The Paradise Trek Concluding Part: Foot-wide bridges, and a maze

Several minutes ago, I had seen a few trekkers way down, at a river. They had crossed me a long way back on the trail. Since then, I had been walking alone for at least an hour, my speed down to a painful crawl now.

So, I had to go down till that river, at the least. Sonmasti to Sumbhal was an 11km-long descent that would take at least 5 hours. I knew I’d take much longer at the speed at which I was going. We were not even halfway down. But several people were supposed to be behind me. Where were they?

As I crawled along, the trail suddenly came to a strange landform. It split into five or six (or maybe more) trails that went down from every side—left, right and front. They looked rather like ‘grooves’—mini canyons actually—that were at least 6 feet deep and were probably made by running water. I shuddered to think what they’d be like during heavy rain. The sky was overcast and there was a light drizzle.

I thought of waiting for the others to arrive. When I had left our trek leader Ankit more than an hour back, he had told me to stop wherever I felt confused. But any delay on my part would only mean increasing the total time to reach Sumbhal. So I decided to go on.

I was in tears, thanks to my toes. Was I lost, too? I thought for a while the prospect of being lost in the forests of Kashmir. Somehow the idea wasn’t scary. As it is, I feel perennially lost in my city! It’s ten times better to feel lost in the forests of Kashmir.

I knew our luggage horses had already passed. So I looked for the obvious signs to find the right trail—horse poop and hoof marks. But all the trails seemed to have some traces of both! So I took the…err…‘shittiest’ (pardon the language) one, and continued with my laborious crawl.

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The final day of the Paradise Trek is the longest, toughest, and full of adventure, as we found out within an hour of starting off.

We had to cross a stream that had no bridge. Having crossed two rivers on the Hampta Pass trail, I approached the stream with some trepidation. It was quite narrow and perhaps taking off shoes and splashing through it would have been a better option, but we were told to hop over boulders (yet again!) at a place where the stream was only a couple of feet wide.

No problem with that, but it so happened that the rocks were extremely slippery. I realised it halfway through the crossing. I did not slip but went down on all fours. And I was not alone in doing that.

I thought maybe the worst was over, but no! An hour later, we came to a spot where the road went nearly vertically down. Some rocks jutted out of the earth and we were told to step on those to go down. A slip would mean going down straight into a second stream!

I simply sat down and decided to slide down to the ‘landing’. Ankit, who was helping everyone down, started shouting at the top of his voice that what I was doing was risky and I would certainly fall—taking him down with me.

With my fear of heights, I knew that if I ‘walked’ down, falling was inevitable; sliding down still gave us a chance. So I did it and Ankit was lithe enough to grab hold of me on the narrow ledge as I slid clumsily down. And then there was a one-foot-wide crude bridge to cross. Our guide Safzar was there to help us out.

Second hurdle crossed.

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The trail continued through the forest after that but thankfully, there were no rivers to cross for the next 3.5 hours. As we had come down to lower altitudes, firs, pines, deodars and, along with them, Gujjar huts, were back on the trail.

The trail was terribly muddy on some stretches, but on the flipside, the wildflowers were back. I photographed some varieties like balsam, geranium, grasslike starwort, sage and great mullein.

Around an hour later, Ankit caught up with me. We walked along for some time before he decided to wait for the rest of the team. I wanted to go on. “The trail is pretty straight. Stop wherever you feel confused,” he told me. And I left.

I went on all right for some time before my big toes started hurting. They had been hurting on the descent to Sonmasti the previous day. I realised now I should have taken a medicine to reduce the swelling. But now it was too late.

Somewhere on the trail I heard voices. It turned out to be a Kashmiri family—a man, a woman (presumably his wife) and some kids (likely to be theirs). I asked the man if this was the way to Sumbhal. He nodded.

I spoke to them for a while, answering their queries about where I was from, how far I had trekked, etc. The man said they were on their way to Sonmasti. “I had come here a long time ago. Now I am taking them,” he said, gesturing at the others.

“There are two members of your group a little way ahead. They are eating dry fruits,” the man said suddenly. If they had been found eating, I was sure they were members of my group! As I started hobbling again, the man said, “Walk confidently. Don’t be scared.”

Before I could reply, the little boy said, “She’s not scared. Her feet are hurting.” Then he turned towards me and said, “Isn’t that so?” I smiled at him, nodded and started walking.

