expedition

(May 11th 2007)
I was all excited and geared up for the Himalayan trek since it was planned
several months ago.
My vacation mood was in full swing previous day evening itself and felt why people in
our office cab were so dull...I tried to cheer them up, but soon had to realize
that, only I was going on vacation but not others... :)

The whole trip was comprised of two legs - first was to trek around Gangotri
of around 55km and next leg was to goto Kedarnath.
In total 18 members were in first leg.
17 of assembled at Bangalore airport at around 4 and one person (Keshav) was supposed
to join us in Delhi.
Out of 18, half the people were strangers to me except my cousin Sumi(alias Krupa) and her family.
Was wondering how the trip might go...

Spicejet flight to Delhi was at 5.10PM, but by the time the flight took off it was 6.
After almost two hours, captain announced that we were reaching Delhi in 20 minutes.
Subsequent announcement heard was "Jaipur ke hawaai adde mein swaagath hein!!!",
we thought it was slip of tongue.
But announcement re-confirmed that "Welcome to Jaipur Airport"!!!
Every person in flight was surprised, when enquired with air-hostesses, even they
were unaware what was happening!
Then they informed us that, the weather in Delhi was bad hence the flight had to
land in Jaipur.We were stranded in Jaipur airport for quite a long time.
Now, we had planned to go to chilling Himalayas, but we had landed in "desert"!!!
Our gang members started making fun -
"What is the use of Thermals in Thar?!"
The flight did not take off from Jaipur till 10.45 - well past dinner time.
There was hardly any food in flight to serve the stranded passengers.
Many passengers teased Air-host(esses) for bad service, but they hardly had any control over the things going around.


Each were offered couple of biscuits (not packs!) and water.
As per our plan, we were supposed to catch train to Dehradun at 11.30 in Delhi.
By the time we landed in Delhi it was 11.35!
Unfortunately we had missed the train...
i thought "Phew, what a start to our trip!!! hope things will not be this way for rest of the trip".
Everyone in the group was very hungry. We had dinner in Hotel Balaji at 12.30 in Delhi Airport.

After dinner, 2 qualis & 1 Indica to Dehradun were arranged.
By the time all hopped on to the vehicles & left Delhi it was 2.20AM!!
I occupied the backseat and slept in the space available happily...
Even huge mosquitoes, which had sneaked in to our vehicles, did not succeed in spoiling my deep sleep.


(May 12th 2007)
By the time I woke up, it was already 7 and our vehicle was racing past Roorkie.
We had a tea break on the way and reached to Dehradun at around 9.30.
There was some confusion where to reach in Dehradun, amongst the vehicles.
After the confusion was sorted out, we took a Hotel room in Dehradun for freshening up.
After cleansing ritual, we did "pet puja" with aloo parathas/pooris.
From Dehradun, adventure club organizer - Karan Kutiyal from Chandra Sangh Adventure Club
had arranged the transport for us. We had to travel in 3 Bolero's till Gangothri.
Instead of joining the gang at Delhi, Keshav joined us here - the only person to catch
the train to Dehradun :)

We left Dehradun at around 11. Our next hop was to reach UttaraKashi and stay over-night there.
Enroute we surpassed Mussoorie; as soon as we reached close to Mussoorie, we could feel
the difference in atmosphere - it was much cool and pleasent weather.
No wonder Mussoorie is one of the favourite hill stations in Northern India.
Pretty close to Mussoorie, water falls named 'Kempty falls' is located.
Falls is very beautiful but people have commercialized the place a lot.
I felt it had lost its natural charm.


We got nice glimpses of River Yamuna on the way.
We were racing in the lower Himalayan range which is pretty green.
It does not snow in these stretch and step vegetation/step farming was visible.
The major crops grown here are - Rice, Wheat and aloo.

