The Chopta Trails

---- THE CHOPTA TRAILS ----

“The long distance hiker,

A breed set apart,

From the likes of the usual pack

He’ll shoulder his gear, be hittin’ the trail

Long gone, long ‘fore he’ll be back”

MJ Eberhart

Ever since the first pictures of snow covered mountains and valleys started spamming my social media walls, I made up my mind to do a Himalayan trek as early as possible. Putting aside New year to spend time with family, I decided to take a break from work on the 2nd week of Jan and registered for the Chopta trek.

This wasn’t my first rodeo in the Himalayas, so had a fair idea on what I was going to face going so early in the year. Not surprisingly, I found out only 3 people had registered for the trek, one of them being a college friend.

Meh.

I’m a guy who runs around the country alone. 3 is like a crowd.

So here’s how it went

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The path was an easy climb with a few chai shops here and there. The trail bended through a forest of silver oak and rhododendrons trees. After a hike of 3kms, we reached the Deoriatal camp. A quick lunch later, we proceeded to the lake nearby. From here we got a brilliant view of the Chaukambha peak. According to the locals, the lake is believed to be the "Indra Sarovar" referred to in the Puranas by wandering Hindu mendicants.

An early sunset and a quick plummet in mercury, I returned to my tent and crept into my sleeping bag with a plan to get up late night to do some night photography. Unfortunately, a cloudy sky hid all the twinkling stars and the results were not very impressive.

“If not today, maybe tomorrow” I thought.

That was pretty much the last night I was able to take my DSLR out of my bag for the entire trek.

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A breakfast and a small brief about the day’s path (which in retrospection, I should have listened more carefully), we merry bunch of 5 set off with little idea that this was going to be the most difficult day of the trek.

The path was easy in the beginning. Green meadows, bright sunshine, intermittent 4G signal, it was almost like a walk in the park. I had messaged one of my previous trek mates this trek was very easy compared to the Kuari pass trek which we had done in Feb last year.

Then came the paths covered with foot deep snow. The temperatures were dropping and we were still pretty far from our next camp. We trudged ahead, slowly with heavy steps with hope that the path gets better ahead.

Close to nightfall and out of the tree line, we came across the concrete road which meant we were approaching our base camp soon. Unfortunately, the road turned out to be a curse in disguise. It was entirely covered with an almost invisible layer of thin ice. Atleast when we were trudging in the snow, we had a grip of sorts. It was almost impossible to walk on the ice road without taking baby steps. To add to our woes, temperatures had dropped to sub-zero and we had to rely on head torches.

Now like I said before, this wasn’t my first rodeo in the Himalayas. But somewhere in that road, I lost it a little.

I saw the glimmering head torch light of my trek leader who was walking quite a distance ahead. From that distance, the lights made it look like some sign of civilization was ahead. Almost like a mirage. But on reaching there, I realized I was just imagining it. In addition to this, I started hearing drum beats and some form of music directly below the road we were taking. To top it off with a cherry on top, I started randomly laughing for absolutely no reason and started spooking my team mates. The lack of oxygen was messing with my head and I semi consciously baby stepped ahead.

After what seemed like eternity, we approached civilization. The camp owner, knowing our plight readily offered us rooms instead of the usual tents. I would have dropped to my knees and worshipped him if I had any energy left. A hot dinner later, I tucked into my extremely comfortable blanky, thanked the stars, remembered it was my birthday, questioned my sanity and slept off.

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Day 5: Take me Home, Country roads / John Denver

Location: Rishikesh

To be honest, after the events of the last four days, I didn’t even mind the bumpiness of the drive back to Rishikesh. There was a tinge of sadness to leave this spectacular place, but at the point of time, I would have killed for a hot water bath and fresh clothes.

We were greeted by the familiar light of the Laxman Jhula as we approached Rishikesh late in the afternoon. Bidding farewell to the rest of the team and with memories to cherish for a lifetime, I happily crawled to the hostel.

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Epilogue:

Thanks to TTH, the trek leaders, guides, cooks and helpers for making this a memorable birthday trip. These memories will be cherished forever.

Trek leaders: Manu Rawat and Shankar Bhandari

Trek team: Sandy, Sharan, Tejas

Until next time,

Sandeep Venkatachalam

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