BASH ON REGARDLESS
A Play in Eight Acts
Dramatis Personae
Lakshmi Krishnamurthy – Trekker 1
Vasant Roy – Trekker 2
N D Badrinath – Trekker 3
P Ramnath – the backbone, the mastermind, the fixer, the negotiator – constantly on the ball – what more can we say?
S Sriram – who provided a dash of foolhardiness, Russian swan-songs and American cashew-nuts.
Rajesh Kochhar – who provided the launching pad for both take-off and landing for this trip.
S Sampath – who sacrificed fun for higher aims in life – Machaan, keep it up.
P N Satheesh – who Lakshmi would dearly have liked to listen to – playing against the backdrop of the Himalayas – but who was otherwise occupied back home in the States.
RST Sai – who came in with a bang near the end.
One nos. person who set this whole thing off by posting a photograph of the Valley of Flowers on the group site – rumoured to be Rakesh Mohan Goyal. Three cheers for Sysman!
M Srinivasan – who intellectualized a wee bit too much about 1:4 gradients and decided chickening out was the better part of valour. Good decision, there were some 1:3 and 1:2 gradients too!
* Bash On Regardless is the motto of the Bison Army Area which is based in Secunderabad. As plans unfolded for the Valley Of Flowers – Hemkund – Badrinath trip, some participants had to drop out due to forces majeure. Three people, possessed by bovine obstinacy, decided to go ahead – and decided to motivate themselves by quoting this motto often and aloud. The following account narrates their saga – far away from the city – which is why they lacked sagacity.
** In this spirit of bashing on and about, it was decided that all resemblances to people and places, living or dead, would be entirely deliberate and intentional.
*** In the same spirit, cheers were there aplenty. Our three took care that the reputation of the IIMB ’82 batch was kept unsullied.
Act I – Delhi – Sep 6, 2008
Chaos in Koch’s house – afternoon.
Lakshmi’s hyperactive imagination, prodded by Sriram’s remorse at missing out on the action due to an unavoidable and last minute trip to Moscow and their day-long proximity as they gallivant all over Delhi for a day inspires plans A and B. Plan A is sane, involving a train journey to Haridwar as organized by Fromm. Plan B is insanity, involving a night drive on horrible roads so that Sriram can drop us at Haridwar and come back to Delhi, putting himself (and us) through great risk and hardship. And thus remain part of the action for a little while longer. Only an American can be so foolhardy. Or there may have been a more subtle strategy. Maybe he wanted to acclimatize himself before his Aeroflot flight to Moscow. Let’s give the man’s intelligence benefit of doubt.
Roy’s reaction to Plan B couldn’t be easily ascertained since he was in Hyderabad airport, doing his bit to add tension by cutting his arrival in Delhi fine. If his flight was on time, he would just about make the train to Haridwar – or else!
B was in NOIDA with Fromm when they first heard the plan – both were too stunned to react, rendered completely speechless, thus ending up by huffing and puffing unintelligibly over the telephone. So plan B survived for some more time. Finally, the statesman-like Koch was strong enough with his disapproval to kill plan B. For a while though, it was touch and go – there was panic all round.
Daru (single malt) and dinner at Koch’s house – 1900.
A debate was launched – whether to pick Roy up at the airport or wait for him in the comfort of Koch’s drawing room, sipping some great single malt. Status quo won. Dinner was had – an excellent spread. The ideal launching pad for the trip, since we needed energy for the arduous treks ahead. Sandwiches were prepared for Roy’s dinner.
One area of concern had been the stubborn refusal for the past several weeks of our tickets to rise beyond Wait List status. Lakshmi used the IVR of the Indian Railways and confirmed RAC for us in coach A8. Sriram needed to know what RAC was. Only Indians understand and accept such quaint coinage. Meanwhile Roy arrived just in time to sit down to dinner with us.
Now, RAC wasn’t good enough for Koch, who promptly offered a bottle of Old Monk rum to be carried as a bribe for the TTE to upgrade us to berths. We felt however, that Indian treasury notes would do the trick and moreover, our packing had already been done, so Koch’s excellent suggestion went abegging. If the TTE had turned out to be a TT then at least Roy and B would have benefited from the OM. As they say, hindsight is 20/20. We used Sriram’s car to get to Old Delhi station.
Old Delhi station – 2230
We took memory lane past the sights and sounds of Daryaganj, Gali Paranthewaali and Jama Masjid and reached the teeming mass of humanity providing a live demonstration of Brownian motion aka Old Delhi railway station. The platform ticket counter closes at 1930 – we were told by an RPF havaldar that this was for security reasons. We believed him – what choice did we have? Sriram was duly provided with the cancelled tickets of those who couldn’t make the trip to flash instead of a platform ticket in case he was challenged on his way out of the gate. God knows if he was – God knows if he did – but Sriram lived to greet us with a cheerful smile on our return – but more of that later. For the present, he was looking bemused at the crowds as they settled down noisily in the AC compartment.
By the way, there was no coach A8 – it turned out to be a figment of Lakshmi’s fertile imagination. Further, only Roy and Sampath were listed RAC on the chart of coach A1 – there was no mention of B or Lakshmi on the charts of any coach. Panic, which had subsided a while back, returned in full force. B decided to go to the second class bogie where all three had confirmed berths – this excellent back-up was due to Fromm’s sagacity – to check in and protect at least those. But that could happen only after the TTE for that compartment came – and that happened only after the train began to move. Question – at which of the 16 stations Fromm had listed en route to Haridwar could B get back to bogie A1, where Lakshmi and Roy were enjoying AC comfort? Well, that was managed and we were all finally assembled in A1 – B to travel as Sampath, while Lakshmi would use the force of her personality on the TTE. More of the source of this force later.
One attendant in the compartment recognized Roy – asked “uncle” why he was in RAC – for some strange reason Roy bristled at being called uncle. Maybe it was because the attendant was old enough to be an uncle himself. But let us pass quickly over this. Because action was beginning to happen on the berth allotments – one upper berth was allotted – the sole member of the unfair sex in our gang got it. Two RAC seats below became one berth, shared by Roy and B who drank Smirnoff poured into a three-quarters-full bottle of Rail Neer – the Indian railways’ brand of water – and managed to chat the first half of the night away. Of the second half – don’t ask.
The guy in the opposite berth got up in the wee hours of the morning and began blabbering about a guy called Sampath who’s in a telecom company in Hyderabad. He seemed pained that our Sampath did not match his and quietly subsided into a hurt snoring.
