NIM, here I come, (to get creamed?)

I saw the Himalayas for the first time in 2003. Knew instantly that that wouldnt be the last. I had gone on a 9 day trek in the Himachal region (near Solang Nala). That was my first real trek. And the real reason for my going on that trip was neither Himalayas nor trekking. But i am glad i did that. It got me totally hooked. All around you, things are beautiful. You are heading to a peak or a glacier that has an exotic name. You exert yourself crazy doing so. A bunch of people tag along. Some swear. Some want to kick themselves for having gotten into such a predicament. Some want to kick others for getting them into such a predicament. Some are way too tired to complain or to see the beauty around. And then the destination is reached. All ills are forgotten. The entire exercise gives an illusion of purpose. It is truly amazing. And there is something surreal about defecating at 15000 ft. Surrounded by snow-capped mountains. Moon rays reflecting off the icy slopes. It offers such a profound contradiction. The beauty and the shit. And you anxiously keep looking over your shoulders. Someone from the camp could walk by. Or worse, a bear from the forests could walk by (thats far-fetched, but your mind can think up any crap). I got totally taken in by the idea of carrying a heavy bag and walking on trails for no specific purpose. Went there again in 2004. This time Himalayas was the real reason. After that I've been doing random treks in random places whenever possible, always wanting to do something more serious, like they show in Adventure-One and stuff. I sent a request to join some expedition in the Himalayas by a group called Stikage in Delhi last year. They politely turned me down saying i didnt have enough high altitude experience.

Anyways, shook off lethargy this year and enrolled for the Basic mountaineering course at Nehru Institute of Mountaineering at Uttarkashi. But could not shake off lethargy enough to train myself for it adequately. So here i am, 10 days away from the course. Awfully underprepared. Quite anxious. Blessed with a back that is not the best in the world. But still, looking forward to the 28-day slog-fest that is in store. Hoping to pull through. And hoping that my body does not have other plans...

Thadiyendamol

Peak-a-boo


Pooja (Mani's wife) minutes before she fell off the edge!..

The trip didn't get jinxed as i had feared in the previous post. But if you head up to the Thadiyendamol peak assuming that you'll find water in the forests close by you're fucked. Myself and Mani had to do go down half the way to fetch pails of water (for vodka, noodles/soup, plain consumption, in that order of priority). Should've listened to Aroon (http://www.arunwho.com/). He had asked us to fill water supplies on the way up...Anyways alls well that ends well (assuming that the nagging pain in my knee would go away in time!)..

Went with friends from college and some others they knew. The crowd had people that covered the entire gamut of the 'talking' spectrum...one extremely garrulous kind...one extremely silent kind...and others somewhere in between. Was good fun...Camped at the peak, ate, drank and made merry...Spoke late into the night...conversation strewn with 'profound' statements like "Hinduism is a way of life"(contributor - Gaurav, if you know him you'll also know that only alcohol can make him say things like this), "Evolution is bullshit. Someone should've created all these things" (contributor - Aroon, i know he'll say this even now)...

On the way back, Aroon helped the cause of future trekkers by making the huge boulder beside the trail to the stream, conspicously spell out (a little wrongly) the magic word "WATR". The meticulous Mani, in his blog (http://freevudu.blogspot.com/), as expected, has written a checklist for future Thadiyendamol visitors.

My camera ran out of batteries, so couldnt take too many pictures. Aroon has posted some pics he took here

Thanneer thanneer (Water water) - A Trek gone wrong..

('Thanneer thanneer' is a tamil movie about a village that runs out of potable water and how it's people deal with it...some flee, some, like the female lead 'saritha' hang on and fight it out).

Now, moving into context, i had gone to this place called Varadapalayam falls(more popularly
called 'Tada falls') last weekend. This place is some 95 km from chennai, in the mountain ranges
enroute Kalahasthi. Had gone there with three of my collegues. For one of them(Binu), this was the 15th trip to this place. (His urge to find the source of this waterfall borders on being obsession!). I've gone there once before (again, with Binu). The objective of this trip was, as always, to trek to the source of the waterfalls.