Dressing style of women (in villeges) here is different.
They wear head-scarf and wear saree as a wrap around to the bottom along with blouse.
Most of the houses were seen with roof of black tiles.
These black tiles are made of black layered rocks, which are widely available in this region.
In many villages, I could see, people had piled small bundles of Hay over the roof.
Bundles of Hay were also mounted over the branches of trees.
I speculated in my mind, these must be the food for cattle, spread aroud to dry.
We had lunch break at Nainbagh and had nice Aloo Parathas with curds.

Further from here, we entered forest region.
The atmosphere was different and the feel was awesome.
The smell of trees/mud was great.
Along the road, there were dark pink small flowers visible.
It was as if they had born to decorate the road borders. Sight was very pretty.
As we chugging along, we had first glimpse of River Bhagirathi at Badethi.
At Badethi, currently dam is being built across Bhagirathi.
In coming years, 'naksha' of this whole area will change when the dam completes.
We had a break at Badethi and had hot aloo bajjis.
By the time we reached Uttarakashi it was around 8.
Hotel rooms were booked in Hotel Everest for us.
We all dumped our bags in the rooms had dinner in near by place and called end of day.

(May 13th 2007)
The plan for the day was to reach Gangothri. I got up at around 5.45 and took nice bath.
Karan provided sleeping bags and rucksacks to everyone.
We were instructed to pack only necessary stuff for trek in the rucksacks and
and to leave unwanted luggage in Uttarakashi.
Most of us got ready by 8. In Uttarakashi, we visited Kashi Vishweshwara Temple.
This temple is not very big, but the surroundings and the temple atmosphere was pleasing.

There are two main complexes in temple - one is for main Vishweshwara temple and
opposite to this another temple for Parvathi.
Parvathi is present here in Shakthi swaroopa - Trishula.
Trishula is massive with approximately 25-30 feet high.
Next to shakti, there are two small statues of Subramanya and Ganesha.
These statues are tiny but attractive ones.
As per the main priest, main deity - shiva is swayambhu(udbhava moorthy).
When I heard that from priest, famous kruthi in Raaga Revathi - "Bho Shambho" rang in my mind.
I wanted to hear this in the temple premises from Ramprasad, who had come along with us.
I requested Ram to sing the "Shambho" song, but due to lack of time, he could not.
But he promised me that, he is going to sing for me during the trip.

Let me introduce you to Ramprasad a bit here.
Ramprasad (my cousin's brother-in-law) is professional carnatic classical singer.
I have heard his renditions many times in concerts as well as cassettes.
He has floored me every single time with his great voice & singing ability.
Though, this is very very small introduction about him (which does not do the justice), I will stop here :)

After having breakfast in Uttarakashi, we left to Gangothri.
On the way, we visited a place called Gangnani.
Here in Gangnani, Hot water Sulphur spring is located.
At source, the water is almost boiling hot!
Kalyaani(what do you call in english?? artificial pond?) has been built, we played in hot water for a while.

As we headed further, 15km to town, Harshil we had first glimpse of Snow capped
mountains. Everyone in the cab was thrilled, mountains were looking like tempting Ice Cones :)
Each mountains were making a fashion statement with different types of white caps.

Enroute to Gangothri, we have to cross Harshil.
In Harshil the river basin is quite huge. River flow was not full.
Bhagirathi had split into multiple streams forming patches of sand in the middle.
In Harshil, multiple streams join River Bhagirathi from the mountain surroundings.
Multiple glorious water falls directly jump into the river
forming fantabulous sight - definitely a feast for eyes.
At one particular place, we had a picture perfect sight of
snow-capped mountain, river, green valley and horse grazing in the river basin.
As I saw the Horse, i went into (day)dream world of riding horse across the river in full vigor :)

Little further from Harshil, group got their first chance to touch the snow.
There was huge glacier formation next to road side. Our vehicles came to halt as soon as we saw the snow.
Everyone jumped out and ran towards the snow.
Water dripping out of snow was chilling.
Gang(sters) enthusiastically smiled for camera holding snow.


