Aagaz
It has been exactly a year since I finished (well ..... nearly finished) the most gruelling (mentally and physically) endeavour I ever embarked upon in this short existence and it is a shame that I waited this long to document it. True, I have been busier, but chronic procrastination probably had a bigger role. Such a long time has now elapsed since that trip that I wanted to pen it down before I lose any more of the small, little precious moments from my memory that made this trip a life-altering experience for me.
So last year, in an effort to make my life a bit more exciting, and a little less moronic and monotonous, I took quite a few baby steps. A giant leap towards that goal however, came exactly a year ago, when I jumped on the opportunity to join two of my school friends for a trekking expedition in the Himalayas. Actually, it was more of a self-invitation. It was a rare, impulsive, carpe diem moment for me. I very well knew another opportunity to go on a trek like this might never come, and I sure as hell wasn't going to create one on my own, so might as well latch on to this one presented on a silver platter. Thus, without knowing anything about the trek or even the place where we were going, I agreed to go with them.
Briefly, the trek in question lies in the Himalayan range in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. The end point of the trek is the Roopkund or the mystery lake, a shallow pond surrounded by glaciers and snow covered Himalayan peaks like the Trishul (7120 m) at a height of approximately 5000 meters (16,499 feet) above sea level. The reason this place has attracted a lot of attention from travel enthusiasts in the last three-four years is the presence of human skeletons - preserved in all their glory - apparently since the 9th century, along the edges of the lake. The lake remains frozen for much of the year, and the trek is open for a few weeks in the summer months of May-June and then in September, excluding the monsoon period. A number of companies and groups have started organizing trekking tours to Roopkund off late. With traveling suddenly capturing the imagination of Indian youth in the last few years, a number of them inexperienced in trekking have been making a beeline for Roopkund and other similar destinations nearby.
Only one of us (let’s call him A) three friends had any prior trekking experience. As the main purpose of this trip was to be adventurous, to challenge ourselves and to find some solace, some peace and quiet and a break from the monotony of our lives, we decided to forgo a packaged tour and decided to do it all by ourselves. Actually, it was all pre-planned that way by A. I just latched on to the trip last minute. The decision to go might have been impulsive, but was followed by hours and hours of research - getting to the place, the myriad aspects of trekking and mountaineering in general and most importantly, the perils involved. Oh the perils! I could have written a mini thesis on Acute Mountain Sickness by the time we were ready for take-off. And suffice to say, the more I read, the more I got familiar with the dangers involved of embarking on a trek of this difficulty for a beginner, the more I began to doubt question the sanity of my impulsive decision.
On June 13th, 2014 we took off on an overnight bus from Delhi to Haldwani, reaching there in the wee hours of next morning, with an entire day of commuting ahead of us to reach our final destination – Wan village - our starting base camp for the trek. A lot of research was done and plans were made on the various possible options for traveling to Wan, but as they say, what has to happen will happen. We had a carefully planned itinerary based on mostly other travellers' blogs. But most of them remained on paper only. The journey from Haldwani to Wan was supposed to take us approximately 10 hours, and was to be completed in short phases with multiple stopovers through many small towns spread across the Uttrakhand countryside via shared jeeps and buses. The actual story however turned out to be much more twisted and infuriating.
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| The proposed itinerary |
