Trek experience part-1

TREK EXPERIENCE(29^th Sep – 7^th October) ( Mussorie-Taluka-Osla-Harkidoon-Hanumanchatti-Dharwadhar top-Dodital-Uttarkashi- Mussorie)

Right since the day I joined LBSNAA, I have been listening about trek more than anything else from the staff and faculty members. We have been given excuses for gruelling PT schedule that, it is meant to condition us for the long trek. In the last 30-35 days, we have spent around 12-13 days in trekking.  Sometimes I confuse FC as TC i.e. Trekking Course. Apart from the 3 small treks to Kempty Falls, Binog Hills and Lal Tibba which were meant to kill our weekends, the most awesome experience so far has been the 9 day trek to the higher Himalayas from 29^th September to 7^th October. I thought of documenting the experience and write it down. So here it goes…

            The day before the trek i.e. 28^th September, we were given 2 classes off to prepare for the trek. The trek manual was of something around 60 pages which I never read before. OTs were seen reading and noting from the trek manual on their way to Mall road to do their shopping. It was just like an exam situation where everybody is confused and in a hurry to meet the target. Some people did the short cut by copying from the shopping list of other people. I also went to mall road to buy some necessary stuff. The mall road was full of OTs. Any shop I went, I found some OTs shopping something or the other. I bought a wind cheater and a pair of sun glasses. For that I had to stand in a queue. The shop keeper said, “I never sold so many sun glasses in an hour’s time”.

            So finally it was packing time in the evening. The rucksack with the sleeping bag itself was quite heavy where I put more things to make it unbearably heavier. I got a call from one fellow OT who requested me to pack a bottle of alcohol too which I cudnt deny. So finally it was done around mid night. I tried to catch a sleep.

             

Day1-(29^th September)

The day began at 5.30 am( I used to sleep at this time during my preparation years!!) and as usual I found my roomie ready with everything. I have never seen a person so organised and punctual before. He is gem of a man. I’ll write about him sometime later. Coming back to the trekking, I got ready in a hurry and reached my scheduled bus and group on time i.e. Group2. later I discovered that I had left my room key in my room itself!!!(hope academy will be successful in mending me by the time FC ends!!!).

            The bus started at around 6.30 am. We were a group of 23 OTs, one ITBP personnel(Sadanand) and a mess boy(Dinesh). Ours was a so called soft trek. (According to trek manual we travelled 469 kms in bus and 127 kms on foot in 9 days time in the challenging terrain of Himalayas. I didn’t found anything soft in that.)

For the 1^st hour of journey it was a descend. I have motion sickness problem, so had already taken an avomine. Inspite of that I puked once. I was sitting beside a lady from Kerala, Asha, later we discovered her to be the Annapurna devi as she used to carry a bag full of food. She was a complete chatter box too. We had our breakfast at Nainibagh at around 8.30 am. I came to know that our bus had 2 punctures and we have to wait. In the mean time another trek group reached that place.

We started for Purola, our scheduled lunch place. We were travelling on NH 123 on the banks of Yamuna. It was almost a level road. Scenery outside my bus window was enjoyable and the song list(taken from my sister) of my smart phone did complement quite well.

We reached Purola at around 1.30pm and went to the GMVN(Garhwal Mandal Vikas Nigam) guest house. We had to search for the choukidar(Rana ji) who was having a nice sleep in his room and came out with a big smile and a ‘namaste’.In civil services one has to learn to condition oneself to receive ‘namaste’ from elderly people. To our utter dismay, we discovered that the food preparation had not yet started. But Rana ji kept smiling and started his stories of his stint at LBS ( lesson to be learnt- ensure everything before hand- nothing can be taken for granted). The khansama came with tea and started preparing for lunch.

Lunch was too good, rice dal with aaloo ki sabji- welcome change from the monotony of LBS mess. We kept on eating as if world would be over next day. One thing we didn’t compromise through out the trek i.e. food. We spent lot of time, enegy, and money on food.

            By the time we left Purola, we were 4 hrs behind the schedule, we didn’t notice that. We were supposed to reach Sankri by 1 pm and take a jeep from that place to Taluka but we reached at around 5.30 pm. We drove through the Govind wild life sanctuary to reach Sankri. It was a serene experience, the evening wind had become slight cold and one could easily hear the typical hissing sound of jungle. We hired 2 jeeps to go to Taluka which was 11 kms away from Sankri. It was completely dark by the time we boarded the jeeps. The jeeps passed through innumerable number of streams and narrow cuts. I observed complete silence inside the jeep, probably people were happy thinking that 1^st day of trek is about to end without a single metre of trekking!!! After a while we were asked to get down and welcome by few local youths. They told us that there is a land slide on the way and we have to cross the landslide point to reach the guest house.

            I was taken aback but was confident that we would do it. But very soon my confidence evaporated. The land slide was nasty and it was pitch dark. I switched on my torch but soon our GL(group leader) took it from me to help others. I had my rucksack on my back and was finding it really difficult to walk as I was influenced by the gravity due to the heavy rucksack. After a few steps, one deadly curve came which was to be navigated. It was an ‘U’ curve with maximum 6 inches of unconsolidated muddy path which was definitely not firm when I put my leg. I tried to get help from the roots and stems of trees but later I found that most of them are the stems of uprooted trees. This was the 1^st time I felt like something wrong is going to happen. But the local boys did their best to help us out and we reached safely on the other side of the land slide point.

            So, we started our trekking by navigating a fresh land slide point at night. The guest house was ok type. It had 2 rooms. 5 girls got into one room and the rest 18 male OTs to another. This is what u call gender inequality but the male OTs were gentlemen enough to do that gracefully. Cigarettes were lit- probably to celebrate the victory. We had our dinner at nearby dhaba where we got egg bhujia to our surprise. We slept at around 10 pm in our sleeping bags.