We reached Gangothri approximately at 2pm. We were supposed to stay in tents and
arrangement was already made. Tent location was at the entry part of Gangothri town.
We had to get down around 100 meters from the main road into the valley.
When we reached the place, tents were getting erected.
Hot lunch was served to everyone from the cooks.

In the evening, we went to Gangothri Temple. Gangothri temple is situated right next to
River Bhagirathi.I was expecting that, river will flow as a narrow stream at Gangothri.
But, here the river was huge almost 50-80 feet wide. Basin was almost 150 ft wide!!
Then I was informed by Local priest that, Gomukh is the birth place for River Bhagirathi and
Gangothri is the place where Lord Shiva tied her in his 'Jata'.
From temple, we have to get down around 20 steps to touch the river water. Water was extremely cold.
Though I wanted to take bath here, I could not and had to wait for some more days for famous 'Ganga snaana'.



Gangothri is small town at 3048 meter above sea level.
It is built along the River coast and it has one major galli and whole town is built on both sides.

You might be noticing in this blog that, I have been using 'Bhagirathi' instead of 'Ganga'.
The nominclature is, until DevaPrayag, place where River Bhagirathi meets River Alakananda, term 'Ganga'
is not used.

As soon we strolled back to our tents, we were offered Hot Tea and Biscuits.
Oh, I forgot to mention about the tents and surrounding!
There were two big tents were provided and the idea was to split into 9 each in the tents.
The surrounding was very beautiful and tents were in the midst of Pine and Devadaru forest.
We could hear hymns of river flow continuosly from tents.
Though river was not visible from tents. River was flowing in a valley around 50-80 feet deep around 50 meters away.
Nearby, I could also see huge boulders had rolled from top of mountains due to landslide.
I just loved this place, I moved away from the crowd and spent some time for myself in the cradle of the nature.




As it was getting dark, Karan gave "gnaan" about do's and don't during the trek and introduced to
Ravi who would accompany for trek as a guide.
It was early dinner at around 7-7.30.We were offered hot soup.
It was May 13th and it was birthday of my cousin, Sumi and Ramprasad.
So as per Varuna's (another gangster :) ) idea, we all started 'Happy Birthday' song as surprise while sipping soup.
Then Ramprasad, sang couple of songs - 'Jeevan se bhari' and 'Bho Shambho'.
Both songs were beautifully rendered. Sumi and Venu also sang.
Meanwhile, our cooks for the trek had prepared the cake!
Sumi and Ram cut the cake as everyone wished them.

After the dinner, we sneaked into the tents.This was the first day in tent sleeping in bags :)

(14th May 2007)

Suprabhatha was at 5.30AM and sun light was already pretty bright.
When I washed my face, face almost froze due to the chilly water.
It was funny to find others struggling to brush their teeth.
People happily watched others "misery".
Cooks served hot tea by 6 in the morning.

Since we were living in tents amidst nature, our nature calls had to be addressed in the nature.
We had to follow guidelines for nature calls as well :)
We had to create small pit, and discretions had to be buried with soil and leaves around.
There were two advantages with this.
First, human waste will dissolve quickly in the nature.
second, you can avoid offending your fellow mate who may come for his turn :D
It was strange and little uncomfortable feeling but we hardly had any choice as this was part of package.

Everyone were served bread toast and with various choices for bread. I opted for honey.
We had to eat quickly as the weather was turning the toast cold. :)

Tent was packed and we left to trek by 8.45, we got delayed since few had misplaced their things.
Before we left, Karan warned us to maintain the timings from here on.
I called up my mom from Gangothri to inform that, we will be totally disconnected from any sort of communication for a week long duration.
We started the trek passing through Gangothri temple.
As we moved along, our guide, Ravi pointed us to the peaks in horizon and informed they were
Sudarshan, Thelu and Koteshwar peaks.