Act II – Haridwar-Joshimath-Govindghat – Sep 7, 2008
The drive from Haridwar to Joshimath – 0830 to 1730
At Haridwar we were met by Rajkeer Rana (whom Roy promptly began calling Baldev), a guide employed by Peak Adventures – the company that we had bought the package tour from; and Narender the Innova driver (whom Roy promptly began calling Dharmender). To be fair to Roy, there was actually a Dharmender involved in this trip – one Dharmender Negi of Peak Adventures, based in Delhi, though we never got to meet him in person! As for how Baldev entered the equation, interested parties will please apply under RTI.
At Haridwar we discovered that there was no hotel room organized for us to freshen up! We couldn’t handle an eight hour drive after such a ragged night in a railway compartment. We promptly put Fromm into action. Despite it being early on a Sunday morning, he organized for the thing to be put right. We freshened up with a bath that was destined to last us for the next four days.
On the drive from Haridwar, Koch’s sandwiches were a big hit – Lakshmi was convinced that the chicken sandwiches were vegetarian – perhaps at least the chickens were.
Passing Terai Hydel Development Corporation in Rishikesh, Roy remembered that RST Sai was its Chairman. But how was he to be contacted? Once again, Fromm was pressed into action – as usual, he delivered – we got Sai’s mobile number, though by then we were already well clear of Rishikesh. Fromm played a stellar supporting role in this saga.
The drive from Haridwar to Joshimath has five sangams – Devaprayag, Rudraprayag, Karnaprayag, Nandprayag and Vishnuprayag – the pristine beauty of the mountains slowly unfolded before us – this is what we had come all this way for and our mood lifted and soon it was really upbeat. With plenty of scenic beauty to be captured on camera, Lakshmi was promptly designated model for all photo-ops that came up
While driving through these mountains, there are constant reminders for exercising caution from the authorities painted on the stonework buttresses that are meant to keep the land from sliding on to the road. Here are some examples:
In the land of the lama
Don’t be a gama.
Better to be late
Than be Mr Late
Don’t nag – let him drive
Bach ke chalana,
Main pahad ki nagin hoon!
The rugged mountain countryside reminded us of the scenery in MacKenna’s Gold – we felt we must come up with a suitable answer to this block-buster – thus was born that classic series of movies that will rock audiences for years to come – Mandakini ka Sona – it will feature Mandakini, who is a sassy village belle most often seen passing time doing item numbers on craggy peaks and falling in love with a series of Indiana Jones-like adventurers planning to ensnare this innocent lass and lay their scheming hands on the legendary gold of the hill people – but hey – wait for the movies to get released!
Meanwhile, Lakshmi regaled us with stories about how she runs her school with an iron hand and has a whole district – Barabanki near Lucknow – under her thumb. Remember the source of the force in her personality referred to earlier? It hereby stands clarified. She was forthwith christened the Bahurani of Barabanki and promised a prominent role in Mandakini ka Sona.
Arriving at Joshimath Dham – 1730
At Joshimath Dham, there was a reception committee of waiters dressed in olive green uniforms as soldiers. They put red tikka and rice on our foreheads and man, we felt on top of the world! If this was a camp it was meant only for Generals and above.
And the Swiss tents – they were neither Swiss nor tents! B was mightily disappointed that they didn’t have Swiss chocolates by the bedside. And each tent was accompanied by a fully equipped bath-room including WC fitted with flush and hot and cold running water. Lakshmi decided that her tent was a spaceship with port-holes and the works. This was not strictly speaking what nit-picking purists would call roughing it out but who cared anyway – dusk was gently falling and the snow was glimmering shyly on the high peaks – and we were enraptured.
We washed up and took a look around the dham. Little pathways climbed up and down around the tents and birds and things were settling down for the night. The camp dog wagged his tail vigorously – he was obviously too well-fed by the tourists to be of any use as a guard-dog. There was a little mandir placed like a traffic island so you couldn’t miss it. Improbable though it may sound, the three hardened souls DID miss it and the camp pujari’s hopeful glances turned into disapproving ones when he realized we were not interested in his part of the programme.
On to Joshimath town itself. We went up to Adishankaracharya’s ashram and his disciple’s cave. It’s a real wonder how the Shankaracharya, all those many centuries ago, trooped by foot to the four corners of what was then a collection of hundreds of foreign countries to set up his maths. Though we are linguistically and culturally so diverse, and though we may hail from places thousands of miles apart, there is a definite Indian-ness about us that we can recognize. And conversely, an un-Indian-ness about people not from India. Never mind if this makes sense, suffice it to say that the three newly arrived novices were mightily awestruck by the Shankaracharya’s vision.
Back to the temporal world. As flag-bearers of the ’82 batch, we headed out to check the night life in Joshimath. This was verified to be non-existent. The only activity on our part was to pick up three MP3 CD’s of golden oldies to substitute for Narender’s god-awful taste in music. So we got back to our Swiss tents and Russian drinks. There was a ‘common-room’ tent with a TV set hooked on to Tata Sky and more importantly a hearth in the centre where a bon-fire could be built. But we were confined to drinking Smirnoff in our barracks by the soldier-waiters since there was a pious party occupying the common room tent. Presumably an appropriately pious programme was being watched.
The tents next to ours were occupied by middle-aged God-fearing Bengalis from the proletariat who scurried in and out before we had a chance of smiling at them or in any way showing unwarranted camaraderie. So a quiet evening passed and when we went into the buffet we had the whole dining tent to ourselves.
Then came the Hot Water Bottles. Now we all knew of their existence but this was the first time in our lives that we were actually handed them for us to use. Roy was completely distrustful of them – he had nightmarish visions of what would happen if the Bihar floods were played out in his bed in the middle of the night. With more intellectual than actual conviction, B said he would use his and played footsie with it all night. The things are highly recommended on Cold Mountain nights. (Vipin – we shall accept cheques as payment for plugging your product.)
The drive to Govindghat – 0630-0730
We got up early the next morning (as indeed we did every morning to Lakshmi’s constant dismay) and made the first gate opening out of Joshimath at 0630. This point must be noted by all potential visitors. Traffic is regulated by the cops by letting batches of vehicles at intervals of one hour at each end of this stretch of highway – namely Joshimath and Badrinath. The next opening would have been at 0900 and that would have meant the waste of a great morning. As we realized during the long trek from Govindghat to the base camp at Ghangaria, starting early was an extremely wise move else we may have landed up in the late afternoon or maybe even after dusk began to fall. As it was, we made it for a late lunch. But more of that later.
