Sin-la (18,500 ft), Adi-Kailash Parvat - Jaulingkong to Bidang!


Starting off towards Sin-la in the drizzle and mist

Satish looking back at the Jippus and Jaulingkong.

This is what the ITBP call 'flat as a football ground'!!

Appa and Narayan trudging up a steep shortcut, with GauriKund in the background

Gopal and the Jippus - how did they manage to climb these 'natural stairs'?!

The Adi-Kailash parvat (the first abode of Shiva) and its massive glaciers

Resting at one of the false passes - how on earth are we going to get to the top of this one!?

Appa and Jaswant - we've come a long way, but miles to go before we sleep!

The jippu's taking a well-earned rest.

We finally see Sin-la!! (and lots more scree to get past first!)

Looking ahead at Sin-la - will we ever get there!?

Walking over the glacier - we hardly realised we were walking on ice till we got to this point as the glacier is completely covered in black scree!
FINALLY - we were at 18,500ft at Sin-la with the Jaulingkong valley behind us and the beautiful Dharma Valley lying ahead (not that we could see a thing with all the mist and snow!)

The only snap we have of the descent from Sin-la! Srikant, me tagging along, ji, Narayan and Tha followed by appa and Jaswant. Vc and Jasram-ji were ahead of us looking desparately for any signs of a path!

Putting up our tents on the cricket/volleyball 'field' of the ITBP at Bidang

This was much later chronologically - but just wanted to get some snaps of sinla online! It had rained all night, so we woke up to a grey, dull day. We were up at 4am, but it was too dark and rainy so we slept for a few hours more. Vc rushed off to the tea shop to find the jippus being loaded, so he woke us up in a hurry!
It was then a 18 km walk up to sinla and down over the pass to Bidang. Mr Panwar Singh Kuttiyal and gopal, with the jippus, guided us up the mountianside, to the false passes, over the glacier and through Sin-la. Looking back we could see the jaulingkong valley, the gauri kund and the Adi-kailash Parvat on the left with its massive glaciers. At the pass, it began to snow as we rested at 18,500 ft, so we began the descent almost immediately (after paranthas, aloo and amul cheese of course!)
Jasram-ji, Jaswant and Narayan guided us down red and black scree of the mountain brilliantly. There was pretty much no path at all, and we slide and scrambled down the loose rocks and scree, struggling not to brain the folks ahead of us with rocks that slipped from beneath our feet! After about two hours of slipping down 4000ft of mountain and scree, we finally reached the maidan having successfully kept left and avoided the uncrossable glacier! I will never forget the relief of being able to see the ITBP camp at Bidang (never mind that it was about 5kms away with about a million switchbacks to cross before we reached the river!)
So now, as we sit a thousand kms away from Sin-la, here's to our guides - Panwar, gopal, Jasram-ji, Jaswant and Narayan! we would never have cross over with them, and of course the hospitable ITBP battalions on either side of Sin-la!
Here's to you - and to all people who live in this beautiful part of the world - may your chai always be 'thaez'! :)

Return to Joshimat and onwards:

Got off to an early start. Loaded luggage onto pony and headed down 13 kms to govindghat.
Had lunch, and didn’t really want to hang around at govindghat with all the flies, so we caught a lorry back to joshimat! We all squeezed into the front with the driver and 2 other. They got us to joshimat, a little shaken but in otherwise fully functional. We wandered around the town, and finally found our lodge. Negociations began to get a sumo to take us all the way to dharchula. We even checked email at joshimat! The sumo deals kept coming and then going. So when we finally went to sleep, ji & vc thought we had cinched a deal, while the rest of us slept fitfully, knowing it had fallen through.

We ended up taking the 7am bus out of Joshimat, to karma prayag, and changed buses to Gwaldham. Rested at the GMVN there, and wandered the one street of the town. Visited the post office a couple of times and bought a Chinese alarm clock that came in pretty handy. (if u want advice on cheap Chinese goods, contact ji or vc)
We were the only guests at the gmvn (apart from a stalker!), so we kindly given a traditional garhwali dinner – Mandwa ki roti, Bhatka-tupkae and more.

Day 6, Day 7, Day 8 – at Ghangaria:

We wandered around ghangaria, acclimatizing for a day. Tha and Gi rested, while Vc, appa and me went off reconnoitering. We saw some beautiful Himalayan redstarts, white-cheeked bulbuls and other birds (Vc has the snaps!) We also discovered the Himalaya Hotel next door had a fantastic cook – he even made us masala dosa. Tha had to teach him how to make the potato masala though!!
The best day yet:
The next morning, after breakfast next door, we set off to the Valley. It’s a steep climb through the village, up to the gate where we got passes for ourselves and cameras. Then, the most beautiful 6km walk in to the valley through the Nanda Devi National Park. The path winds across the river, goes over a small landslide, crosses a jungle-y patch of moss, ferns and lichen covered boughs and then through the evergreens, cedars and cypresses. We collected the bark of the birch – or ‘bhoj patra’ as it is called here – to write letters to friends and family. Definitely made a change from the usual picture postcard!
The first view of the valley is from the side, and we nearly missed seeing the mostly melted snow-bridge, which was dusted with mud and dirt.
Apparently 256 varieties of flora. Grave of Joan Margaret Legge (1805-1939) where appa left his spectacles. Misty clouds float up while we are at brunch, and we put on raincoats in a rush
Feesl like a tiny tiny speck in all of creation
Walked to the valley again. Had the most amazing lunch of Cheese (panner) omlette and bread on the banks/ dry bed of a tributary of the pushpawati river. Ji and tha trek with the pilgrims to Hemkund sahib and collect Brahma kamal (the state flower)

