Fecal brown is the color of the day! Though there is an ongoing colorful show of daybreak at 11,000ft at our eye level - a sky of changing hues, an alpine meadow coming to life, a sun climbing up clandestinely behind an amphitheater of snow-bound god peaks to inject color into our surroundings - with us being the sole audience; but despite all the color, nothing strikes more than that particular shade of brown that I mentioned. Color of my previous night, color of my present dawn, and color of my soon-to-commence retreat back into civilization.
Over the next 24 hours, I, alongwith my buddy Y, will be backtracking our route - from this hamlet at Dayara Bugyal, to the village of Raithal, to the town of Uttarkashi, to the city of Dehradun, to the metropolis of Delhi. We are returning home, on time for the grand festival of Diwali, but with an embarrassing note on our faces that tells that we really didn't mean to. We had a much longer trekking route in mind: Raithal - Dayara Bugyal - Morpada - Dodital - Darba Top - Hanuman Chatti; but so were the considerations of the moment that we had to call it quits. Now, "quit" is a word I don't understand when in the lap of "mother" nature, since she made things to be possible (otherwise we won't have evolution, to begin with), so I was taken aback and had to pretend I understood what Y meant when he proposed that.
But first, let me give some foreground on that. I might switch to a third-person narrative for better effect.
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So there were these two guys, twenty-somethings. One was a true man of the outdoors, charged, hardy, active, rich, brash, smart (womanizer), sentimental, decisive. The other was a jobless software programmer. They had been friends for a while. They had also been playing bait-and-hook with a lot of trekking plans for a while. They had done a single trip that qualified as 'trek',
The Hamta Pass, in last year August; so understandably the itch of outdoors was strong. By October, the itch was intense. Coincidentally, they were equally unsocial in nature, to interpret the November week of Diwali - the Indian (Hindu) festival of lights and celebration and family reunions and prosperity - as a void in their schedule, waiting to be filled. So they decided to trek, and after brief research (or should I say under-research) worked out a 6-day itinerary in upper reaches of Uttarkashi. It was to be of a double honour, of visiting two destinations - Dayara Bugyal, one of India's most beautiful meadows at 11000ft, and Dodital, an enigmatic lake at 10800ft, also claimed in mythology as the birthplace of the Indian elephant god, Ganesha - in the same week.
The most ambitious aspect of this trek was that they planned to do it all by themselves, that is, no reliance on guides, or load-bearing mules, or opportune chaiwallahs, or greedy hotel owners. To be self sufficient, they had equipped themselves with sufficient clothes - for keeping warm, a tent - for stay, food - for survival, and a stove - for the food. Not to ignore other emergent facets of human isolation, they were also equipped with music - for the dull evenings, texts - for the idle moments, cameras - for the memories, and (most spectacularly) a bottle of Old Monk rum - for the madness (or escaping it). They had been sincere, at least in their preparation.
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They left the city of Delhi very happy, because they could see - as they inched in an autorickshaw towards their transit destination to catch a bus into Garhwal - of what deplorable a setup, that is sadly called 'society', they were running from. The whole city was going crazy, like there was some zombie outbreak - policeman, miles of traffic jams, sirens, pollution; they were happy to be leaving it all behind. They felt a shudder seeing the clamor at the bus depot, where all levels of civilization converged to act equally uncivilized. The bus conductor was probably sympathetic to their condition, which is why he didn't force them to cram like chicken at the backseat, making their journey a rather comfortable one.
Their route was:
Delhi >--(bus)--> Rishikesh
Rishikesh >--(taxi)--> Uttarkashi
Uttarkashi >--(taxi)--> Bhatwari
Bhatwari >--(taxi)--> Raithal
From the village of Raithal, they started their uphill climb to Dayara Bugyal.
Reaching uptil Bhatwari was easy, but reaching Raithal from Bhatwari - the last 10km - wasn't; they had to nervously wait for a couple of hours before an overloaded taxi showed up and crammed them like chicken alongside other human chickens (and little chicks, with schoolbags). By the time their jeep labored up the bends like a dying hag and reached Raithal, it was already 16:30. There had been a persistent drizzle in the last half hour, which though had now abated, made the weather unpredictable - "If the clouds do open up on our way, it would probably come down as snow," they reminded themselves. But being arrogant, finicky, indecisive, and - consequently - embarrassed at the idea of giving into the subtle coercion (to stay, waste a day, and prosper the village economy) by the villagers, they chose to trudge ahead. It was already 17:00.
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At this point, I must give 'them' an individual identity, since their individual characters/strengths/handicaps shone through by the time they'd barely made it beyond the village. It was somewhat like the ribbon of the rainbow that wrapped the mountain at that very instant, white light being subjected through walls of moisture at funny angles and broken into individual colors that had their own names (VIBGYOR). Let us call them Nagraj and Doga [
1,
2]. (those familiar to Raj Comics might subconsciously pick their favorite at this time, which might be detrimental to the narration, so please avoid making any connections).
Doga was the slower one, though surprisingly Nagraj was the more burdened among the two. They trekked up the well-defined trail from Raithal village, taking frequent breaks for rest, water, change of clothing, or bodily discharge. Inside an hour, darkness had taken over, so their
CREE headlamps had come out. The temperature had also taken an abrupt (albeit expected) dip, so their fleece jackets were out as well. It was a paradoxical situation, as the jackets which were sufficient protection against the cold, also hampered the ventilation when the body would heat up on a tough section and produce sweat. They had no clue of how far they'd come, as the trail, though broad and unambiguous throughout, isn't marked. They had no clue of how far they had to go, as there was not a hint of human presence anywhere up ahead, despite the villagers confirming of a team of workers employed for trail maintenance camping somewhere along. Though tired, they were thankful for the clouds that still maintained their dignified calm, and kept trudging ahead in the dark with damp clothes, breathing heavily, sticking close.
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To be continued...
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