The salesmen at the gate were selling plastic rudraksha beads, cold pop corn, brightly-coloured blankets and dusty dates to captive audiences in the waiting vehicles. Fortunately the gates opened on time and we were off. Landslides and overhangs mark the way as the narrow road snakes around the hillsides. These slopes are quite steep and they dive deep down from the shoulder-less road into dark bottoms that we could see only by craning our necks. But our intrepid Narender (aka Dharmender according to Roy) sent the Innova tearing and sliding around the pebble-strewn bends like Schumacher’s Ferrari, while chatting up various people on his cell phone to alleviate his boredom. Like, we weren’t bored, and more than once told him to pull over to finish his call, but the man ignored us disdainfully. What old women we must have seemed like to him.
The mountains are spectacular, truly spectacular. Their slopes are spoilt only by hydel projects being constructed by NTPC and the Jaypee group. These are pretty big ones with close to 1,000 mega-watts of generating capacity. Roy and B analysed the power demand-supply equation for Uttarakhand in detail, while Lakshmi remained non-committal as to her opinions on the situation.
Pehla pehla pyaar! We catch our first sight of snow in the bright daylight as it lay glistening on a distant mountain slope above the snow line. It was like maybe two kilometers away as the crows in these parts would have flown if there had been any at this altitude, but to us plainsmen it was just beautiful. Roy wondered whether the slivers of white were actually clouds – he was promptly pulled up by Lakshmi and B for being unromantic. Well, those “clouds” stayed there for the next few days, so our point was proved.
Act III – Trek 1 – Govindghat-Ghangaria – Sep 8, 2008
On the 14 km trek
At Govindghat (altitude 2500 metres) we made arrangements with Narender to meet us again at the same spot three days hence – he said that if we moved our butts early enough on that day, we could make it back by 1030. So that having been decided, we packed off our rucksacks on a mule that would wait for us up in Ghangaria (altitude 3000 metres) at Hotel Kuber, where we were to have our base camp. Here’s a tip to all – DON’T book into Hotel Kuber, but more of that later. We set off on our first serious trek of the trip – and boy, did it become serious at the end! Meanwhile, there was a scientific discussion on 1 in 4 gradients and whether we were doing one or not. And whether there were steeper ones in store for us.
We were walking up the valley and Lakshmi kept wanting to dive into the rapids even though it was only B who knew a bit of swimming. This wish to be close to the rushing waters was granted nearly half-way up the trek. We stopped over at a defunct and rusted-over cable car dangling from steel cables across the gurgling brook. There were plenty of wide rocks by the stream to park ourselves on and so we had the first serious, properly composed photo-op session. We all struck poses – Roy demonstrated the power of yoga by meditating, Lakshmi waved romantically at the mountain-tops and B finally figured 
out how to work the self-timer in the camera so that all three of us could come into one snap.
B also figured out how to work the extreme close-up in the camera – there were some inviting, bright red berries on the bushes – Lakshmi was in half a mind to try them out but Roy wouldn’t get conned. We only photographed them and refrained from eating any. On the way down to the stream and back to the paved trail, we allowed several little brambles to brush our wrists, cheeks and foreheads, which stung for a long, long time later. Many trekkers (the vast majority – maybe ninety five percent – of whom are surds making the pilgrimage to Hemkund Sahib) asked us why we went down there. Our responses drew puzzled stares in return, which we at that time thought were because the answers contained nothing of any religious significance. A few minutes later we realize that the puzzlement was because there was an easier way to the stream than the one we took. And better places a little upstream for photo ops. And – a few minutes on, a restaurant serving hot aloo paranthas and – balle balle -- Papsi at tables on an island in the stream. Need any more reasons to make us feel foolish? But hey, we got some glorious shots and at the time we felt we had experienced something few others had. If anybody wants to dispute this, you’ll have to talk to the Bahurani of Barabanki. The said Bahurani mentioned that these were great S&S moments – which she defined as Stop & Stare moments. The ad guy in B wasn’t at all satisfied with such a mundane expression so she worked at it and worked at it until she came up with a better one – Snatch & Savour, and Roy and B could finally be rid of the heavy noise of her mental gears grinding and grunting under the effort. But hey, Snatch and Savour every now and then is what you must do when trekking these beautiful slopes.
S&S moments also give you time to catch your breath as the altitude begins to snatch the oxygen away from your nostrils. The climb was becoming seriously steep, every step a Herculean task of focus on objectives. Roy kept prancing along jabbering about the benefits of practicing yoga every morning while Lakshmi and B laboured weakly along, pulling in each breath and stopping to stare blankly into the middle distance every ten meters. The last three kilometers of the trek to Ghangaria are absolute KILLERS. Then there was this sweet sardarni who told us that after the next kilometer and a half the world would flatten. We asked her if she had done it before. No, she said, but her family had and they had thus informed her authoritatively. This, we found, was the first taste we were to have of the community feeling of Sikhs that came shining through when every now and then one of them would pop up and say “Bas ho gaya ji, ho gaya. Aap paunch gaye si. Thodi hi der aur. Bas do hi mod bach gaye si.” Well, that’s alright, we thought, provided those “do hi mod” stayed at that number! For us out-of-shape hikers who had just struggled breathlessly along eleven kilometers only to find three more that were steeper than ever, this was VERY LITTLE CONSOLATION! The glory of the Himalayas were quite far from our minds now and we were beginning to wonder at the wisdom – or lack of it -- of undertaking this trip.
Ghangaria finally at 1330 – it took us a good five hours of plodding with a half-hour break for romancing nature in between, and our muleteer rammed into us full tilt on the run returning to Govindghat! We collared him and he grumbled that we seemed to have damn well taken our own bloody time, hadn’t we? Lakshmi drew herself up to her full Barabanki height and pointed out that he damn well hadn’t told us we were operating under any deadline. At that he judiciously swallowed any further words and led us to Hotel Kuber which, to add insult to our complete and abject state of exhaustion, had to be the last one down the road. In addition, it was about as distressing, depressing, cold, damp and bedbug-friendly as you can imagine.