Joshimath, Badrinath, GovindGhat and Ghangaria

We stayed at a hotel run by a Buddhist man who made us dinner, gave us buckets of hot bath water, and woke us up with chai at 5am. Ji and Tha were squeezed into a Dehradun-Badrinath bus at 6, while the rest of us slept at little more/ washed and bathed/ packed some of our bags into a single room. Vc, appa and me managed to get a jeep (with 10 other people and 2 children!) which wound its way up steep and barely existing roads, past the Vishuprayag hydro-electric power project, to Badrinath. A crowded and shop-lined street leads to the bright and colourful temple, and you can get anything from Persian coloured-glass lamps, to plastic Ganesha keychains. Ji and Tha have more stories about Badrinath from the Malayalee priest there!
We just about managed to get a bus back from Badrinath, and got off at Govindghat. A small town long the banks of the river, Govindghat comprises of a large gurudwara, a line of shops selling pilgrim paraphernalia, more hotels and taxi stands and an army of flies! We stayed at the gurudwara with many Sikh pilgrims who were on their way to Hemkund Sahib. With nothing much to do in Govindghat, and an early start ahead, we hit the sack by 8pm!

Next morning, we were all up at 4am, packed, tea-ed and ready for the 13km trek to Ghngaria. We bravely did the first 5kms with all our luggage and tents, and then hired 2 Nepali porters! The going was slow along the steep winding paths and we stopped at Pulna and Bhyundar villages, and started appa and Tha on acetozolomide as we were rapidly going higher and higher into the beautiful mountains. The Eco-Development Committee has fantastic programme that has cleaned up the path and maintains it as well. We walked up with the ponies, pilgrims and porters, amazed at the beauty of the mountains and the rushing river. We stayed at Krishna Place lodge in Gangharia, where we had hot baths, dinner, tea and milk before collapsing into bed.

Along the Alaknanda

It took us a day to get from Haridwar to Joshimat. We hired a sumo and drove up the mountains along the Alaknanda River, past the 5 prayags of the Ganga – Devprayag, Rudraprayag, Nandaprayag, Karnaprayag and Vishuprayag. The winding roads are maintained by the Border Roads Organisation (666) and thanks to them we got to Joshimat in the late evening on Day 3.

Here are some gems from the BRO

IF YOU ARE MARRIED

DIVORCE SPEED

THIS IS NOT A RALLY RACE

DRIVE WITH GRACE

NO RACE, NO RALLY

ENJOY THE BEAUTY OF THE VALLEY

EAGER TO LAST

THEN WHY FAST

FOR SAFE ARRIVING

NO LIQUOR IN DRIVING

MOUNTAINS ARE PLEASURE

IF YOU DRIVE WITH LEISURE

ON THE BEND BE CAREFUL FRIEND

THIS IS HIGHWAY

NOT RUNWAY

Day 0, Day 1 & Day 2

Our trek began on a Sunday morning at 2am. For appa and me atleast. Vijayan chetan (henceforth known as Vc) boarded the train at Calicut on Saturday before lunch, and Reji and Lalitha (Ji and Tha) joined him at Salem that night. So that was Day 0. Appa and me were at Katpadi railway station at 1am on Sunday, and hung around for while before boarding the Kerala Express. The train was crowded, but Ji and Tha were waiting for us at the door, and soon we and our luggage were installed in S9. But we spent most of the day waiting for the TTE to allot us a berth on one waitlisted ticket! Breakfast, lunch, dinner and we were into day 2. We reached New Delhi in the evening, where Srikanth met us and put us into a local train, which was fortunately mostly empty! We had dinner with the interesting ambiance and smell of the crowded platform. Soon we made our escape from the humid heat and dust of Delhi, to the cool foothills of the Himalayas.

A Month in the Mountains

Just home from a month in Uttaranchal with a group of brilliant people :) Snaps are finally on my computer, so we'll be able to share a bit of the beauty with everyone. Here's a sneak peek - a view of the Api-Nampa Range in Nepal. We were on the other side of the Kali river in India resting in a beautiful village called Gunji having walked a whole day to get there from Chhialekh...when the clouds parted and this panorama unfolded. The name Api is Tibetan for Grandmother and the name of its neighbour Nampa is derived from the Tibetan expression gnampa-p'a meaning Holy Father.

And here's my favourite flower - the geranium. Many varieties followed us from the Garhwal Himalayas to Kumaon - purples, violets, pinks and lilacs!