New bed does not allow you to sleep late. Yes, by 6 o'clock in the morning we were all up n well not running but peacefully sitting. As discussed in the night before, we were supposed to leave by 7. The cold was not very killing except the tap water. Since it was going to be a lot of work we did not put on much clothes. We started off on GD's call. GD, our trekking guide, was a fairly young and handsome guy, equipped with well, not much, but a radio for directions and entertainment. We were on our track by 7:30.
It was a bright sunny day. The beauty in the mountains is the clarity of vision. The air is co clean that you can
see miles with out a blur. We didn't get a feel of where we were staying the day before. It was too foggy to look around. It was really a beautiful site. We started off with a slow pace. The route was not very steep, about 20 deg or so. The track went through forests of huge pine trees. I noticed for the first time the sources of the water supply in the habitats down the slope. What these people do is to make some kind of reservoir up in the mountains to hold the ground water and then carry them to their houses using pipes. We could hear the hissing of tiny leaks in many of such pipes laid around us. The road was suitable for a Jeep. GD told that its possible to reach Sandakphu also by Jeep, but the experience we are going to have is only possible by walking.
About half an hour had passed. We started t
o feel the hardwork we had to do in our limbs and bones. We had a small water break and started again. But there was a potential problem peeking on us. As I stepped up, I could not see Sinha and Sjit as well. I called out for them, and the answer was not promising. Sinha shouted that sjit is down and is taking rest. "You move on, we are coming.". Well, I started again, but with a hint of worry about Sjit. I know he had been to rough places, but was not quite sure about his ability to undergo this coming stress. And even if a single person in the group collapses, I dont know what to do next. At that point of time it was only hope. Got the sight of Sjit taking small and slowsteps, no word no lookback. All he knew then was that he needs to keep moving.
In about an hour w
e reached Chitrey, our first tea spot. We have almost reached the top of the hill that we were climbing so far. It was a moderate flta hiltop, with a little vegetation above grass level. We were having a cup of tea there. The tea, if call it like that was aweful, it merely tasted like one. Though I am not a reguller sipper, I can sense this much. Anyway, the good part was, it had water. We also filled our bottles. There were some big Chicks over there. Arka was terrified about birdflu :-). And It seemed that thay knew about our fears. Never bothered about our irritations and kept on looking for biscuit fragments. We took rest for about 10-15 mins there and moved on.
After walking a while suddenly we noticed something bright
shining above the horizon. My God! that was the Kanchendzonga, possibly the most beautiful mountain range int the world. This was my first sight of the same, and it was amazing. I started feeling the thrill in my heart. All of a suddent our tempo rose up and up. It was so exciting to see the peak from that distance, I could not imagine how it is going to be when I shall look at it from Sandakphu. Everyone got energized once more. We had reached the top of the current mountain. Now there was a decent descent ahead before we climb again. Still 27 kms to go before we slip.
Troubles never stops chasing anybody. Whatever you do, whereever you go, sometime or other... bang!!
gotcha. This time it was Sinha for whom our last minute purchase of a handy rope came really handy. His rooksack was undergoing heavy stress and could not bear it. So we had to tie the lower portion up to make sure it doesn't fall apart. We did this while Bomba, Sjit had energy drinks at a tea stall at Lamayedhura. I was telling arka about how he can make use of this trip to impress his dream girl. He did not seem to be very excited and was evident from his favourite remark *** ****.(Censored for sanity). Prasoon always poses as a habildar, I dont know why, look at him! Arka was looking around to find out how powerful my new binocular is. Until GD shouted "Hoy... Hoy...", meaning "What? Move on...".
For a while we got plain land on the mountain top. There wasnt much rise, more or less peaceful walk we were having. We reached Meghma. M
eghma had a border checkpost of India. There was also a buddhist Gumpha, we waited a while there. I was taking snapshots infront of the Gumpha. As I mentioned earlier, Sjit was moving slow, and hence we asked him to move ahead of us so that he doesnt get left behind. From meghma there are two routes. One on the right goes to Tonglu, and the other one is header towards Gairibas, via Tumling. We were supposed to take the second one. As instructed by GD, we, I mean me, Bomba, Sinha, Arka & Prasoon moved on. After a
while, suddenly thought of sjit came along. We could not see him neither ahead of us nor behind us. We started to worry, he might have taken the Tonglu route. We had to stop for a while for GD to come and tell us that Sjit had moved far ahead of us in the correct route. So it was walk once again. The air was getting colder, we had reached about 2900 meters. There we met two local guys. They said, it snows often at this height. But we were lucky that there was no snow at that time. In fact, they told that there was no snowfall throughout the winter this year. We came accross a few smal streams. At about 12:30 we reached Tumling. Sjit wat waiting for us.
The air was getting colder as clouds started covering the mountains. We were almost inside the clouds. The wet sensation was reminding us abo
ut the cold all the time. I could not help taking a sprinkle to wash my hair n head. It was pretty cool in both the senses. We had quite a marvellous lunch there. We had Rice, Dal, Couliflower, Tamarind pickle Ghee etc etc. And to the tired and hungry fellows it was like 'Amrit'. We had enough. After about an hour or so, it was time to start again. We had still about 9 kms left to go. We started from Tumling after resting for one hour. As we moved on the fog started to become denser. After sometime, it was hardly possible to look down at the valley. Bomba was complaining about the clouds getting into his head :-) We were in good mood again. I was singing along and walking crisply. We found a sideway at one place leading to a hanging cliff. Me and Sinha decided to look down from there. It was amazing, looking straight down to may be a km. One f
all from there and you will be at your destiny without a pinch. Some of us had a cup of tea at Jaubari, a small halt on the route. The next day was the Tibetan new year called 'Loshar'. The signs of celebration were visible everywhere. The route ahead was totally descent. We already started to feel that descending is really tougher and more pinful than climbing up. Sjit was far away... he started early as before. We were amazed by this kid my then. Nobody thought that he will be the first person to reach our Day 1 destination. As it is said, 'Slow but steady wins the race', is exctly what we could see there. He never talked or looked back. Me, Sinha, Arka Prasoon all of us are in search of opportunity to have little chit chat and all in between. It slowed down us a lot. Anyway, we were having fun ! :-) As the fog got denser we started to feel eerie about the hill track. Who knows if we are lost or not. There is no sign of GD or Sjit in front of us. May be we are in some wrong route. There is nothing that could help us here. No cell network nothing. We did not know about the frequency of wild animal there, but it was not absolutely impossible too. Good news is nothing happened. About after 3
hrs or so, we were near some habitats. After a little enquiry we found out that it was indeed our destination for the day, Gairibas. We walked a few yards more and could see the Rooksacks of our companions, Sjit n GD. Yoo Sjit, he made it first. There was nothing to fear anymore, at least for the time being. It was about 4:30 pm in the afternoon. Still we had sunlight, strong enough to prevent us from lying in our hut beds. Bomba was determined to enjoy the warmth of rag and did so. Rest of us were just having a walk around. This was a nice place. There was no civilian houses or enything. Gairibas is about army posts, forest inspection bunglow and our hut only. It was still misty weather. Sight of cloudes passing by the Magnolia was simply heavenly. We just sat in the terrace of our hut and kept looking at the misty nature for a while. It was awesome. I never felt so much happy ever before. All the pain of waking the day long seemed nothing. I just wanted to forget everything else in the world.
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