But we were ravenous and ate tandoori paranthas, one each filled with aloo, mooli, paneer and pyaaz. Now we were stuffed. We didn’t have place for dessert, though we had seen several shops selling hot gulab jamuns. We had checked out Hotel Kuber and checked out double-quick, walked back down the track for about a kilometer to an outlying suburb of the city known as Kanjilla. In the process we missed out on some appetizing smells coming from the langar of the gurudwara bang opposite Hotel Kuber – a fact duly and loudly advertised by that establishment. The glam address seems to be why this hotel is known. There are other, better ones down the main street (not that there is any other street, anyway). Later pilgrims and others like us will be advised to check out the Uttaranchal Vikas Nigam’s guest house – but bookings must be made several years in advance, for obvious reasons. The Sarovar group has tents in Kanjilla which compete in grandeur with those in Joshimath. Well, the competition stands tied except that Kanjilla has no known sources of electricity, no telephones within easy walking distance, no cars or bikes, no TV (except for Tata Sky and Dish TV), no cell-phone signals (excepting for the army holiday-home next to the helipad that our tent overlooked) and no land lines that can be depended upon (and even those were activated only between 4 and 6 in the evening). Camp Kanjilla was run by a young manager called Manoj (whom Roy promptly began calling Mukesh for reasons best known to him). Young Manoj looked suitably subservient except when it came to negotiating rates. Though the rates were a bit steeper than the mountains, we decided that Hotel Kuber was definitely not happening and checked in. We didn’t regret this decision.
We came across one Hon. Sunil Kumar of Moradabad, a budding young self-trained masseur all of fifteen years old with a sociable disposition and a bold grin, who bases himself at Hotel Kuber when Ghangaria is in season, which is May to October. His massage was sharp and forceful and all the while he was watching our expressions to see what impact he was having. The massage was forceful enough to have us yelping helplessly most of the time. But all three of us felt a lot better afterwards. At Rs 50 a go for leg massage, it’s worth it after a long trek. He also does neck and head, full-body – generally the works.
While going back and forth between Ghangaria and Kanjilla during the next couple of days, whenever we came across some soul in the extreme throes of physical exhaustion after the long grind up from Govindghat, we encouraged them with the words “Bas ho gaya ji, ho gaya. Aap paunch gaye.” One must do one’s social duty in these mountains, especially if it gives us sadistic pleasure when the poor pilgrims stare at us with woebegone expressions. Tit for tat.
Communicating with Arvind.
Now Kanjilla had no phones in sight and Ghangaria was a tough kilometer back up the valley. But Lakshmi, the Bahurani of Barabanki had to communicate with the love of her life. And like NOW. So B was given the task of supervising Manoj who had been given the task of passing on a slip of paper containing a message from Lakshmi for Arvind to any obliging body going down the road to Govindghat (remember, 14 kms down the valley) so that the said body could duly ring up Arvind and assure him that the Bahurani was fine. Meanwhile, Roy and Lakshmi went to Ghangaria (B had the easy job, eh?) to get the luggage on to a mule and duly dispatched to Camp Kanjilla. And hunt for a PCO because by then the land line activation time in the bustling metropolis of Ghangaria was on.
One couldn’t get through to Arvind on the phone, but Lakshmi passed on more slips of paper containing the all-important message to (a) a retired army officer and (b) a middle-aged lady, returning to Govindghat from their pilgrimage to Hemkund Sahib on their respective mules. Lakshmi’s criterion for choosing her messengers was the kindliness and piety of the looks on their faces – either of which qualities would ensure the slips of paper didn’t wind up fluttering down the valley. Upon their return to the base camp at Kanjilla, Lakshmi remained despondent that she hadn’t gotten across to Arvind. So we went out for a walk after chai to lighten her mood. Near the helipad was the Army holiday home – and inspiration struck. Surely any Army outfit would have radio communication? So we barged in and sure enough a strapping, kindly surd called Sukhvinder (whom Roy promptly began calling Jasvinder) willingly got the whole army network activated. While we waited he got through to Joshimath, who got through to Arvind and duly reported back that the message had been conveyed. We thanked Sukhvnider aka Jasvinder profusely until all his teeth gleamed with pleasure in the gathering dusk.
Dinner at the camp.
There were four other tents occupied the first night that we were at Kanjilla. Dinner gets served early in the mountains – we suspect that it’s not only because it’s good for health to eat early but more because the camp employees want to wind up fast and hit the pulsating night-life of the city of Ghangaria. So the rest of the guests assembled in the dining tent on time but Roy and B were occupied in exploring the differences between Smirnoff and Magic Moments (Green Apple flavour). The conclusion is that both are equally commendable. Manoj aka Mukesh came by after a while and said everybody was waiting! So Lakshmi went ahead to represent us while we quickly poured out another drink. That last one was enough to help us ignore the hostile stares of the company as we quickly served ourselves and settled down to make friendly conversation. We were told that each dish in the buffet was opened ceremoniously and we had kind of missed out being there. The dessert was – you guessed it – hot gulab jamuns.
We peered around in the lantern-light as each guest held forth on absolutely fascinating the treks he or she had been on. They seemed to take pleasure in the fact that the season for the Valley of Flowers was over – July is the best month – and that we would see only the yellow flowers and the white flowers according to a lanky young pip-squeak with a beaky nose. He had of course done his share of great treks – around the table each guy’s trek was better than the other’s. Fishermen will easily vibe with the mood at the table that night.
The view from Camp Kanjilla
The most fabulous part about the camp in Kanjilla is the view. It has high mountains reaching far up into a sky so deep a blue that it captivates one endlessly. Banks of clouds roll up and down the slopes, and earlier, as we drank our first cups of chai at the camp, the sun had taken a long, long time to die away in the dusk. Then the bottom of the valley gets dark and shadowy, though the tops of the high peaks around us are ablaze in gold and the trail from Govindghat shoots down the valley in a straight line for about a quarter kilometer before disappearing into the woods. As the dusk deepens, the stars come out in thousands and then, well into the night, one can see the white paved trail bisecting the valley and several ranges of hills in the distance beyond in different shades of blue-black. The breeze is cold, the hills are silent and every once in a while comes a long, sustained war-cry from the darkness “Jo bole-ey-ey so niha-aa-al!” followed by the chorus “Sat sri akaal!” Another bunch of pilgrims has done the killer climb and has “bas do mod” to go before they reach Ghangaria.
One should make it a daily habit of staying out for a few minutes shivering in the bright night while hot water bottles placed strategically under the blankets are getting one’s bed warm in the right places. Roy finally took the bottle to bed. We convinced the Bahurani of Barabanki to get up early enough to leave for the Valley of Flowers by 0700. Two lanterns were provided to each tent, gentle shadows played around as we settled ourselves down for the night. Before getting into bed, we placed them outside to be collected, as Manoj had requested. We were not too surprised to find them there uncollected the next morning – the city’s night life had drawn off the meager staff of three youngsters long before we had crashed out.
Act IV – Trek 2 – Valley of Flowers – Sep 9, 2008
Colonel and Colonel
While having an after-breakfast coffee, Roy met up with two remarkable gentlemen who dropped in to wait for the slight drizzle to subside. They were the retired colonels Bhatia (aged 74) and Khanna (aged 65) from NOIDA. They had left home and their wives on August 22nd and planned on reaching back on October 1st – that made five weeks of continuous trekking through some of the toughest countryside in the world! They do this every year. Both are diabetics – but that doesn’t deter them. It was inspiring, to say the least. They were going on to the Valley of Flowers and also to Hemkund Sahib the next day – so their plans were going to coincide with ours.
