Hampta Pass: On a Himalayan High (Part IV)

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At first I thought the glove had somehow caused the burning sensation. When I took it off, I couldn’t find anything amiss initially except for marks caused by the wool on the skin. But the skin felt tender. After a while, blisters started appearing all over it and kept growing alarmingly in size.

All I could guess was that it was sunburn. I had used sunscreen on my face but not on my hands. And now there was nothing I could do about it. I had no medicines for sunburn and the mobile phone had no signal so that I could call up my doctor.

Other trekkers gave some advice on what available medicine I could use which would help reduce the damage. But nothing really worked and over the next two days, it only kept getting worse.

The previous night, Akhil had asked how many of us wanted to go to the pass in the morning. If we did not want to go to the pass, we could go straight to Jwara. Those who’d go to the pass would have to go down to Jwara as well. There was a Cinderella-like condition too — everyone would be allowed to hike till 12 noon. After that, they would have to come back from wherever they were.

I had been in two minds. Not because I had doubts whether I’d be able to make it to Jwara alive, like I did at Goecha La. But simply because I wasn’t sure I really wanted to go to the pass. Crossing Hampta Pas had been my target, not returning from it midway. I asked Akhil what peaks we could expect to see on the way. “None,” he claimed. That was even more disappointing.

Working against daily deadlines all year round is bad enough; I did not want to put myself through a deadline on a trek as well. Spending some quality time at Jwara with myself — and my camera — seemed like a far better deal than spending 9 hours staring down at my feet, which I was likely to do while walking on snow.

Eti tried to persuade me to come. But I had made up my mind. Akhil said a couple of guys in the previous batch had seen a wolf and that gave me some motivation. But it seemed highly unlikely that the wolf would present itself once again at that exact spot for my benefit. And it didn’t.

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They were supposed to leave at 7.30am. Ultimately, they left well past 8.30am, as far as I can remember. Rita, whose condition was worsening by the day, was in no position to go. I was worried for her — she had a constant headache and nausea, wasn’t being able to eat anything at all and hardly slept at night.

If I ever woke up at night, I would invariably find Rita sitting with her head in her hands. As a result, she would keep falling asleep at odd hours, like on reaching the campsite after the day’s trek. Obviously, she would not get sleep at night after that. And thus the vicious cycle continued.

Even I had not been in such a bad state at Goecha La. I used to be extremely tired, but not sick like her. I asked Akhil if we should evacuate her to Manali as she was clearly suffering from AMS. He said it wasn’t necessary. “Her fitness is not up to the mark. Had she been fit, her body would have adapted itself easily to the altitude. If she stays here for a couple of days, her body will adjust,” he said.

The only problem was, we could not possibly stay in one place for a couple of days.

Apart from Rita and I, a couple of others did not go for the pass either. We watched as the rest of the group walked in a straight line towards the pass, looking like ants against the vastness of the background, especially the magnificent Indrasan peak, and gradually getting tinier and tinier until we could see them no longer.

As we prepared to leave camp, some of them returned from half way. And together we left for Jwara. Some IH staffers consoled us saying we could always come back and do the trek with IH once again for Re 1 — its policy for incomplete treks. But every place revisited means forgoing something else.

I took one last look at the Indrasan peak. Mr Himalaya had done it again. He had sent me back disappointed.

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I expected the day to be an uneventful one and wanted to reach Jwara as soon as possible to gift myself some leisurely time in the lap of the mountains. But Polu bhai had other plans. 

While coming up, we had bypassed the frozen river by climbing higher up the bank. But now, we went down the frozen river itself. Climbing up on snow was tough; going down was even tougher. Even though the porters held our hand and helped us climb down the tricky slopes, we slipped and took a tumble at times.

When we were a little way down, Polu bhai asked if someone had a plastic sheet. One emerged out of nowhere. He then said we could all slide down the slopes on the sheet by turn. Immediately, our sad little party was beaming with excitement.

He chose a place fit for the slide, placed the sheet on the slope, and sat down in the front and asked one of the trekkers to sit behind him. Shouting and cheering, they sledged down to the bottom of the slope.

