Day 4: 25 December 2015 - Deoriyatal, Chopta, Tunganath, & Chandrashila
Gaurav had
shaken everyone at ungodly morning hours when he woke up to go to the woods to
attend nature's call. Everyone cursed him for that. He was mumbling something
on coming back but nobody bothered and went back to sleep. I got up to hear
Utkarsh yelling how cold he felt the last night and that snow had also
permeated inside the tent. And we did see that too. We checked that temperature
had dropped to -7 oC the last night. Yet we survived. Everyone
gradually got up to behold the panorama around. We were all stunned. It was a
picture perfect setting. A lake at the center of the landscape, iridescent
tents stationed here and there on the undulating terrain, tall pine trees
encircling this arena and the magnificent snow clad Chaukhamba peaks encircling
in concentric circle to the overall landscape made us feel like kings of the
mountains.
We found a
machaan closeby and climbed atop along with few others to give testimony to the
beauty of the place. By that time, sunshine was already sparkling over the
peaks in the distance. We clicked photos ardently and came down to roam around
just a little more in the woods. This would also ensure finding a lonely place
to attend to nature's call. When I reached to fetch water from the lake, I
could see that the edges of the lake were frozen. The water to be used was
freezing. But we had to make do with it and somehow we all managed it. But my
hands got frozen again and was running frantically everywhere just to find some
any kindle of fire burning anywhere. Finally I could find an almost
extinguished fire and managed to get my hands warm enough.
Paying INR
700 to Raghuvirji for the tent and also INR 150 per person to the forest
officers to use the place, we vacated our tent and took our only bag with us. I
had not even taken photos properly because of my frozen hands. Thus when we
left our tents and went for breakfast, I had to come back again to capture more
photos. And I am glad I came back. You could see the ones I took while coming
back.
We had befriended the guys
at the canteen. They were serving delicious food there. However, that didn’t
mean there was any concession coming our way. Bringing food at such heights is
a pain and then staying, cooking and serving your guests there is more so.
These guys have been handling things very well and made the guests feel
satisfied with their service and innocent attitude. We asked one of them if he
could connect us with a driver that can take us to Chopta from Sari village and
he contacted one and passed on his contact number. We paid him 1000 bucks
for four persons including the last night's dinner & tea and this morning's
breakfast & tea. We thanked the staff paying them some tip for their
generosity and started climbing down.
Getting down, we were the
usual lads with high spirits and fantastic energy levels. We got down quickly,
had some more tea and left in the cab we had hired to Chopta taking our luggage
from the guest house. Chopta is not far from Sari village if you choose the
shorter route. It won't take more than an hour. But the only problem is that it
might be covered with snow for several months. And it turned out to be so. The
cab driver left us some 4 km away from Chopta before his van had started
skidding on snow (I am sure he skidded it intentionally merely to frighten us
but that situation was indeed risky). Now we had to trek all the way up on
frozen trails to reach Chopta carrying all our luggage.
Someone showed us the trail
to follow to reach Chopta and we moved merrily on the tricky ice laden roads.
Everything was covered in ice there. It was getting difficult to grip the
surface. But we had to move on. Helping each other on the way, sometimes
encouraging and sometimes taunting each other, we somehow reached a tiny place
called Baniyakund, still a couple of kilometres from Chopta. But we knew we had
to get rid of our baggage if the slopes were to be outsmarted and reach the
place on time. Then we concurred on our next plan of action.
We actually wanted to scale
both Tunganath and Chandrashila the same day and come back to wherever we were
stationed for the day, but we had realized we were far away from there. We
agreed that it'd better to station at Baniyakund itself leaving our bags there, eat
something before we resume the journey again. We made Baniyakund our base for
the rest of the trek. We rented two cottages and kept our luggage there. We
only had some maggi to save time, rented snow boots and proper hand gloves (for
INR 200 per person) to make the trek smoother and left off towards Chopta.
Luckily for us the sun was shining and it made the chill of the weather
much more manageable. The four of us kept walking looking for shortcuts, which
actually were much smaller but surely consumed more energy. We happily mounted
several slopes to circumvent the meandering driveways. In fact, we surpassed
Chopta that way. We rollicked in the snow, made snowman, whirled down the snow
slopes and captured the every moment in photographs.
We met only a few people on the way till we reached Tunganath where a
few travellers had made their base. We had crossed Tunganath and were on our
way to Chandrashila when it started to appear that we were reaching our limits
and hunger made Dinesh and me incapable to move ahead. Then we realized we had
already walked almost 5 km on the difficult terrain without much food since
morning. Plus it was getting dark and it won't have been possible to reach the
Chandrashila summit and come back to our base at Baniyakund with any trace of
light to help us on the way. With heavy heart we conceded that we should go
back to Tunganath, have some food before we start climbing down to our base.
It was getting even
colder. The water that was served had frozen. Even the water kept to wash our
hands was frozen. We had to ask the hotel owner to heat up some water and give
us something to drink at least which he politely obliged. Filling our tummies,
we left for the rest of the journey back to Baniyakund but we were never short
of making it any fun. We spent some peaceful moments relaxing near the bonfire
pondering over how much to wonder on the vastness of infinity of the skies. The
caretaker at the cottage, Harish, poured his heart out in cooking and offering
us the delicious food. This was yet another instance to cement our appreciation
of the pahari hospitality towards their guests. This is certainly one of the
aspects of the whole journey which has made an indelible imprint on our minds.
The switching off of lights running so far on the generator was an
indication that 9 pm was the time when you should be into your beds in the
hills. We also chose the confines of our blankets before the cold froze us. The
next morning we paid the caretaker for the tents, the food he had prepared, all
the equipment he had provided and for his diligent hospitality. It costed us
nearly INR 2500 for four people but every penny was sure worth spending.