Talking of NOIDA – Lakshmi mentioned that her husband’s uncle was also a retired colonel who had settled down there. They immediately asked for his name and sure enough, he turned out to be the same old person with whom they did the daily trip to the local Mother Dairy booth! Roy and B were left wondering how she constantly pulled these things off. And of course, after that Lakshmi was the apple of the old colonels’ eyes.
By and by we set out (the Colonels had left maybe half an hour before us) and hit the trail. Once you leave the bustling sounds and strong mule-droppings smells of the city of Ghangaria behind, the walk is fabulous, the scenery great, the mountain air clear and bracing. It’s a 5 km climb from the check-post to the actual Valley. On the way we passed a tree with a big hollow that was used in winters by a hibernating bear. Or so the guide of a gang near us said. We believed him and promptly set up photo ops.
One group of four porters who were hefting a lady in a palanquin dropped something over the edge. Col Bhatia, who happened to be close by asked what it was, but quickly followed it up with a laconic “Gone is gone.” Then he told us of a sad incident they had witnessed in Arunachal, when a local tribeswoman’s baby dropped from her hands from a cable car high above a river. She walked away without a backward glance when she reached the other side – gone was gone.
Into the Valley itself.
The Valley is beautiful. One initial scene captured on camera is of the valley opening out some three curling kilometers before us, a spreading tree in the foreground, rolling meadows on either side of the river Pushpavati (it’s in the Valley of Flowers, see?) that flows in twisting rushes down the middle, banks of flowering plants rising up the slopes beyond the meadows, the slopes reaching up into the sky as we crane our necks and finally, beyond these high reaches, absolutely majestic, towering and mighty mountains with snow lying in shining white splendour above the snow-line. One big guy at the end shouldered a huge glacier that lay sparkling in the morning sunshine.
We crossed several gurgling brooks that were rushing down to meet the Pushpavati. Now, the brochure from Peak Adventures had told us that we could find brown beer, white beer and snow leopards in the Valley. We were on the hopeful look-out for these. Talk of brown and white beer made us thirsty, and that of snow leopards ignited images of big cats crouched at the rocky banks of the stream, lapping the cold clear water. With the inexorable progress of civilization all types of beer have vanished from the Valley and no leopards dare crouch, majestically or otherwise, at the streams anymore. So we improvised – and if you can accept Roy and B as stand-ins for snow leopards, check out some great pics.
As usual the Bahurani of Barabanki wanted to dive into the water. So we broke off once again from the beaten track and plunged into some shoulder high grass. We kept out of thorns’ way this time and the snakes kept themselves out of ours and we reached the rocks near the stream without much ado except for Roy getting his feet soaking wet. For about an hour we lazed around in the sunshine, Roy caught up with some Pranayama, Lakshmi with some sleep and B with some Papsi. We felt that we had seen enough of “Harpreet Singh Manochahal Was Here” and “Soni and Sonia ki Amar Kahani” and suchlike painted on the rocks. So we clicked ourselves festooned with packages that would declare that “Papsi was here” and “Toblerone was here” and “Parle-G was here” and well, we’ll let you know how much we collect from the sponsors.
Finally we headed back, on the way paying our respects to Joan Margaret Legge (1885-1939) whose brother was rumoured to have brought the Valley to the world’s notice and whose grave nestles in a picturesque little setting where she can enjoy the view for eternity. The Valley is now a UN Heritage Site, as a result of which (so the locals say) cattle and sheep are no longer allowed to graze in the Valley, as a result of which the grass and weeds grow tall, as a result of which the flowering bushes get crowded out, as a result of which the season, which used to extend until September, gets cut short. Well, who’s to say? We duly believed these guys too.
On the way back we came across Maniram Aggarwal (name improvised because we didn’t get properly introduced) who was way ahead of his family because they had given up and plonked themselves down to a tired picnic, while Mr Agarwal’s enthusiasm had still some steam left. We told him the valley ahead was a great sight and he said he would record it on his videocam to show his wife what she had missed. We pointed out Ms Legge’s grave which could be seen in the distance but he waved it away since he couldn’t see the merit of paying respects to someone from outside his circle of acquaintances. We waved him on with the words “Bas ho gaya ji, ho gaya. Aap paunch gaye.”
We took our time ambling back to Ghangaria and had a late lunch at Hotel Kuber. Roy and B, who were getting quite riled by the in-your-face vegetarianism of the place and discovered to their great joy that this hotel served eggs, had egg-bhurji with tawa-rotis. By the time we finished, the land lines were back in action and all three placed calls to our respective headquarters. Ironically enough, it was Lakshmi who couldn’t get through. So both Roy and B passed on messages – Roy to his mom in Hyderabad and B to his wife in Mumbai – to call Arvind (who was then in Shajahanpur) and assure him that the Bahurani was in as fine fettle as on the previous day. One wondered if by now Arvind would be smelling a rat. If so many different people – the Army, various pilgrims, Roy’s mom, B’s wife, in fact everybody but Lakshmi herself – were intent on insisting that Lakshmi was okay, would he begin to think that actually something was wrong and some great cover-up operation was in full swing? When we met him back in Delhi, he didn’t elaborate on his thoughts at receiving so many messages from across the country.
On our way back to the tents in Kanjilla, we suddenly heard a bellow from up the hill-side “Oy madam, aaj ka phone hua ki nahin? Oy madam, oy!” Looking up we saw Sukhvinder aka Jasvinder waving his hands excitedly and grinning away with his great big teeth. He told us that our colonels were back in their room. So in the evening we checked into the army holiday home to see how they were doing. They were neatly tucked up in razais after having kept their feet in tubs of hot water with a dash of salt added. They said that if we did this we would be fully fit and not even debate whether or not to take mules up to Hemkund Sahib the next day – as for themselves, they were quite sure that they would do the climb on foot. Talk of old soldiers – these old gentlemen weren’t about to fade away – they were full of get up and go, quite literally.
Act V – Trek 3 – Hemkund Sahib – Sep 10, 2008
Hemkund Sahib is not for the faint-hearted.