Leaving her there, Polu bhai immediately ran up the slope with the sheet and repeated it with someone else. The man’s energy was infectious. Every time he came back for one of us, he ran up the slope, the effortless grin never leaving his weather-beaten face.

To save time, Rita and I decided to go down together. I sat in the middle. It was terribly awkward sitting behind a man I hardly knew, clinging on to him, my legs spread wide apart. For a brief second, I tried to imagine myself doing this on Kolkata streets, on the Metro maybe, and cringed.

But this was the Himalayas. It doesn’t give you much time to be embarrassed. “Aa jao,” (come on),” came Polu bhai’s encouraging invitation. And within seconds, we were roaring down the snow-covered slope on the magic carpet-like plastic sheet. Polu bhai had turned the mighty mountains into an entertainment park.

No one seemed satisfied with one ride. Like kids, they started badgering him, “Polu bhai, I want to slide from here,” “Polu bhai, I want to climb up that slope and slide from there…” With that unfaltering smile, the man obliged everyone, first checking every time if it was safe enough for the slide.

I did not ask him, but he insisted that I climb up one slope and slide with him from there. Immediately someone wanted to slide from there as well. Even Rita forgot her illness briefly and seemed to be having the time of her life.

But like all good things in life, there was an end to the snow-covered slopes too. And finally back on our feet, our happy little party trooped towards Jwara.

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The Jwara campsite was barely half an hour from where the snow-covered slopes ended. We were nearly in sight of it when I found Polu bhai and one of the trekkers resting by the trail. I was about to cross them when Polu bhai called out to me: “Come, join us.”

“The campsite’s minutes away,” I told him, not stopping. “What’s the hurry?” Polu bhai smiled. Take a while to sit here, enjoy the view of the mountains…this is the fun of trekking after all…why run around all the time?” I wondered why there was no Polu bhai at Goecha La, where I was perennially being hurried (and harried).

It was lunchtime when we finally reached Jwara. I sat down and ate the food that had been packed for us — bread pakoras, an apple, two boiled eggs — while trying to make friends with one of the scraggly shepherd dogs. I tried to lure him with one of the dry chapatti rolls of the previous day, but he refused to eat straight out of my hand. Then I threw bits on the ground towards him, every time putting them a little closer to me. This tactic succeeded. He took the final few bits from my hand.

He followed me around for a while and I thought we were now friends. But the next time I tried to draw him towards me with a bait of biscuits, I had to repeat the process all over again. He wouldn’t eat them out of my hand straightaway.

When the porters were setting up the tents I asked Polu bhai to teach me how to do it. When we were settled, I went up the slope a bit and sat down on a flat rock.

It was nice and sunny, with an azure sky dotted with fluffy white clouds behind the lofty mountains. The river flowed a little distance away with a bed of Himalayan meadow primrose and marsh marigolds growing around the rivulets that met it from the slopes. The only voice I could hear was the shepherd’s who was calling out to his sheep from time to time. The animals grazed on the green grass all around me while a couple of them lazed on the snow patches on the slopes. And three tiny little white butterflies fluttered around my feet. Bliss!

After some time, I was called to have lunch. When I said I had already had the packed food, the cook laughed and said, “It won’t do you any harm to have some of the khichdi.” So, it was lunch no. 2 of the day.

I lazed around with the camera all afternoon and our team members — except for four and Akhil — returned by 5.30pm. It appeared that 11 had reached the pass. Eti had been very close when she returned and so were several others. It seemed some people had had a very close encounter with an avalanche. Someone called it an “iceberg”!

When I asked Akhil about it later, he said he hadn’t seen it happen but that it was probably a ‘cornice’ that had fallen in front of the trekkers. “A cornice is an overhanging chunk of ice. It’s usually when a cornice breaks off and falls that an avalanche is triggered,” he explained. “Luckily for us, this one did not trigger an avalanche, or we could have been in serious trouble,” he said.

