The Paradise Trek Part 6: The 'killer' lake of Kashmir

His never-say-die spirit amazed me. Though 11 trekkers had chosen to skip the ‘optional’ Marsar’, he boldly followed us along with a friend after the day’s arduous trek from Tarsar.

Trek leader Ankit was with me, ‘helping’ me on the boulders. He was actually dragging me up the rocks. As we neared the top of the ridge, he said casually, “Do you know at what speed you are climbing? Safzar (our Kashmiri guide) climbs at this speed.”

I replied equally casually, “Yeah, that’s because you are hauling me up like a piece of luggage. The poor piece of luggage has no option but to tag along.”

Ankit had told me before we departed that Marsar would be visible from the top of the ridge. So I was quite surprised to see that the eight trekkers before me had not stopped. I thought maybe they were a little below, appreciating some heavenly sight, and were not visible from where I was.

As I huffed and puffed to the top and glanced below, I let out a wail. There was no lake there. There was only a vast meadow, flanked by ridges, and we were on one extreme side. “How many lies do you tell per day?” I glared at Ankit. “He burst out laughing, apparently extremely amused at my frustration.

“Where in the world is the lake?” I howled. “It’s visible from the top of that ridge,” Ankit said, pointing vaguely at the ridges at the other end of the meadow. “I don’t trust you,” I glowered at him again. “Once I’m on top of that one, you are likely to point at the next ridge.”

“No, I’m serious. You’ll see it from that ridge,” he said as solemnly as he was probably capable of. So I grimaced and started climbing down to the meadow. I had high doubts that ridge on the other side of the meadow was our final destination.

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Kashmiris believe Marsar is a sinister lake that kills whoever chooses to camp by its banks. Apparently shepherds who decided to spend the night by the lake were found dead in its waters. And, the trek organizers had promoted Marsar as the “elusive” lake that gets shrouded by a veil of mist every now and then.

So, I was curious for a glimpse of this notorious lake that has a lust for blood and/or loves to play hide-and-seek with hikers. Was it really as mysterious and murderous as the tales suggest?

Marsar is approachable from both Tarsar and from Sundersar. If you see the map I presented earlier in this series (click here), if one climbs up the ridge at the southern side of Tarsar, Marsar is visible. But the trail is extremely tough and hazardous. So, the better alternative is to take the trail from the southern side of Sundersar, diametrically opposite the campsite.

The lake can be skirted either way, but since there was a snow patch on the eastern side of the lake, Ankit had felt it might not be safe for 11 trekkers to cross it. He thought the snow could give way under our feet and since it was all rocks below, breaking a bone or two was highly possible. So, we had taken the western route.

The trail around the lake was grassy, dotted with small rocks, but once the climb to the ridge began, it was all boulders of varying shapes and sizes. And it was about a 600–700-feet climb. Even as I was climbing, I had started worrying about the descent. For me, it would be worse than the ascent.

As he had promised, Ankit helped me up the boulders, but then came the shocker. Marsar was further up.

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As we crossed the meadow, Ankit told me we should reach the top of the ridge by 5pm. It would take 30 minutes to reach the ridge; we would spend 30 minutes admiring Marsar; and the return journey would take another 30 minutes.

The ridge on the other side, though equally rocky, was slightly easier to climb, but there was a snow patch. Arvind was also walking with us. A little up the trail, we could see a trekker struggling to climb up a huge snow patch. He could have avoided it; so it was apparent he was deliberately trying to clamber up it.

“Sahil, wait! That’s not how you climb up a snow patch,” Ankit ran up to him. “I’ll show you how to do it,” he said valiantly, took a few steps up, slipped, and fell flat on his face. The situation was too funny for any of us to hold our laughter.

Ankit was embarrassed, but got up fast and made some excuse. Leaving the two of them to battle the snow patch, Arvind and I started climbing up the last stretch. It was only a short climb and finally, we were at the top. Ankit hadn’t lied; at the bottom of the valley below, Marsar was spread out in all its grandeur.

