Himalayan Trek – Day 3 – Chandertal to Topkogongma – An ardous journey

Day 3 started on a chilly note. All of us got up by 7am, finished our routine duties and breakfast and were ready to move out by 8 pm.

Today’s trekking terrain was to be different. We were not going to go through set roads. It was going to be uphill-downhill all the way, something that the guide called, “pagdandiyan“. We started off at a decent pace, but the uphills were coming thick and fast and we were already starting to slow down 45 minutes into the day’s walk. Sham was trekking on an empty stomach and I don’t think the rest of us were feeling that strong anyways. Pranitha was in her new shoes taken from Sham, and was still adjusting; we made slow but steady progress.

From mud-hills, the terrain started to turn rocky. Infact, we had to do one uphill on an extremely rocky surface and it demanded most of the strength that we had. We plodded through the climb, huffing and puffing hard. It took us nearly an hour to climb that stretch.

Rinku, our guide, always used to be a couple of hills ahead of us, which we often used to find frustrating:). Anyways, this time he was ahead of us for a good reason. There was a mountain stream up ahead which he was not aware of earlier….it had appeared suddenly – a common occurence in the mountains. The water level was increasing very fast, and he was urging all us to move quickly, so that we could cross that stream safely. However, we were least bothered, concentrating on just trying to breathe!!!!

Anyways, we tried to hurry up as fast as we could and reached the “pagal nullah”, as these sudden mountain streams are called. It looked like cement all over the place! We managed to clear the stream OK, though some of us did get our shoes and pants wet and mucky in the process.

After this, we just kept walking and walking. The terrain was mostly rocky – sometimes a pebble ridden path and sometimes those huge boulders that we had to navigate through. The sun was shining down hard and the wind used to pick up on and off. The body was confused whether to feel hot or to feel cold:)!!!

Lunch happened at around 1 pm. After all those uphills, our legs were literally giving away. We did not know that the best, or should I say the worst, was yet to come. We had lunch on the top of a hill, and I still can hear Pranitha vehemently expressing with the choicest expletives – “I don’t want to be blown away while having lunch!!” Yup – it was extremely windy and cold on the hill top – a perfect lunch setting indeed!. Sham and I hardly ate anything. Lunch got over quickly – anyways it was not too cosy up there – and we moved on. It had been 5 hours since we had started in the morning and apparently, we weren’t even half way!

And then started arguably what was the one of the most physically and mentally strenuous walking stretches in the trek. We had to cross over a huge hill by walking on a ridge made on the face of the hill. The width of the trail path was just enough to plant one feet at a time. The mud under the feet used to give away at the least pressure!. And to our left there either was a dizzying fall down to the rocks or to the river below (We had to concentrate so much that I even forgot to take pics here)! It became so much that all of us started thinking , for the first time seriously, if coming on this trek was a big mistake:) . This stretch continued for close to 3 painful hours and we were drained of energy.

And our guide was very “unsmart” to remark “Dar ke aage jeet hai” when we complained to him on how tricky that stretch was! Even worse, in those three hours, it seems we covered only about 1.5 kms and therefore we still had around 4-5 kms to cover. It was 5 pm in the evening and getting late! The pic below shows the trail that we came through ….

We mustered up whatever energy was left and continued to walk – uphill – downhill – uphill – downhill. In between we also had to cross a tricky stretch of snow. Our eyes were aching to see the camp:( and whenever we would ask the guide how much more, the same old line – “just a few kms” more … all of us were starting to fret! We kept walking and walking and phew! we finally saw camp:). By the time we reached it, it was close to 7:30 pm…Our guide claims that on average groups had completed this stretch in 7 hours and our 11 hours was a new (obviously notorious) record! We disagree with him as in our opinion the distance was close to 18 kms and not 12 as he claims…

We had walked for almost 11 hours this day and there was not even an ounce of energy left…not even to chew food. As a formality we ate something; Sham managed to down a little bit of food finally…all the rest of us munched on some food. It was 8:30 pm and time to retire.

We hardly had 8 hours to sleep. We had to get up pretty early the next day! Day 4 was the next most adventurous thing that we did in the trek…..we had to cross 20 meters of the body numbing cold river, Topkogongma, at 6 AM in the morning . The river was there, right in front of us; all night we could hear the water gushing by at full force; even thinking of the river crossing would send chills through us…..What happened on the morning of Day 4 was more than what we had bargained for…

I guess its right when they say that these treks “Build Character”…