Linga temple (our base-camp site) is a 9km trek from the closest motorable point. Doing this
after dark was fairly spooky. We were barked at by a bunch of dogs (i am no fan of dogs, domesticated or otherwise!).We saw a couple of snakes, one dead and harmles, another alive and deadly (it is called 'kattuvarean' in tamil, Krait in English, has rings in it's body and it is told that if it bites you, u die before counting it's rings, which are 21 in number). Every footprint looked like some animal's pug-mark. When u walk in a forest at 11 in the night, u suspect even the breeze!. We reached Linga temple at 11:30 pm. We pitched our tent right next to a clear stream. This forest is home to Bears, Leopards, Foxes and Wild Boars (ok, Wild Boars are really less dangerous than stray dogs). We heard enough sounds at night to suggest that the stream had a big visitor that night.(next time, we would'nt be camping next to a stream).

The objective of camping on Friday night was to start our trek to the source early on Saturday, but that was not to be. We got into the stream, started swimming and lazing around. Finally it took a water-snake (or Mani's imagination of it's existence in that stream) to drive us out. We finally set out at 11:30 am, with 12kg backpacks on our backs and 2 litres of water per head. We were sure of finding the source before running out of our 8 litres' supply (big mistake!).

We met the Linga-temple pujari. He told us we could never reach the source if we follow the stream (that much we knew already, it ends in a vertical unscaleable rock wall!).He suggested an alternative trail we could take to go where we wanted to go. We took that trail (if you can call an extremely rocky terrain with a 70 degree gradient for most parts a 'trail'!!). After a 3 hour toil and a few incidents we reached a man-made wall(which the pujari mentioned, so our spirits soared up a couple of inches). Binu named the trail upto this point the pujari-trail. (the landmarks he has named in Tada include Blue-lagoon, Needle falls, Green mile, Linga temple).
We climbed onto the other side of the wall. The other side was a fairly flat surface leading upto a sheer fall.

It was extremely windy up there.(it was so windy that one of the guys - Ashwani - refused to stand up!).It was fun to face the wind though. The only way to go from there was to turn left and vaguely head to the point where we thought the mountain spring could be. After going a few metres, we met an old man and a lady. He said the man-made wall was built by Britishers and that there was a fort on top. He also showed us a proper trail that started a few metres
from there, and said that the source was a 15 minutes' trek along that trail. He said that there was a pool kindof thing with neck-deep water. We got excited. In our minds we were already there. We started taking longer breaks and much longer sips from our dwindling supply of water. In one of the breaks we even discussed strategy for getting into the pool (cos the pujari had warned us against getting into the pool on top). I would go in first and swim the whole stretch and assess the depth at various points. One of us would always stand guard with a rope ready in case things should go awry.(So much for precaution!!)Also, the point where we met the old man was named 'old-man's point' and the trail 'old man's trail'.

Beyond this, the trek played out into a regular unguided trek. We kept following the trail. After a point there was no trail. We kept heading towards a deep gorge (that looked like the only likely place to house a water-body). And then we got lost, we walked in circles, and worst of all we did not have enough water to camp there for the night. Our plan was to reach the source, camp next to it on Saturday night and head back down on Sunday morning. Our backup plan,
should we not find the source on saturday, was to camp wherever we were at dusk and continue the search on Sunday morning. We had not planned for a scenario where we would run out of water. We needed water to cook and ofcourse to drink, and it was getting late, and we did not want to do that trail back after dark. We decided to turn back. We took a different trail
down, which was fairly more gradual and simple and ofcourse longer. After coming down, we had to do the 9 km walk again to reach the road. We were luckily offered a lift by a civil contractor there, to the nearest village(Varadapalayam). That leg was the most risky think i did that day, i was sitting on a thin steel rod on a tanker attached to a Tractor and was
clinging on to the rod (and to dear life) with my feet on another steel rod connecting the tractor to the tanker. At reachable distances, to my left and right were two huge tractor tyres!!This was a 25km ride, and was fun!!

This was an extremely strenuous, energy sapping trek, unsuccesful at that. I had an amazing time all the same. Next time we would be carrying 4 litres of water per head, and wouldnt indulge in premature celebrations, and maybe we'd actually reach the source! Lessons learnt...