Meanwhile, it was a very anxious wait for the group of four and Akhil for the entire evening. It grew dark and some of the porters went a little up the trail to look for the little party. But there was no sign of them until it was around 8.15pm or so, when finally, we could spot their headlamps at a distance, fluttering in the dark like fireflies. It wasn’t before 8.30pm when they finally reached the campsite.

Akhil later said “it was nothing”. “When we cross the pass, some trekkers spend much of the night doing so and reach Shea Goru in the early hours of the next day,” he claimed. He might be used to it, but even a seasoned trek leader like him was so tired that he did not even have dinner that evening and straightaway went to bed.

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This was to be a long day and we were told that we would take a different route than the one we took while going up. I was dreading another couple of river crossings, but Akhil said we wouldn’t have to cross it even once if the snow bridge still existed. I fervently hoped that it did.

Though the Jwara campsite had been grassy, our tryst with the snow-covered river was not yet over. The snow was melting rapidly and it was particularly risky where the snow ended and the rocks began. I was contemplating the task at hand in front of a massive snow stretch when the porter in front saw me and encouraged me: “Come on, I’ll hold your hand. It’s not tough.”

He was carrying, like all others, two backpacks and some more stuff. And yet, he supported me continuously through the stretch, leaving the ‘footmark trail’ to me and walking on the unstable snow a little above. We covered the stretch very comfortably.

Later, when we came to a steep climb up some “tree root-steps”, another porter similarly offered to help me when he saw me stopping for a little rest. I was merely catching my breath and did not really need his help, but he was so eager to help that I could not say no. After a while, I realised that I was the one actually leading the way! But I did not have the heart to disappoint him and said nothing.

The highlight of the day was crossing the snow bridge once again. It had been melting away since we left and we found a huge chasm about 3 feet wide in the middle of the snow. Steps had been carved out for us to climb down and we safely crossed it one by one with help from the IH staff.

We bid the river goodbye temporarily once we had climbed up the steep “tree-root” trail. From there, we had a grand view of the mountains behind us and the meadows below, where horses, mules and sheep were grazing.

We walked down the undulating grassy trail that sometimes went down steeply to the rivulets and climbed up again. Eti and I had been walking together that day and somewhere on the way, we saw a tiny little animal that looked very much like a meerkat. It stood on its two hind legs and within seconds, shot off along the grass.

“Click it, click it,” Eti was shouting very excitedly. But my SX50 was out of battery. My old A580 was in my backpack and the animal was too quick to be clicked with a primitive digicam. The porters laughed too. “How will she click it? It’s too quick,” one of them said. Right then, a group of trekkers came stomping down the hill and the animal vanished out of sight, probably shooting off straight into its burrow.

I asked the porters what it was. “We call it a ‘musa’,” one said. I asked Akhil later about it. I described it as best as I could. It was around 8/9 inches tall, stood on its hind legs, had round ears jutting out of its head, brownish in colour with a slender build. It looked like a cross between a squirrel and a rat but bigger in size — much like a meerkat. 

But Akhil was clueless. “Was it a field rat,” he asked finally. I told him politely that I knew what a field rat looked like. “Then it could have been a marmot,” he offered helpfully. “No, it was much smaller than a marmot and looked nothing like it,” I said.

Even Polu bhai had no answer. It took me a lot of Googling back home to find out what it was. It was in all probability a mountain weasel and I’m 99% sure of it. The 1% doubt remains simply because I couldn’t photograph it.

Shortly after our encounter with the weasel, we had a steep descent to tackle. From the top of the trail, the trekkers down below looked like ants. It was perhaps the toughest thing I had encountered in the entire trek. Eti had sore thigh muscles from the previous day’s trek, while I had pulled a thigh muscle sometime during the day. So we were both having difficulty going down.

It took us quite a while climbing down the trail that had not only loose rocks but also sand and gravel — an ideal cocktail for the shoes to slip. Polu bhai later said had the rains started this trail would never have been an option.

When we finally reached the bottom, we realised we were in same meadow that we had crossed on the way from Jobra to Chika on the first day. Only this time, we were far deeper into it.