Day6 - Rapelling, Rock CLimbing and Bird Watching

Guru rappeling down the boulder


River Parvati Valley


The crystal clear 'original mineral' waters of River Parvati

Day5 - Acclimatization

Goood Maaarning Exercise


Pine forest @ the Acclimatization spot


'aShTa sakha's @ the acclimatization spot.


Orientation 'drill' (literally!) by Camp Director Roy


Hues of a Himalayan Evening - As seen from the Base Camp


Cultural Events at the Camp Fire (Chetha and Kashyapa rendering a Upanishad Shloka)

The Base Camp, Kasol

Kasol is a sleepy himalayan town at an altitude of about 5500 ft. The town is situated on the banks of the river Parvati. The famous hot springs of Manikaran, where godess Parvarti is supposed to have meditated, is just 5Kms from here. Kasol is frequented by lots of foreign tourists, israelis in particular. Youth hostel has setup its base camp for the Sar Pass trek here. And that was our destination.


>> Base-camp as seen from the road

The base camp was at much lower level than the road. We had to walk a good 100 mts down some steep steps to reach the camp from the road. On the east and south it was covered by the hill on which the road was. On the other sides it was covered by not so thick a foliage. Beyond this foliage, to the north and north-west of the camp, flowed the crystal clear waters of the river Parvati.

>> The base camp. Officer's tents.

The tents for men were on the south side, while the women's tents and the toilet were to the north. There was quite a big open space between them. At the eastern end of the open space were the officer's tents. To the west was the kitchen and the dining area. Youth hostel had done a very good job of maintaining the whole place.



>> Bangalore baays and gurl @ the base camp.

We got ourselves registered in the office and had lunch. The lunch was pretty decent given the place and the scale in which it had to be prepared. The dining area was pretty clean. Even the toilets were well maintained. The water used was pumped directly from the nearby river and was very cool during the day and very cold during the night. Probably that was the reason why none of us took bath here. :)

Sar pass trek was conducted in batches. Every day a batch left for the trek and a batch returned from the trek. We were in the tenth batch and hence named "SP 10". With 69 people in the batch, ours was easily the most populous batch. Every batch spent the first three days in the base camp, engaged in activities like acclimatization, rock climbing, rappling, etc.

>> Relak'sing' at the base camp :)

During these days, we got used to the "tent life". Its fun to live in tents, though its not very comfortable. To fight the cold conditions during the nights, we had sleeping bags. Sometimes, we felt a little cramped inside. But on the whole it was quite manageabe and enjoyable. :)

Bhuntar to Kasol

>> On the bus top!!!

The bus journey from Bhuntar to Kasol was a very memorable one. Kashyapa, Guru, Lakshmi and myself decided to travel on top. It was not very comfortable up there, but we could get a very good view of everything around. Even though we were initially troubled by the sun, it was not a problem once the bus started moving. U see, we were not so much bothered about getting tanned :)

Bhuntar is at the confluence of the rivers Beas (Vyas) and Parvati. As the bus crossed the bridge over the rivers, we people travelling on top of the bus realized that such a good view was impossible from inside the bus.

>> The confluence of Beas and Parvati @ Bhuntar

The road ahead was narrow, steep at places and curvaceous. At every turn, the scenery changed and gave way to something new. We would gaze at houses built at the edge of a mountain and wonder as to how people could live there. A very amazing thing was that even such house had electricity connection. We were constantly followed by electric wires thruough out the journey.

>> The ravenous journey

Lakshmi and Guru had not seen snow clad mountains before. Lakshmi was impatiently waiting for the snow covered peaks to show up. After about half an hour or so, the bus took a sharp right turn and the snow covered peak of a far off mountain granted us vision. Lakshmi shouted in excitement. There were sounds from inside the bus as well. TC, could not bear to sit inside any longer. He was promptly followed by the rest in due course of time. As the bus moved deeper and deeper into the mountains, the feeling of actually being in the Himalayas sank into us.

Tholpi, who was the last to come to the top didnt find too much space to accomodate himself and had to literally lie down at the front. At every turn and every brake, his bums got a massage. By the time we reached our destinatio, all of us had a stiff back and aching bums :)

We reached Kasol by around 2:00. The bus stops right in front of the base camp. After travelling continuously for 3 days, we were finally there!!!

Sumanth

Day4 - Kullu

>> A view of Kullu valley

When we arrived in Kullu, it was well past 7 in the morning. In order to finish our morning chores, we checked in to a hotel called "The nest". We had two rooms and was big enough for me do yoga and Tholpi to do "sudarshana kriya". We were all very relaxed and took time to get ready. Once outside the hotel, we went into a nearby hotel, "Sharma Vaishnav Bhojanalay", for breakfast. The food there was too good. We hogged lots of Parathas with this very tasty chetni called moongi. In fact many of us had extra parathas just to eat the chetni. It was so good.

From Kullu, there are not many direct buses to Kasol. So, we went to this neaighbouring town called Bhuntar and took the bus to kasol from there.

Sumanth

Day3 - Delhi

Kashyapa had a tough time securing all the berths together and we had to settle for a 7-1 split. Though the lone berth was in the same compartment, it was a few blocks away from the group. One of us had to go on "Agnatavaasa" during the night. While Tholpi volunteered on the first occasion, I decided to relieve him on the second night.

