A few days ago I returned from a 20 day expedition through the Northeast Himalayas.
When the possibility of hiking in the Himalayas was first suggested by my host father it sounded like an offhand comment. And I readily said yes, in that American, or maybe more accurately Southern way, in which since I don't believe something is going to happen, I agree to it. But that sort of agreement does not translate here. The following weekend, I joined him and 6 other people for sprints and push ups and crab-walking in a park by Hussein Sagar.
The weekend after that at five o'clock in the morning we met 40 km outside of the city in a village called Bhongir to hike around an old fortress.
We spent the whole day climbing up and down stairs. Literaly. You see, as I came to learn, I had joined with a serious hiking club. Not only are they hikers, they practice martial arts, do hyatha yoga, scuba dive, and explore wildlife sanctuaries all over India. They are serious. They are fit. And the idea was that we would be too.
I started to have doubts. For one, I had only been in India 2 weeks. Two, I have never been hiking in the US, so why should I start now. Three, I am terrified of heights.
I can't really say what it was that made me say 'Yes' definitively, buy a train ticket and start searching for gloves and wool socks. But I think it happened somewhere in Bhongir. Somewhere between seeing my first monkey in the wild and crawling down to see a lone lotus flower floating in the recesses of a pond.
But even after packing, even on the train to Dehli, I didn''t really understand what was happening or really, what was going to happen. In truth, I had very little information about the particulars. Because I don't speak Hindi or Telugu, I have to rely on translation for any and all information. Sometimes there is a translator and sometimes there isn't. Plus, translation is often a notorious paraphrase, and sometimes pertinent information like 'bring two pairs of gloves' or 'book your train ticket well in advance so your bunk gets confirmed' was left out.
To be honest, it was only at the end of the trip that I realized what we had just done.
The train from Dehli was the beginning, and the first time I had been on an Indian train. They are strikingly similar to the Russian platz-kart; a long narrow corridor with bunks along the windows and thin walls separate each compartment of 8 beds. The group was big - around 40 or 50 people - all from Bangalore. The organization we went through - Adventure Sports Association of India - is based there, so along with the 15 or so members there were 25 high school to college aged girls that had heard about the trip through their schools and friends.
I am unable to tell the age of Indian men and women. I have no scale. So I was constantly assuming that sixteen year-olds were really my age and that 20 year olds were 15.
The train ride was long 26 hours, straight up the center of the country. In Dehli we changed to a local train and went north to Chendigarh. Then there was an exchange to a bus that drove us by night into the mountains so that we reached Kuulu and Manali, small resort towns at the base of the Himalayas by the next morning.
The farther North we traveled the more clothing and snacks and items we shed, and the more the group began to feel like an adult summer camp. Groups of friends started to form and songs were sung on the bus, not only by the teenagers but led by the men. As the altitude rose and the air thinned, every one started laughing and talking about glaciers and how we would stay warm and what we would be doing.
In Manali, we stopped at an ashram to take the last shower we would have for 17 days and whittle down our belonging to one pack of 8 kilos. And then we drove up along the official state highway. Because of the remoteness and the grade of the terrain, the road is impossible to maintain. There are constant avalanches and rock slides and from Oct to May the entire road and area is closed because of snowfall. So along a serpentine, one-way road we went.
And then down into a rocky, grey valley without trees or towns or people. At night, in the rain we reached Batal, which was to be our first camp.
The next 15 days kind of merge into one long sequence in my head and this post is already long winded and windy. It took a few days to get acclimatized to the altitude and cold. Batal was at around 14,000 feet, which was not so noticeable in a bus. However, the next morning (and about the next 7 mornings), I couldn't see clearly when I woke up and when I tried to stand and walk my legs swerved and snaked. I had headaches and couldn't breathe fully. And the strangest thing of all, with only 40% of the regular oxygen, I couldn't recall the basic names of people or things. When I was asked to sing an English song, I couldn't think of the lyrics to "Hard Days Night".
Some days we stayed in camp and played cards and snuck off to a dhaba (a small, roadside, or in this case cliffside, hut for food and tea) to drink tea and eat the coveted roti. You see, we had to carry everything we needed, so food was boiled down to dal' and rice and later only dehydrated upma and rice pilaf. So, at the sight of a shepherds tea or dhaba, we (meaning the less-disciplined youth and all the older men) began to calculate how many bars of chocolate and packs of cookies we needed till the next stop.
And some days we walked. Sometimes up hill for 16 km, sometimes we scaled up to 15,500 ft (Humpta Pass) and they descended into a valley of marshlands and lost trails. And sometimes it was downhill and it was raining and we fell in mud and skidded down rock faces.
Was I happy to get a bath after seventeen days? Most definitely. And I was happy to eat something green, to change my socks, to feel hot water. But the moment we walked into Manali, I felt this surge of anger. As shops and businesses started to multiple and divide into a street, then two, then 7, then a whole city, I started to feel this compression of pollution and noise and advertisements and stares. And a bigger part of me, a part that had been incubating for 17 days and had only now just woken up to what happened and where I was wanted to turn around and walk backwards.
***
I know I haven't mentioned the people or much of the actual events of the hike. This is for a few reasons. One, the hike was a serious of small events that are hard to describe in words. Luckily, there are photos. As for the people, I interviews and recorded the songs and jokes and stories of many of the people on the trip, and I will be posting snippets and edits soon. Also, I have a feeling that these people, or at least a select few, will be part of continuing adventures in the future and writing about them now feels like I am laying to rest something in its nascent form.
For all photos, look here: http://picasawe
For now its back to Hyderabad, a city I feel I know way too little about, and classes and this apartment that is starting, ever so slowly, to look and feel like a home.
