Skip to main content

In the Land of Gods – 2

From NIM, Uttarkashi
“I’M IN MY PRIME, THERE’S NO GOAL TOO FAR / NO MOUNTAIN TOO HIGH,” says a quote from Wilma Rudolf, displayed on the campus of the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering (NIM) at Uttarkashi in the Uttarakhand state of India.    
Uttarkashi was the base camp of our Himalayan trekking simply because our tour manager has a resort in that place.  The resort consists of permanent tents which look like temporary ones.  The look is important.  We live in a world that gives much importance to looks.  The hospitality, however, was of 5-star standard.  The resort can indeed boast of a high standard.  My students were happy with the facilities provided there.  They love appearances.  Illusions are real at the age of 16 or 17.
Our bus backtracked from here
What I wanted, however, was the rough trekking and the challenge it would provide to my aging body.  We started our journey from the star-class resort in Uttarkashi toward Gangotri by the two buses that we had hired from Delhi.  One of the buses could not cross the narrow, rugged road in the mountains.  Our tour manager ordered for three Tata Sumos in its place and we continued the journey, and reached Gangotri by early evening. 
The trekking began on Wednesday morning after breakfast.  Our journey from Delhi had started on Sunday at 10.30 pm.  We had already travelled 500 km by bus– from our school to Gangotri. 
We were given packed lunch.  There was a roll of toilet tissue delivered along with the lunch packet.  “You’ll need this at Bhojbasa, our halt tonight,” said the tour manager as his men distributed the tissue rolls.  I had not imagined how much it would come in handy when I thrust the roll into my rucksack.
Bhojbasa is 18 km from Gangotri, at a height of about 12,000 feet from MSL.  We started ascending the trail after breakfast.  It was not a difficult walk, in fact.  If you walk at a steady pace, trekking of this sort is not very arduous.  You should have a mind that thinks that you are still in your prime even if you are not.  The mind works miracles.  The body is an illusion.
I found the trek interesting.  In fact, I could have reached Bhojbasa in about 3 hours.  But I took about 5 hours because I was bringing up the rear.  I reached along with the last group of students.  But I wanted to prove to myself something.  So I continued to climb after leaving all the students safely in the temporary tents set up by our tour manager and his assistants.  I was glad to get the company of an equally spirited colleague, Mr S K Sharma.  We walked together toward Gomukh.  Gomukh is just 4 km from Bhojbasa.  We walked and talked – both casually.  And we covered 3 km easily.  We would have reached Gomukh easily had it not been for the darkness that was setting in. 
The next morning we took our students to Gomukh.  In spite of the assurance given by two teachers who had crossed 50 years in age and had climbed three-quarters of the distance the previous evening, most students refused to climb any further than Bhojbasa.  One-third of the students chose to make the ascent. 
Real climbing has no short cuts.  But how many people actually want to climb REALLY?  We live in a world of short cuts.
Bhojbasa might have dispirited the students to some extent, especially since they have been used to extremely easy life since their birth.  Bhojbasa greeted us with freezing winds.  It was with much difficulty that we managed to put up the tents fighting against the wind and the frozen fingers.  A few students started vomiting due to the unfamiliar atmosphere.  Quite many had headache.  I too had a headache.  The revolt in my stomach was quite palpable too.  There were no toilets in Bhojbasa.  “The whole area is open to you,” said one of the waiters in the sick-looking “tourist home.”  The roll of toilet tissue gasped for breath in my rucksack.  I chose to ascend the mountain further rather than pull out the tissue roll.
A policeman came after Mr Sharma and me.  He had to make sure that we were not terrorists going at the odd hour toward Gomukh! 
Perhaps, what Gomukh needs is not a police force, but a set of toilets so that trekkers and pilgrims won’t desecrate the holy place in the morning.  I would suggest that the Uttarakhand government should construct some kind of accommodation in Bhojbasa and also restrict the number of trekkers and pilgrims.  The Himalayas deserve that at the least.

At NIM, Uttarkashi

Comments

  1. Replies
    1. Yes, Deepak, some serious action is required; otherwise we will continue to pollute the Ganga right at its source and also pollute the pristine Himalayas.

      Delete
  2. My interest is mounting..hope there's more soon!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Amit. I can continue; but I think I should halt for now!