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The duo turned out to be Arvind and Darshan. “How come you have arrived already? I thought you said you would take time on descent!” Darshan said on seeing me. I learned then that there was no one ahead of them.

“That’s because I have been walking continuously, without a break,” I said. The two left soon after. I stood there for a while and within seconds, heard the clip-clop of horse hooves. It was Safzar leading a horse through the forest and happily seated on it was my tent-mate Manasa.

One of the trekkers had already left the previous day; another two had opted to take horses on the way down to Sumbhal. And now Manasa had taken the same route. As the horse passed by, I wanted to let out a wail. I also wanted to hang on to its tail if I could. The going was way too painful now.

I had gone a little way up from the trail. Going down to it would mean putting extra pressure on my toes. Seeing there was no one around—not that anyone being there would have mattered—I simply sat down on the soft ground cushioned by pine needles, and slid down.

As I limped along, four–five trekkers hopped and skipped past me. About half an hour later, I caught a glimpse of them way down at a river. And then, I came to the maze of strange grooves.

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I followed the horse poop, wondering all the time whether the horse(s) was at all ours, and whether I would find myself at a strange destination at the end of the trail. However, once the groove ended, my initial suspicion was proved right. The grooves all led to the same trail. Whichever I took would have led me to the same spot.

Tottering down, I somehow reached the river below. There was a foot-wide crude bridge here, too, and no one to help me. The trail continued at the other end of the bridge. So, keeping my eyes solely on the bridge, I started counting “1…2…3…” with each step that I took. Finally, I had crossed it.

On the other side, I realised the trail had actually bifurcated. One climbed steeply up and the other continued along the base of the hill, a little above the river. Trying to figure out the correct trail, I climbed up the steep trail a bit, came down and was taking the other one, when I heard someone call out my name.

It was Ankit, Nandita, Ankur and Sanjay. “Wait. That’s not the trail,” Ankit said. I returned, relieved to see the others. But I was also anxious to go on. I asked Ankit why he had stopped me, he said, “What’s the hurry? Once you left, you were nowhere to be seen!”

“Yeah, but now I can’t go on fast,” I grumbled. “I saw Manasa on a horse…” I mentioned offhandedly. “Her knees were hurting. Nothing worked, so I put her on a horse,” he said. “My knee is hurting too. So are my toes,” I whined. But there were no more horses. Not that I would have taken one, but it felt wonderful to complain.

The trail apparently continued through the river! It skirted the hill and then climbed up again. Ankit told Sanjay to help me on the boulders, but I had had enough of rocks and stones by then. I simply splashed through the river, shoes and all. The cold water felt heavenly on my battered feet.

As I limped along, the others would walk a little ahead and then wait for me. An hour later, we came to yet another crude bridge, this one maybe a couple of feet wide. I crossed the bridge as I had done the previous one, more confident this time.

Ankit noticed it and suddenly called out to me once I had crossed it. He stood on the bridge and asked me to come to the centre. He wore an angelic expression, which should have warned me. But I was too tired to read expressions.

Once I was in the middle of the bridge, he started jumping, and the crude structure rocked dangerously. As I screamed at the top of my voice, he laughed his head off. I ran off the bridge once he stopped, forgetting the pain and everything else.

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It was another half an hour before Sumbhal came into sight. I walked the last leg with two of the veterans, one in his sixties and the other fiftyish. As we walked through the village, we kept expecting to see our cars somewhere on the way. Others cars were plying on the road.

But it seemed our sadistic organizers had chosen to keep the cars at the very end of the village, making us slog it out for as long as they could. With my feet in the condition in which they were, it wasn’t a happy walk. My big toe nails later got black and hard, and gradually came off.

Thankfully, Sanjay had the good sense to come looking for us in a car, knowing that some of us were not in a very good state of health. He himself had to take a wheelchair at the airport the next day. And, I still had a road trip to Ladakh waiting!

As we were approaching Sumbhal earlier, we had met a couple of young Kashmiri youths, who cheered us on. “You are nearly there,” they said helpfully. Debjyoti, the younger of my two companions, was leading. After a while I saw him waiting on the road for us.

“One of the guys said, ‘Your father is having some trouble, but your daughter is coming just fine.’ They have made three generations of us!” he said. Even in pain, I started giggling.

As the houses of Sumbhal came into sight, I sighed, “Back to civilization.”

“Or is it the other way around?” Debjyoti remarked. 

I knew what he meant. Maybe ‘civilization’ was, after all, where we had just come down from.

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THE END