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By 5.10pm or so, all of us had reached the top of the ridge. We could take a few steps down to a broad ledge that overlooked the lake. But that was about it. Going down any further looked really tough, perhaps impossible without gear.

Marsar did not look sinister to me. Neither did it look mysterious and elusive—there were hardly any clouds to veil it. It looked rather lonely to me, especially compared to its prettier ‘twin’, Tarsar. While the bright blue Tarsaris surrounded by greenery and wildflowers, the greenish-blue Marsar looks stunningly austere in its harsh and barren surroundings.

The sides of Marsar are quite steep and I wondered who had dared to climb down to camp by its banks. If we stood facing the lake, a valley seemed to lead straight to the lake a little to our left on the opposite side. But apparently that route is not accessible either. Then how did the victim go down to the banks?

Could it so have happened that he had tried to climb down the steep side, slipped and fallen into the lake, where people found him later? Hence the ‘killer’ tag for the lonely Marsar? But then, I know too little about these parts to make any expert comment. After all, “There are more things in heaven and earth….”

We spent half an hour taking photographs and getting ourselves photographed with Marsar as the background. And then, it was time to take leave.

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We took a slightly different route while going back. Apparently it was shorter. But the boulders were there in all their glory, so there was no respite for me.

Ankit helped me down as well. This time, I took my time, descent always being my weak point. I literally staggered and stumbled my way down and once when I stopped for a breather, I started laughing uncontrollably, as is my wont in an impossibly tough situation. “How do I manage to find myself in such places?” I rolled with laughter.

But I had company; Ankit started laughing too! “Don’t worry. I have the same habit,” he said. We looked at each other for a split second and burst out laughing again. So tripping and laughing, I finally made it to the bottom of the valley of Sundersar down those dreadful rocks.

Sundersar looked prettier from this side. From the top of the ridge, it had looked a distinct pinkish-blue—quite mauve-ish actually. Our tents looked tiny, and the sky and surrounding mountains were reflected clearly in the water, making Sundersar look more appealing than what it had seemed to me when I had first set eyes on it.

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The sky was totally clear that evening, and when we went to have dinner, I suddenly realised that our head-torches were quite redundant. Apart from the moonlight, the sky was speckled with stars. I could see Sagittarius right overhead, and Scorpio was at about a 45-degree angle, only its tail partially hidden behind a hill.

Seeing me switch off my head-torch and gazing at the stars, Ankit walked up to me and said, “Point out the North Star.” It brought back a faint but distinct memory from my childhood. My father would often ask me the same question while out star-gazing in the evenings.

Those were the evenings in Tripura—a tiny state in the eastern Himalayan foothills in India’s northeast. I left it when I was eleven and that was perhaps the last time I saw stars properly. Living in a city like Kolkata ever since, my relationship with stars has become just as faint as those memories of star-gazing in a garden heavy with the scent of roses and cape jasmines.

“Hmm, let me see, which way is north…,” I started. “You’re supposed to find the north on the basis of the North Star, not the other way around,” came Ankit’s rebuke.

All I remembered was that the North Star had something to do with the Great Bear, which I could still identify easily. “Okay, that’s the Great Bear… Now, let me see… It had something to do with a straight line…,” I started again. By now, other trekkers had surrounded us.

As Ankit started asking others to switch off their head-torches and look up, I quickly sneaked up to Arvind and asked him which one was the North Star. “Oh that’s easy. See the Saptarshi (the ‘Seven Sages’, the Sanskrit name for the Great Bear) up there? Those two stars lead straight to the North Star,” he pointed out.

In a second it came back to me. Right! That was the straight line I had been looking for. I strode up to Ankit and coolly pointed out the North Star. “Who showed you?” he demanded. Caught, I admitted it was Arvind.

“Sir, why did you show her the North Star?” Ankit cried. Poor Arvind had no idea why pointing out the North Star could be such a crime. But I knew—he had denied Ankit the splendid chance to play the hero-cum-boss-cum-lecturer!

As they argued, I looked up again. This desolate piece of land in distant Kashmir had suddenly returned a small piece of my childhood spent in exactly the opposite corner of the country.