The climb starts at 3000 meters (Ghangaria) and goes up in a steep 70° slope to about 4500 meters. That’s about 10,000 feet to nearly 14,500 feet. This climb is done via a continuous zig-zag 6-km long trail without a single flat stretch for pilgrims to give their aching thighs, hips, backs and other painstakingly discovered muscles a break. All this mathematics means that in an atmosphere of fast-depleting oxygen, the strain of climbing becomes more and more difficult and all one’s mental strength is required to take your left foot and put it in front of the right and then to take your right foot and …. well, you get the idea.
We felt inspired by the long line of literally hundreds of pilgrims – young and old, fat and thin, men and women – who were doing the climb on foot. The faint-hearted can do it on mule-back. We came across a lady of maybe 30 years of age who was doing it barefoot. We could see that her dainty pink feet had never been outdoors without being shod. There were many who were climbing up in hawai chappals! The muleteers were the most amazing – they ran up and down and around the mules, kicking and cursing them forward. And of course, we came across our colonels, who had started off at four am, broad grins lighting up their faces.
The view as usual was spectacular. The slopes were sheer. The valley deep down below had a patch of blue roofs – Ghangaria. And still we had to crane our necks up to look at the rugged mountain-tops around us. It struck us mightily that it’s only the Hindu religion and its off-shoots that have pilgrimage spots in the most inaccessible and inhospitable of terrains. Think of the Vatican in bustling Rome and busy Mecca and Medina and then try and think of the equivalents of Kailash-Mansarovar and Vaishno Devi and Hemkund and Tirumala and Sabarimala and you get the idea. Must be something to do with tropical peoples – they need to feel they’ve earned their salvation in a very obvious manner. But why only Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism? Makes one ponder, that.
The Sarovar, the Grudwara, India’s only Lakshmana temple and the Brahma Kamal.
The Hemkund Sahib gurudwara is the site where Guru Govind Singh is said to have meditated in a pervious incarnation to attain Samadhi. The gurudwara has a unique polyhedral structure and the atmosphere inside is subdued and soothing. There are blankets aplenty, neatly folded and kept around the floor for pilgrims to keep the cold off while they sit and meditate. The sarovar behind it is a placid little lake surrounded by seven peaks. The setting was so completely peaceful, the morning sunlight was gentle but bright and the clear mountain air re-energized us. The water was ice-cold but we still saw dozens of pilgrims bathing happily in it. The langar serves hot khichadi and chai – they tasted divine. The whole scene was sublime.
In a little hut by the side of the gurudwara stands what is reputed to be India’s only temple to Lakshmana. He is said to have done penance at this spot. We climbed a little way up the slopes and got some fabulous photo-ops – particularly of the mountain Neelkanth reaching way up into the sky, its snow-covered cone glittering in the sunshine. Neelkanth stands guard over Badrinath, which is a seven-day trek from Ghangaria if one wants to go across the mountains.
Up another slope around Hemkund and we took some close-ups of Uttarakhand’s official state flower – the Brahma Kamal. It has large white or off-white petals that look somewhat like leaves and grows in groups of three or four on small plants of about a couple of feet in height. Caught up in the beauty of the scene, the Bahurani of Barabanki noticed too late that she had planted her back-side on some soggy soil and carried the wet feeling for quite a long time on the way down returning to Ghangaria.
Knees and toes knocking on heaven’s door
It took an hour and a half of steady banging of feet on unevenly laid stones on that steep path to come down off the mountain. We came down pretty fast – barely one or two groups overtook us. In the process we found that our knees were complaining loudly and sharply. Each time we planted our feet (remember – with soles pointing steeply down the gradient) our toes banged up against the rim of our sneakers and soon enough they felt as if they were also knocking on heaven’s door. Tip: ensure that you cut your toe-nails before going on treks in the Himalayas.
Lakshmi’s social circle
We hit Hotel Kuber for a late lunch. You guessed it – egg-bhurji with tawa-rotis, with Lakshmi maintaining her dignified vegetarianism. Later we hobbled painfully down the main street (there was no other, remember) and found a shop that sold DVD’s with an audio-visual presentation of the Valley of Flowers so that we could see what we had missed. While Lakshmi was paying the guy off, who should land up but a class-mate of hers from school in Delhi. They were meeting after thirty years. Thirty years! And they casually bump into each other up in the Himalayas! With him doing solo – he was accompanied only by a guide he had hired in Delhi. What chances would you give normal mortals to have this kind of encounter? By now Roy and B were fast getting used to the width and depth of the Bahurani’s social circle. And her long-lost friend turned out to be a sociable guy so we invited him to join us for a drink at our tent.
We were still at it when around 7.30 Manoj aka Mukesh came up to say that some army officers were asking to meet Mr Vasant Roy. You could have knocked us down with a feather – here were the two colonels, finishing an arduous hike of 12 kms up and down one of the steepest mountain trails in the country – they had been on their feet for nearly sixteen hours – they were yet to reach their own room – the day would have sapped men who were twenty years younger – and they had enough energy and spirit to drop by for a social call! And the stories they regaled us with! Magic Moments indeed!
That night it was just the three of us for dinner. We had – guess what – paranthas and dessert was guess what – hot gulab jamuns! The mountains never cease to surprise. We got our ration of hot water bottles and settled the bill. Manoj aka Mukesh was told by Roy to “solpa adjust maadi” the bill since his masters were far away from Kanjilla, but he was either too naïve or too straight or too unbending to catch the hints that were dropping like grenades to help us cut down our outlay. So we paid up – in full. It was princely – Rs 4,500 per night, up there, back of beyond – well, we were grateful for the five-star feeling.
Night time outside the tent once more – faint lantern-lights went off one by one and the valley descended slowly into its silent darkness. The moon had grown bigger since the night before and the road down to Govindghat stretched out like a white ribbon. The giant H marking the helipad slowly faded away. Far above, the jagged outlines of the tops of the ridges could be made out – a very faintly darker shade of black than the sky above them. Gradually nothing could be seen in the valley. Then there was a small yellow flash at the bottom – it was swinging to and fro at the point where the killer climb flattened out. A proud voice rang out in triumph across the night “Jo bole so niha-aa-aal!” followed by the chorus “Sat sri akaal!” Another batch of pilgrims had arrived.
Act VI – Trek 4 – Kanjilla-Govindghat and Badrinath-Mana – Sep 11, 2008
The long way down
We had asked for a mule to carry our packs down to Govindghat. While waiting for it to appear, a helicopter came up the valley and deposited a family of pilgrims – the flight takes all of 7 minutes. It took off immediately, went up the valley a bit and then came hurtling down for the return to Govindghat. The man from the family clambered up to the tent and asked B brusquely in American-accented Hindi “Yahan ka mausam kaisa hai?” B gave the man a well-considered discourse on the pressure conditions and their impact on local precipitation. The guy folded his American accent between his legs and shoved off. Manoj aka Mukesh landed up and asked the man if he had a reservation. We could see that he was having difficulty deciphering the accent – at long last he got the name – it was Manu Patel – and he made the arrangements. Last we heard, Patel was asking directions to go to “the Hemkund”. So much for phony Indian Americans.