Little more on Ravi here...
Ravi is a student who who works for Karan during his holidays.
He aspires to climb peaks and also run one of these adventure clubs himself later on.
He says he is currently learning the ropes of the business from his guru Karan Kutiyal.
(Thanks to Prathima(trek-mate) for providing info about Ravi :) )

The total trek for the day was of 9km to Chirbasa.
Journey was not too tough. We could see many small mud covered glaciers on the way.
Few glaciers had formed like tunnels under which river was flowing.
As we strolled, we could see Himalayan Blue sheep (called as "Bharal" in Hindi).




At certain places, we had to cross small streams using small wooden bridges.
The width of these wooden bridges are so narrow that, only one person can go over it at one time.
We could see multiple streams forming from top of mountains.
The way they were rushing, I felt, these streams were very eager to get called as 'Holy Ganga' :)



As we treked along, some were pacy and raced ahead, and few got tired and strolled slowly taking many breaks in between.

As per guides, we should not take too many breaks during the trek, especially not to sit and relax under shades.
If we sit and relax, the body gets used to the shady weather and body cools down and
it takes extra effort and time to get the body back to the rythm.
The weather was clear and pretty bright and sunny.
As we trudged further, we drank water from streams, the cold water was very refreshing!
I was very keen on bird spotting, but I could hardly see any.
All I could here was bird's chirping but found it very difficult to spot.
Finally I reached our destination for the day - Chirbasa by 2.15.
I had reduced my trekking pace for photography, which made me more tired - especially the last part.
People arrived in batches and everyone reached the place by 3.

Chirbasa is a very small village located at 3600 meter altitude from sea level.
Most of the shops(dhabas) cum homes are temporary construction and this area will be completely covered by snow during winter.
People here migrate to different places during winter.
We could see some new type of birds, which has yellow beak, saffron legs and jet black body.
Some people named it as "Chinese crow" and others said Mountain Crow.



After some research over this I have finally figured out that, it is called "Yellow billed chough", which falls in to crow category.

At Chirbasa, the tents were erected at a picturesque place in the middle of valley.
We could see Bhagirathi mountain in the horizon.
We were surrounded by many unnamed peaks, our guide pointed one of the round headed mountain as Mount Manda.
It looked as if it was an icecream top to me.

We were served with Maggis for lunch. Myself, Varuna, Bharath & Prathima started playing cards.
As we were playing cards we were served with Hot Tea & Biscuits.
Everyone gushed, "This is the perfect way to spend vacation! Sipping Hot Tea with Biscuits & playing cards
with friends at picture perfect location"!

It should be around 4.30, one more trek troop arrived from opposite direction to the place.
The gang was huge consisting mostly kids.
After they settled down, we were introduced to a lady Vrunda Ramanan, the person who was leading the group and the kids.
Vrunda Ramanan regularly organizes treks almost every year.
We were also introduced to a nepali lady named Chandra devi, who is 66 year old.
She has conquered many many peaks and has climbed Mount Everest 3 times (not to the peak due to circumstances).
She gave a pep talk and what we might face during the treks.
Chandra Devi is Padmashree awardee(as introduced) and a peak has been named after her for her achievements in mountaineering.
She has been conducting trainings to many including Vrunda.

As per plans, we were supposed to go to Nandanvan, but Vrunda suggested not to trek that part as the weather was pretty bad out there.
Meanwhie, I was very keen to take the dusk shots but talk with Chandradevi went on for quite sometime, till it became dark.
We were also introduced to a humble guy called Chandra Bhai, who has conquered almost 55 peaks!
Keshav exclaimed "He is no less than Napolean!"

Whistle from the cook announced that dinner was ready.
After dinner, everyone sneaked into the tents as it got dark.
Craze to play cards had just started!



So bunch of people played the cards in the tents using torch lights while others had gone to deep sleep by 8!
My day ended at 9.30.
Though the weather here at this altitude is quite cold, we are not supposed to put camp fire to preserve the environment and save trees,
Hence there was no bonfire.

As I had slept early than the usual, I woke up many times in the middle of night to realize morning was still far.
The whole night, I could hear sound of water flow, which was the lullaby for night.


To be continued...