A Love Affair with the Mountains - I

Are you a sea person or a mountain person? I was first asked this question sometime in college, and at the time, the answer had been clear to me – I was a staunch sea person. I had been living near the coast all my life, I could tolerate heat much better than people I knew, and I love swimming. Every time an Imtiaz Ali film came out, I would fall in love with the songs in it – with at least one picturised on the hills – and this would make me waver a bit, but never for too long.

So it was with some trepidation that I packed and set out for my first ever Himalayan trek, to the Har ki Doon valley in Uttarakhand. The list of things to carry itself seemed intimidating – winter clothes, and more winter clothes. The last time I had been to a really cold place was more than a decade ago, to Dalhousie. I remember little from it – a few stunning views, and lots of motion sickness. 

The name's Bond, Ruskin Bond

We were to leave from Dehradun by road to Taluka, some 250 kms away from and then begin our trek from there. Since my best friend’s family stays in Dehradun, I got there a few days earlier with the idea of making a trip to Mussoorie and hopefully, meeting Ruskin Bond. Ruskin Bond meets his readers every Saturday in some café or bookstore. You can try meeting him on other days too, but you’ll probably have to catch him at his house. As luck would have it, my three days in Doon included a Saturday.

After waiting for three-quarters of an hour at Dehradun’s bus depot, we finally got a ticket to Mussoorie. I had read Ruskin Bond’s stories as a kid, and I remembered perhaps only a few of them clearly. More than the stories themselves, the tone of the writing had stuck in my mind – insightful, hopeful and yet a little melancholy. Now, it was something else that arrested my mind. The idea that a man could go on living for years and years in the same place and yet never stop writing simply couldn’t be from this century.  

But he was there, still writing, seemingly contented. I made a sketch of him and gave it to him, and he had the grace and wit to sign something irreverent in the book I had bought. ‘A Book of Simple Living – Notes from the hills’ was the title and in it, he signed, “To the girl with glasses, to whom we all make passes”! It was a book full of observations and notes – unpretentious, simply written and poignant. 

After reading a few pages, it seemed to me that achievement was not all that it was made out to be and that contentment wasn’t a bad ideal to aspire to. But I have only recently left my job, so you shouldn’t pay too much attention to what yours truly says.

Taming the ride - Motion Sickness 101

A few more hours in the cool, narrow streets of Mussorie and we were on our way back, hearts a little gladder. I did feel nauseous on the way back to Dehradun, just like I had when coming up, and this worried me a bit. We were to travel for about 8 hrs by road to reach Taluka, from where the trek would begin. I remembered a line a keen sufferer of motion sickness had said about it – “You won’t die from it, but you sure will wish you did”.

Enough was enough – this called for some serious Googling. “How to prevent motion sickness” finally led me to discover that motion sickness was more psychological than anything else. The next day, as I waited for the rest of the trekking group to arrive, I told myself I wouldn’t throw up, and I didn’t.

The ride took nearly nine hours and there was lots of antakshari involved – which included Tamil, Malyalam, Telugu, English and Hindi songs, owing to the mixed group I was traveling with. On the way, we stopped for cool water and profile pictures at the Tons river.

From Sankri, it was a bumpy, but very exciting ride on top of a jeep to our first base Taluka. The change in the weather was palpable as the jeep made its way through the mountainsides. There was plenty of dust along the way, because the road was kaccha, but the air was definitely getting cooler.

And so we reached the village of Taluka, bums sore from the rough ride. Everyone had been counting on charging their phones after getting here. It turned out that there was no electricity in the village. The only light that village had was from emergency solar lamps. Many a futile attempt later, the party gave up trying to find a charging point and resigned to its fate. We would have to document this trip with only a couple of DSLRs and three phones (including mine). For a group of 25, that is frugal.

Night had fallen by the time we all settled down in bare, clean rooms in wooden houses. A keen wind was blowing outside, and we slept off before ten so that we could wake up early next day for the trek.

First trek, first steps

I love walking. Cycles may take me far, running may thrill me and swimming is relaxing, but it’s my two feet that have taken me to inaccessible places, without tiring me – according every opportunity to stop and smell the proverbial roses. We were to trek for 14kms the first day, the last 2kms to the village Osla being a steeper climb than the rest. We were following the Supin river’s course – if the paths diverged, we had to choose the one that was closer to the river on our left.

We started at around 8.30 am, passing through evergreen forests at first, the river chattering merrily at our side. At first, the group was more or less together. We stopped for snacks together, and took pictures at the waterfalls and picturesque spots that came our way. We were trekking inside the Govind Pashu Vihar National Park. It can only be accessed through walking or mules, which explained its unspoiled state. We had been told not to throw any trash along the way, and I was pleased to note that the way was more or less clean of plastic. I later found out that the hiking companies who organized these treks had people clean-up the trail every once in a while.

As we walked, some people speeded up and some slowed down. I had been walking along with a 7 yr old, enthusiastically explaining evolution to him after we spotted some monkeys. We got separated at some point, and I found myself walking alone. Most of the time, I could see people walking far off in the distance. But sometimes, the path would curve out of sight and I would be all alone.

Rains in the mountains are unpredictable and at some point, it started raining as well. Until now, I could admire the scenery along the way, perhaps pause to collect flowers. Now, my glasses were wet and the way kept getting more difficult. In those lonesome, rainy bends through the mountains, I could imagine myself as Frodo or Samwise, out on a quest in the unknown. Maybe my quest was to collect the trash that I found along the way.  Anjali the Trash-bearer.

My heart did leap at the sight of the village of Osla. By this time, I had caught up with some more people, and we asked our way through the village to the place where we were staying. It was another wooden structure, but this time built on a shelf of rock. There were potatoes growing in a terrace carved out of the shelf. Those of us who weren’t afraid of the canine species quickly made friends with a big, shaggy, shepherd dog that had wandered up to us. There were many more friendly dogs we met throughout the trek, some of them wearing spiked metal collars as protection from wild animals.

Everyone hadn’t reached yet. Some had stopped in the houses on the way due to exhaustion. When they did finally get to our camp, there were rousing cheers – for both those who had made it, and those who had helped them.

Finding company

The most difficult part of the trek was over. The next day’s walk took us to our destination Har ki Doon. It was getting much, much colder but we didn’t realize it because our bodies were warmed by the heat of walking. We could see snow here and there, although it was never close enough to touch – which led to some heated debates about whether it was actually snow we were seeing, or some sort of rocks (it was snow).

Continued in Part II

(Picture no. 3 courtesy Krishna Kumar Pisharady)