The Trek

After the highlights comes the match replay :D

So after a month long round of exams I come home dying to do something. Lugging with me an extra suitcase full of winter clothes coz Mom has arranged for a trek with a group of people I do not know. She knows one of them. And as it turned out, the group consisted of no-one my age.

So I bought a rucksack, a jacket, a sleeping bag and two pairs of rubber-soled shoes and cheerfully set out to 'see mountains' as I put it. That's because thanks to a very asthmatic childhood all my vacations are seaside. Or hill station. But I had never seen snowcapped peaks. Or snowfall.

At the railway station I was introduced to a group of children, around 15 years old at an average and their parents and a core group of trained trekker and mountaineer men.

So we piled into a train and set out. Singing cheerfully.

We reached Chandigarh at midnight day after that and piled into a bus. After a twelve hour bus journey with breaks to eat and pee we reached Manikaran. Manikaran is famous for hot water springs. The cool part is that we lived in a gurudwara. Incidentally, bro says, Manikaran has one of India's only two geothermal energy plants. Anyway, so all 46 of us in one room in a gurudwara and eating in a langar was a total new experience. Next morning we piled into cars and set out for Tosh village. Lots of us threw up. It's called altitude change.... (I'm going to take a line here to wish a friend. Dear Vineet, that was probably ur b'day. Happy Birthday. It probably sucked coz u had exams right after but hopefully knowing that people threw up may make u feel happier coz of ur weird interest in puke)

Tosh is this beautiful village. Last outpost of civilization. Last plugpoint. Last bed. Last potty. Wild weed growing everywhere. We stayed in a little hotel run by a local couple. In the afternoon they took us to see the waterfall and the local dam and power project. They almost ran along, leaving us huffing and puffing and hurting experienced trekker uncleA's ego pretty badly.

Next day we started trekking. Wonderful little trail. Snowcapped mountains in the distance. Pine and fir trees around us. Colorful wildflowers.

It was a short trek and we reached camp quickly. Just one minor mishap happened. R and T, two teenagers managed to walk right into the middle of a lot of squishy mud and sink ankle deep in it and get totally stuck. They screamed for uncleA and he came running and pulled them out after handing me his rucksack. I had an attack of the giggles then. I think the altitude had a little to do with it.

Campsite was called Budhaban. My first time living in a tent.

The next day the trek was really really long. Exhausting for everybody. Adding to my misery came a round of menstrual cramps. My stomach felt like someone had pumped it with lead. The guide Teedee, a mountain of a man, put up with my moaning for the last two hours of the trek. How much longer? I don't want to walk anymore....

Just twenty more minutes is what he said every time. The man must have a terrible impression if me.

Camp was called Sharamthach. Night was bitterly cold.

The third day's trek was amazing. We crossed the treeline. We had to cross glaciers, freezingly cold rivers and stretches of the trail were so narrow that one misstep meant disaster. I was walking behind a kid for most of the way. He's got some trekking experience and is good at picking out the right way to go but when it comes to glaciers and rivers he's BAAd. Glaciers, his formula is to cling to the rope and be pulled across coz otherwise he slips. The entire dig in the side of your foot doesn't work for him. Rivers, he just stopped in the middle of one when he found some rocks, leaving me stranded barefoot in ankle deep water which was freeeeeeezing. Man I howled then.

We reached camp. Samsithach. It started to snow. We pitched our tents and rushed inside. Our tent hadn't been pitched too well as we discovered later. The sides weren't pulled tight and water seeped in all night. Added to a porter spilling water in our tent while giving us warm driking water made our tent quite the mother of misery. We fell asleep sitting in the cold wet tent. I was apparently the only one who managed to sleep well.

Bad weather conditions forced us to start our descent the next day after a quick snowball fight. We never made it to Papsura base camp. Lots of us did heave sighs of relief at that.

Descent in the slippery snow was difficult. Two people and me managed to take a little bit of a wrong trail and ended up climbing up the side of a mountain straight to regain the trail. that was fun. After that me and uncleA trekked a long distance. This was fine and we just sat down to eat boiled eggs when 13year old G who had crapped his pants arrived. Apparently he hadnt been, crapping behind rocks not being his thing, and then slipped in snow and done it. He stank something terrible and gave me and uncleA a lot of speed. Little Ivan broke his leg that day. he completed the trek with two crutches. (Applause)

After a last night in tents we reached Tosh the next day and piled back into buses to go to Kullu. That was also the day I realized I was crapping in a Marijuana field.

Little Ivan's xray revealed three fractures and his leg was put in a cast.

last three days to be written later..... :P