      Delete
  3. Sir, NIM is a treat, I learnt mountaineering from that place. Why were the students taken there? Did they get a chance to see the museum? And the 3D movie which they've made to educate the kids about the Himalayas?
    It's sad to see that students are only superficially enthusiastic about such stuff. When it actually comes down to doing it, they back off.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sid, since Bhojbasa turned out to be rather hostile we had to cut short our stay there by one day. That extra day was utilised for visiting NIM and the famous Shiv Temple in Uttarkashi, the temple with Shiva's trident.

      Delete
  4. You have lot more grey hair than when I last saw you, two years ago!

    I'll respond in detail to your series, after you conclude it.

    RE

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Growing in wisdom, aren't I? That's why the grey hairs!

      I have concluded the series, Raghuram. If I write more about it, I'll write certain things that are quite unsavoury for many people!

      A famous Malayalam poet wrote:
      "Light is sorrow, my son,
      Darkness is solace."

      The less you see, the better - it seems. I have seen the various shades of greed of all kinds of people!

      Delete
  5. Very nice blog post. I've been to Uttarkashi and the place is great to unwind yourself and enjoy a memorable trip. Apart form it, it offers various adventure sports activities. Get to know about various hotels in Uttarkashi offering warm and comfortable stay.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Second Crucifixion

  ‘The Second Crucifixion’ is the title of the last chapter of Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’s magnum opus Freedom at Midnight . The sub-heading is: ‘New Delhi, 30 January 1948’. Seventy-three years ago, on that day, a great soul was shot dead by a man who was driven by the darkness of hatred. Gandhi has just completed his usual prayer session. He had recited a prayer from the Gita:                         For certain is death for the born                         and certain is birth for the dead;                         Therefore over the inevitable                         Thou shalt not grieve . At that time Narayan Apte and Vishnu Karkare were moving to Retiring Room Number 6 at the Old Delhi railway station. They walked like thieves not wishing to be noticed by anyone. The early morning’s winter fog of Delhi gave them the required wrap. They found Nathuram Godse already awake in the retiring room. The three of them sat together and finalised the plot against Gand

The Final Farewell

Book Review “ Death ends life, not a relationship ,” as Mitch Albom put it. That is why, we have so many rituals associated with death. Minakshi Dewan’s book, The Final Farewell [HarperCollins, 2023], is a well-researched book about those rituals. The book starts with an elaborate description of the Sikh rituals associated with death and cremation, before moving on to Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and finally Hinduism. After that, it’s all about the various traditions and related details of Hindu final rites. A few chapters are dedicated to the problems of widows in India, gender discrimination in the last rites, and the problem of unclaimed dead bodies. There is a chapter titled ‘Grieving Widows in Hindi Cinema’ too. Death and its rituals form an unusual theme for a book. Frankly, I don’t find the topic stimulating in any way. Obviously, I didn’t buy this book. It came to me as quite many other books do – for reasons of their own. I read the book finally, having shelv

Vultures and Religion

When vultures become extinct, why should a religion face a threat? “When the vultures died off, they stopped eating the bodies of Zoroastrians…” I was amused as I went on reading the book The Final Farewell by Minakshi Dewan. The book is about how the dead are dealt with by people of different religious persuasions. Dead people are quite useless, unless you love euphemism. Or, as they say, dead people tell no tales. In the end, we are all just stories made by people like the religious woman who wrote the epitaph for her atheist husband: “Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.” Zoroastrianism is a religion which converts death into a sordid tale by throwing the corpses of its believers to vultures. Death makes one impure, according to that religion. Well, I always thought, and still do, that life makes one impure. I have the support of Lord Buddha on that. Life is dukkha , said the Enlightened. That is, suffering, dissatisfaction and unease. Death is liberation

Cats and Love

No less a psychologist than Freud said that the “time spent with cats is never wasted.” I find time to spend with cats precisely for that reason. They are not easy to love, particularly if they are the country variety which are not quite tameable, and mine are those. What makes my love affair with my cats special is precisely their unwillingness to befriend me. They’d rather be in their own company. “In ancient time, cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this,” Terry Pratchett says. My cats haven’t, I’m sure. Pratchett knew what he was speaking about because he loved cats which appear frequently in his works. Pratchett’s cats love independence, very unlike dogs. Dogs come when you call them; cats take a message and get back to you as and when they please. I don’t have dogs. But my brother’s dogs visit us – Maggie and me – every evening. We give them something to eat and they love that. They spend time with us after eating. My cats just go away without even a look af