Meanwhile we got tired of waiting for a mule and engaged a porter instead. These guys might as well be mules – they carry as many bags up hill and down dale in deep baskets slung from their foreheads. Often they’ll be seen carrying people – usually old ladies – in these baskets. Tough guys, these, living a tough life.
This time the 14 km trek back to Govindghat was easier – must have been something to do with the downward slope. We paused here and there to enjoy the scenery – we even caught the sun on camera as it flashed over a peak. The porter carrying our rucksacks looked quite convincingly stoned, but kept pace – guess he needed something to alter his state of consciousness during the long trudge. We stopped for him at an eating joint that advertised cryptically on one pillar in Hindi – Cold Milk, Nariyal, Thanda Cold Drinks, UK. Now that last one remains a mystery till date.
We got to a PCO about 2 km shy of Govindghat and finally, finally, Lakshmi spoke to Arvind in person. Hallelujah! A few moments later we saw the town across the valley and heard the beep-beep of a jeep for the first time in four days. We were out of the place of no traffic, no mobile signals, iffy land lines, scant electricity and occasional running water. We felt really sad to be back in civilization.
At 1100 hours we found Narender aka Dharmender waiting at the designated spot. We piled into the Innova for the drive to Badrinath and Narender was full of questions on our plans for the next two days. We wanted to check out Auli, a ski resort 16 kms from Joshimath and then hit Badrinath in the evening but friend Narender was adamant that it would set us back too far in terms of time. He even didn’t want to stop for Coke that B wanted to drink badly as an antidote for all the Papsi he had to do with up in Ghangaria.. Talk of rush and bustle after four days of chilled out life!
Mana – iska jawaab nahin
Mana is the last village of India, 3 kms further down the road from Badrinath. The Chinese border is another 20 kms hike through the mountains. By now readers would appreciate what 20 kms in those mountains mean, but the locals seem to trade regularly across it.
By the way, the full name of Mana is Manibhadrapuri.
Mana had plenty of sights to see and was teeming with pilgrims – Hindus this time. That is because about half a kilometer from the village is the confluence of the rivers Saraswati and Gangotri. There’s a tiny Saraswati temple tucked into the rocks under the shadow of Bhim Pul. This is where Bhima is said to have placed a massive boulder (it is kind of cuboid and measures nearly 3 meters a side) across the stream for the other Pandavas to cross. A little rainbow plays constantly at the confluence – it is a very pretty spot. In a little cave to one side there was a bunch of ‘ash-babas’ – so named because they smear ash all over their bodies. We could see that they could as well as have been named ‘hash-babas’.
Okay, one more sharp climb from this spot – man, how many sharp climbs did we do? – and one reached the Vyas ka Gufaa – a cave that is 5111 years old and is the place where Vyas sat down to pen the Mahabharata. Inside is a statue to mark homage to the sage and we sat down to meditate for a few minutes. The feeling was sublime.
Just outside this complex is “India’s last chai shop” with a board nearby proclaiming the full name of Mana. Apart from chai, the board advertises coffee, Maggi, chai flavoured with tulsi from the forest, Jamvu – also known as Faran – both terms which we neglected to extract the meaning of and chai flavoured with pahadi tadka namkeen. We asked the guy at the counter if apart from being India’s last chai shop it was also its best – sure enough we got an affirmative answer. His chai (we had the tulsi-from-the-forest flavoured one) was as good as his word – and cost just Rs 6 a glass. Don’t miss it when you’re there next.
One curious occurrence during this part of the trip – apart from Hindi the most often heard language was – Kannada! B was quite gung-ho about this discovery – he startled quite a few people by breaking into what they must have thought were conversations that would not be understood by passers-by in this remote spot, some distance beyond the very last village of India. This incidence of Kannada intensified in Mana and Badrinath. The mountains never cease to surprise.
There was also the lady who found in B a shoulder to cry on about the inexorable push of civilization against the nature’s beauty. She and a friend had come this far expecting to find peace and serenity and instead what do they find but a teeming village, plasticky restaurants selling Maggi, Nescafe, Lays, Papsi and whatnot at daylight-robbery prices, a dried-up stream and tons and tons of pilgrims babbling in strange south-Indian tongues! And this was the last village in the country! She was quite justifiably ballistic. The last time she was here, she told B, it was not at all like this. Roy and Lakshmi had moved discreetly down the road. Upon enquiring, B was told that the last time was ten (maybe twelve) years ago. With resigned shrugs, we left her to bemoan the state of the world. We figured that she had probably sung paeans of praise back home about this place to her pal and the said pal was now quite disappointed, maybe quite vocally so and probably pushing for her money back.
Badrinath – a splash of colour
We checked into Hotel Snow Crest – pretty high-tech with hot and cold running water, TV and fridges in all rooms and a radiator to keep the room warm. Then we went down to the temple for the evening aarti and darshan.
Badrinath duly posed at Badrinath Km 0 to mark his arrival there during his silver jubilee year. Cheers!
Now that we were finally back in mobile signal range, we discovered exactly how many people had missed us. We shall leave the embarrassing details out for obvious reasons.
The temple is brightly coloured and far above it stands the proud peak of Neelkanth – a brilliant flash of white against a pure blue sky. On the hillsides are several colourful (mainly red) ashrams – one for the famous Mauni Baba. We didn’t have the time to make his acquaintance. The Gangotri flows fast and furious past the town. Pilgrims were bathing in those cold waters by the dozen and we watched with admiration. On a wide cement ledge overlooking the river, people were posing in groups for photo-ops in front of the temple. We got one guy to click for us and he was quite flummoxed by the display unit that swung out from the digital camera. He pointed the display unit at us, with the lens consequently pointing off at an angle and got a whole expanse of hillside in the snap. Roy and Lakshmi managed an appearance while B was sacrificed in this snap’s composition. Finally a more experienced hand took better photos.
In the temple itself the place was teeming with south Indians. There was this young swamiji-looking guy in a veshti with an American accent sporting a BITS Pilani jersey. So B went up to introduce himself – turned out the guy was an IIT Madras alumnus and the jersey belonged to a niece back home.
The deity itself is made of rock and there was some inconclusive discussion among the pilgrims assembled whether it was a Shiva-linga or not. We were told that people make both interpretations – Shaivites arguing one side and Vaishnavites the other. To each his own! It took a good long while for the panditji to read out the names of all those in whose names the aarti was being performed.