I was woken up by a fellow passenger shouting "Jhansi". I noticed that most of the people there had already woken up and the lights were on. Since I wanted to see Jhansi fort, I decided to get up and join my friends. Once on my feet I realized that something was wrong. It seemed to be pretty dark outside and many people in the comparment were still asleep. It was then I saw the board outside - "Bhopal". The train was in Bhopal and it the time was still 12:00 AM. I had actually slept for about half an hour and thought it was time to wake up!!! False alarm. I promptly went back to my berth, and fell asleep cursing the person who had shouted "Jhansi".


>> Chambal valley

The following morning was much hotter than the previous day. We reached Delhi at 11:40 AM. It was sizzling hot outside. Well, it was a typical Delhi summer day. Nothing more. We packed ourselves into two taxis (read mobile ovens) and went to Maharana Pratap ISBT (inter state bus terminus). From here we had to go to Kullu and from there to Kasol (our base camp).

Initially I was conned by an agent into believing that there is a direct bus to kasol. He took me to a shop outside the bus stand, to a private operator. By that time, Kashyapa had joined us and we figured out that he was trying to swindle us. So, we came back to the stand and went to HRTC (Himachal pradesh road transport corp) reservation counter. We figured out that the rates were pretty expensive. An ordinary bus ticket would cost Rs 350 and a deluxe would cost Rs 585 !!! Since we had a 14 hour journey ahead of us, I voted for deluxe. Kashyapa was hell bent upon the cheaper one. This made me more particular about the deluxe bus :) We decided to take a vote, but most of them seemed to be fine with either. Very reluctantly, I agreed to settle for the ordinary bus. The bus was at 5:00 PM in the evening. Then we had lunch in a small hotel inside ISBT and drank lots of HPMC apple juice.

After all this, we realized that we were really dirty. It had been 2 days since we had taken bath and we had more than 2 hours to kill. So, why not take a bath? Again, I and Kashyapa had divergent opinions. But this time, the others put their weight behind me and kashyapa reluctantly (as reluctantly as I had agreed to go by the ordinary bus) agreed to accompany us. We went out in the aftrenoon heat in search of a decent hotel. What we finally got was far from that. We rented a room at hotel "Star" for 2 hrs. There was a double bed in the room which was the only place to sit, sleep or spread the clothes. Kashyapa, who refused to take a bath dozed off. Tholpadi, a very disciplined man, finished his bath and performed "Sudarshana Kriya", a kind of pranayama. In the process he happened to break Chethak's cooling glass.

By about 4:15, we left the hotel and walked back to the ISBT. The bus was there, and we realized that it was pretty crammed. I realized that the journey would be pretty tough and boarded the bus only because the deluxe bus was already full. Also, it was impossible to have all our luggage inside the bus. We put a good part of our luggage on top of the bus. The bus promptly started at 5:00. The journey to Kullu was very cramped and uneventful.

Day2 - Eat eat eat...

I and Kashyapa went on a newspaper hunting spree in Solapur. Something that I (even Kashyapa) cannot forget happened on the platform. The platform was full of vendors and passengers. As I and Kashyapa were heading back to our compartment, a young man from inside one of the compartments came to window and spat mouthful of water onto the platform as if it was his private bathroom. People on the platform standing near that window jumped in all directions to avoid being hit by the oral missile. The man went back to his seat and life on the platform returned to normalcy. U really cant help these things. Can U?

Most of the morning we spent trying to get to know each other. I, Lakshmi, TC and Guru were classmates before. But I had hardly met the other 4 (Goutham, Chethak, Kashyapa and Tholpi). Goutham proved be a not so serious as I had initially thought. In a sense, he was a typical engineer, like, his love for RX 100. He could also talk about a camera like an expert. (Dont ask me if he is really one ;) ). And he was total manager when he spoke about his clients, his company etc. I was really amused to hear that he had submitted his resignation to his manager when he was declined 2 weeks leave for this trek. For most part our train journey, he was wondering as to what would have happened in his office after his heroic resignation.

And his friend Chethak was an "Amazing" character. He was a software engineer who also did part time Paurohitya (priesthood). To add to it, he had the looks of a model. But the most charecteristic feature of his was his story telling abilities. Over the next couple of weeks, he enthralled us with numerous stories. He specialized in crime Diary kind of narration (Ravi Belagere style).

The day was dry and hot. But much better than what we had expected it to be. Traveling through Maharashtra and MP in the month of May, we had expected it to be sizzling hot. But at no point was it unbearable. However, we did sweat profusely and consumed gallons of "mineral" water.

To go with water, we had banana, cucumber, vada pav, etc. We seemed to have unlimited supply of sweets with my and Kahsyapa's kobbari miThai, TC's "sweet puDi", Chetha's badam burfi, my box of chocolates, etc. adding to the sweet reserve. :)

Our staple diet mostly consisted of chapatis, to be precise, lots of chapatis, to be more precise, about 130 of them!!! :O Kilograms of varieties of gojjus, multitudes of uppinakayi, dashes of cheTnipudi, dozens of packets of sauce/ketchup were also consumed along with the chapatis. Well, thats not all... we also had heaps of puliyogare which our cheif vendor of perishable foods (yours truly;) had brought!!!

Manmad wishing us good luck :)


Sumanth

PS: With inputs from Kashyapa