Hampta Pass: On a Himalayan High (Concluding Part)

Of all the different kinds of trails that one encounters in the mountains, the meadows happen to be my favourite. I enjoy greenery much more than I enjoy snow. So obviously, I wasn’t in a hurry to reach the Jobra campsite (I’m usually never in a hurry to reach anywhere actually). I relished the meadow walk. Eti preferred to stay back with me.

It was she who drew my attention to the cobra lilies (also called snake lilies) that grew in abundance in the meadows. Panna Thakur, one of our trek guides, later told her that the cobra lily has a potato-like root. “He said people get swollen throats and faces if they eat it,” Eti told me. I checked the Net later and found that the cobra lily is indeed a part of the arum family.

We took our own sweet time to cross the meadow, stopping for photo breaks, appreciating the cobra lilies and watching kids (not the human kind) at play. We could see some of our trek-mates at a distance. They stopped from time to time and like us, did not seem to be in a hurry either.

When we finally ambled up to the point where the meadow ended and the thickets began, we found Panna Thakur waiting for us. He explained that the campsite was supposed to have been there, at the opening of the meadow, but since another group had already taken it, we would have to walk up to the point where we had had the ‘siddu’ break on the first day. That was the campsite for the night.  

“We could have easily walked the entire way to Jobra dam and returned to Manali today,” I told Eti. The dam must be only about 15/20 minutes from the campsite.

It was around 3-3.30pm when we reached the campsite and most of our trek-mates were already there. Some of the tents, though, were still being pitched. After settling down in our tent, Eti and I were sitting on a flat rock, gobbling down a plateful of Maggi each, when Panna came. We (mostly me) wanted to have a taste of the local drink chhang (millet beer) — like we had had tumba at Goecha La — and we asked Panna how we could get it.

“You want to drink chhang?” he grinned foolishly. We weren’t surprised. In a country like India, city women looking for a crude local drink is not a very everyday phenomenon. He quickly added that he could send one of the guys down to the Jobra dam and get it right then if we had a bottle. I gave him one of my two water bottles at once. (And for the next four days, I went around Kinnaur with water in one bottle and chhang in the other.)

Eti also had another idea. “Why don’t we ask him if he can arrange local food for us in Manali tomorrow?” she said. I agreed at once. She told Panna and he promised to make an arrangement, but unfortunately he never called after we reached Manali.

Presently, when we were talking about local food, he suddenly said in his usual quiet, timid way: “Have you noticed the big ants here?” Loving to experiment with any kind of exotic food — especially non-veg — I was delighted thinking the locals eat the ants (it’s common among some tribes). “Do you eat them?” I asked very excitedly.

He looked very confused and moved his head in a way that could mean a nod or a shake, yes or no, or anything else. Then he said, “No, I was saying these ants bite a lot. Be careful they don’t get inside your tent.

Eti had already jumped up from the rock, but I stayed put. I felt stupid and furious at the same time, my prospect of tasting ants going up in smoke. After he left, Eti and I were in splits.

“Oh God, for a moment, I thought you would pick up an ant and pop it into your mouth,” Eti was roaring with laughter. “How would I know that he would suddenly jump to biting ants in the middle of our conversation about local food?” I protested.

The bottle of chhang, however, came after a couple of hours and that was some consolation.

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Rita arrived after some time, with Polu bhai and Akhil. She and Polu bhai sat down a little distance from our campsite as Akhil went to get a plate of Maggi for her. “Come and sit with us,” Polu bhai called out to me. In ones and twos, some of the others joined us as well.

As we talked, Polu bhai revealed that he had suggested to IH that the Hampta trek be cancelled this year till the end of June at least. “I knew that several teams would not be able to cross the pass this year because of the snow. But they refused,” he said.