Walking out of the temple area we finally had the samosas and chai that B had been hankering for since leaving Delhi.
The Contessa of Badrinath
Formal business having been conducted, Roy and B set out to the serious business of checking out the night life. As expected, this was conspicuous by its absence. Also consp by their abs were booze shops – by the way, this applies to all the towns in the area from Haridwar to Rishikesh to Joshimath to Govindghat and now to Badrinath. Tip: carry your own as we did from Delhi. The situation was unacceptable to the veterans of the ’82 batch. Meanwhile, as girls will be girls, Lakshmi wanted to explore shopping in the town. We came up to a shop selling handicrafts and Lakshmi almost made the usual touristy mistakes of buying something completely useless. When sanity had returned, Roy asked the man behind the counter where to get good old daru. The man gave us the company line and said it’s only the Army guys who can get it. An ever so small inflection in his voice was enough to get Roy pushing for more information. The thing then proceeded in stages as described below.
Stage 1 was when the man at the counter said it was very difficult for civilians. Stage 2 was when he said only Contessa rum was available. Stage 3 was about the price – daylight robbery as expected because he quoted Rs 300 for a bottle that should have costed him less than Rs 100. On enquiry he said no half bottles were to be had. Stage 4 was when he said we could wait in our hotel (which was just across the road) and it would be delivered in our room within 5 minutes. That was the giveaway – Stage 5 was when we asked him to pack the thing and give it to us right there and so he went behind a counter, fetched the bottle, wrapped it in some innocuous looking newspaper, slipped it across to us and pocketed his Rs 300.
That evening Roy and B finished the bottle between them. Plenty happened while this was being accomplished. We all recalled incidents of the trip blow by blow while B wrote down bullet points in preparation for this chronicle. We had planned on any resemblance to people living or dead being entirely intentional – deviations from this principle may be blamed on an excess of Contessa rum. In our anxiety to communicate the story we called up various people – Srikant, Sundar, Sampath, Fromm and Kochar come to mind – the others have disappeared in the alcoholic haze.
Evidence exists to the effect that we had dinner that night – memory does not.
Act VII – Badrinath-Rishikesh-Haridwar – Sep 12, 2008
Getting going
At 5 am, so she claims, Lakshmi got the whole establishment up and about to make chai/ black coffee/ plain hot water for all of us. We believe her. Anyway, as specified by Narender aka Dharmender, we got to an early start but even this was not enough to impress our driver. He was itching to get going all the time! To be fair, we scraped through the police gate at 0645 – we had to part with Rs 60 because it shuts at 0630 only to be re-opened at 0900. People visiting in future please note gate timings for drives from place A to place B – you could end up wasting half a day if you miss these.
Once through, Narender opened up with the gas. The way he tore around gravel-strewn curves which had just been cleared of landslides, we began suspecting if he was afraid of missing a date with a girl-friend back in Haridwar. We think he must have planned an evening movie. We zipped through all the Prayags, stopping only at Peepalkoti for a brunch of good old idli-sambaar. It was quite well-made. The owner had the typical looks of Udupi folk – he must have decided that this was a great virgin market for his stuff. That must have been the secret.
We spotted people doing the river on rafts – next time we should organize river-rafting. Lakshmi is a veteran at this – she has promised to provide guidance.
Contact having been established with RST Sai, we checked into the THDC guest house in Rishikesh. The place is swank. It had high-tech shower enclosures in the bathrooms and B spent a good fifteen minutes trying to figure out the maze of buttons on the LCD control panel. It looked like something from the cockpit of a fighter plane. Pushing various buttons, he was rewarded in succession by the latest Bollywood music, extremely hot trickles from side nozzles, extremely cold jets from the overhead nozzle and then as a grand finale, a gushing torrent from some gizmo at ankle height. In the interests of time (we had to catch the famed Ganga Aarti, which we were told was slated to begin at 1900 hours) he gave up the cause and lapsed to a bucket-and-mug bath.
Some more good old idli-sambaar
We rushed along to the riverside and Lakshmi took us to Madras Café where we had some more good old idli-sambaar. The place was full of people beaming with beatific piety and one young panda type at the next table was devouring the Lonely Planet. He seemed to be reading up on some part of France – maybe his next meeting was with French tourists.
Close to 1900 hours and we hoofed it double-quick across the bridge to the Ganga temple. Man, that bridge! The scooters and mobikes careen across that bridge like maniacs, cutting in and out of pedestrians, push-carts and pilgrims, with horns blaring like banshees out of hell.
We reached the temple only to be told that the aarti finishes, not starts, at 1900 hours. At the end the diyas are floated down the river and are a great sight – but we missed that. Better luck next time.
We made Haridwar station with plenty of time. Narender aka Dharmender seemed quite at peace now – maybe he had quietly organized for his gf to make the late night show rather than the evening one. At the end he was all smiles – a mood uplift helped no doubt with a little something from the Indian treasury. As they say, all’s well that ends well.
We had another hour before the train was to arrive. What with all the activity of the past week, we three inveterate trekkers found outlets for our excess energy by clambering over and about Haridwar railway station in search of a quiet spot to spread out. Much seasoned as we were by now, having done 15-plus kilometers each day, our limbs were twitching with impatience. Or so we’d like you to believe. Once aboard, we wound down slowly, with Roy finding use finally for his Swiss army knife to cut extremely mushy and gooey Toblerone that had been kept warm in Lakshmi’s rucksack into pieces for us to lick off the silver foil.
Act VIII – Delhi – Sep 13, 2008
Lunch at Gulati’s.
It was a raucous lot that assembled at Gulati’s on Saturday afternoon. The crowd included the following with their better halves – Lakshmi with Arvind, Koch with Manju, Vipin with Seeta and Fromm with Rama. The following footloose and fancy-free namely Sriram, Roy, Sai and Badri completed the lot. Photos were shown, the gist of the fore-going chronicle was delivered and some great kababs were had. Dessert was a change for the trekkers – lip-smacking kulfi-falooda. Aterwards, beer-hugs – sorry bear-hugs, were exchanged during which Vipin affectionately crushed B’s reading glasses.
After we dispersed from Gulati’s, reality hit. B made a dash for the airport to catch a flight to Mumbai, Roy stayed a while for a last one at Koch’s place before heading for his flight to Hyderabad. Lakshmi had to fight her way through the chaos that ensued after the serial blasts to Ghaziabad where she and Arvind finally got a train to Lucknow.
As Lakshmi put it, it was yesterday once more.