He also told us that there’s another trail right behind where we were sitting. It would mean going south from Jobra instead of going east towards Hampta. “It’s a beautiful trail, with snow, a lake and nice view of the mountains,” he said. “Everyone would have gone home content, completing the trek, but that was not to be…” 

Polu bhai also said that he would try to arrange rappelling for us the next morning, but was not too hopeful. “Every member of the last batch did it successfully. But it’s the original campsite, at the opening of the meadow, that’s conducive for rappelling, not this one. But I’ll check,” he said. Unfortunately for us, the rappelling didn’t happen either.

But a campfire was on the cards. Eti, Rita, Polu bhai and I chatted away in our tent till it got dark. Rita was feeling very down about her health condition and I kept telling her that I had had immense trouble on my first trek as well. Polu bhai, too, tried to cheer her up: “You came down today all the way on your own feet. There was a very fat guy in the last batch who gave up midway and we had to carry him down,” he claimed.

But Rita was not in a happy state. She threw up later that evening, had a tummy upset and the headaches followed her all the way to Manali and left her only after she was well on her way back to Kolkata on train.

The campfire was already raging when we joined the others. Some of our trek-mates were singing and dancing and it seemed quite a tame campfire until our Nepali porters — who were so far sitting very quietly — were asked to dance. They needed no further coaxing.

Four or five of them jumped into the middle and started off their wild jig as someone played songs on their mobile phones. ‘Dance like no one’s watching’ is a motto that these mountain folks have taken to heart like no other. But even as I enjoyed their boisterous moves, I — and Eti too — missed the post-trek party at GoechaLa. I missed those far restrained-but-rhythmic moves, the Nepali songs that they sang as they danced — and Dinesh’s cake.

It’s been 16 months since the Goecha La trek. ‘Simple Simple Kanchi’ still happens to be my ring tone.

The campfire was followed by a dinner that included gulab jamuns as a special treat. It was the last evening and everyone was sharing his or her experience and future trekking plans over dinner. This had been a mostly inexperienced team and many had had injuries and mountain sickness — nausea, tummy upsets, headaches — but everyone was already planning a future date with the Himalayas.

Of them, one girl particularly impressed me. Only six months back, she had signed up for the Chadar trek — a weeklong difficult-level trek on the frozen Zanskar river in Ladakh. She had fallen so ill that she had had to be hospitalised. She had now completed Hampta and was already planning to go for Chadar again next year.

I have already seen many experienced trekkers, thanks to the Goecha La trek. In comparison, this girl was nothing special. She was neither a fast trekker nor one with technical expertise. But her spirit and love for the mountains make her one of the best trekkers I have seen so far.

I watched them silently — another group of Himalaya-lovers in the making. Thirteen months back, Goecha La had converted me as well, despite all its tortures. And just like these youngsters, it hadn’t taken me long to decide that I would keep trekking in the Himalayas for as long as I can.

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We left camp around 11am to an overcast sky and it started drizzling a little after we left. The morning had been uneventful except for a small incident when a woman’s buffaloes decided to explore our toilet tents. Thankfully no one was inside when one of the animals ripped one open with its horns. One of our trek helps chased it away before it could do much damage.

I was now anxious to get back to Manali as early as possible to check out as much of it as I could before leaving early the next morning. The peaks of the surrounding mountains were covered in mist and they looked very much like the floating mountains of Pandora in ‘Avatar’, as one of the youngsters mentioned. It took us not more than half an hour to reach the Jobra dam, where the cars were waiting to take us back to Manali.

From the peppy Hindi film songs playing on the car stereo, it wasn’t difficult to get the feeling that we were heading back to civilization. We were actually dashing back to civilization, with the cars whooshing down the 40-odd hairpin bends like a roller coaster. The mountains surrounding Manali and the layers of pines cascading down the hills were shrouded in thick mist, making it all seem like a dream.

Everyone was upbeat; we simply couldn’t stop grinning as we hummed along with whatever song was playing in the car. I looked at a very happy-looking Eti and said: “Fasten your seat belts because this is not the end of your roller-coaster ride. It’s just the beginning.”

Our date with Mr Himalayas was not yet over. Kinnaur was calling us.