Today was the official start of the
trek as yesterday we didn't walk much. It was 16th of June
and I was reminded of the fact that it was exactly on the the same
day last year that the great calamity took place in this area.
We were all ready by 7AM. The initial
walk was on the well marked trail. We had to cross the river today.
The Sian Gad meets the Bhagirathi somewhere after the village of
Jhala and we had to cross the Sian Gad so that we can come on to the
true left of the river.
Till before last year, teams have been
crossing the river using log bridges, however, this time around all
the bridges had vanished.
When we started our day, the flow of
the river was very high. So the guide decided to climb up the ridge
above the river and see if we could avoid the river crossing.
Unfortunately, he couldn't find any such route and we decided to
cross the river. This was not just crossing one stream, but a series
of small and large stream which we had to cross to start the day for
the hike till Jhadunga.
But Suresh , who was a big help to us
and to our guide suggested that it will be too risky to cross the
river in spate and so we had to find another route. With this, we
started hiking up on the mountain in the forest. The climb was tough
in the hot sun and it seemed never ending. As we climbed, I could a
see a ridge and then another and then another, but could not see any
trail to go down to other side. Our guide would go ahead of us asking
us to wait then after a while asked us to climb behind him. This was
the pattern till we had climbed almost around 600 mts that day. The
porters were behind us and they too were tiring now.
After a while
Suresh came up from behind and called us to climb down as there was
no route further up. The climbing down part was really scary. It was
while we were climbing down, we met Sathya who was attempting the
“Kaala Naag” summit. His party too was stuck on the ridge because
of the missing log bridges on the Sian Gad.
After climbing and waiting, at around
2.30 PM, we descended down to the river bed. The descent was terrible
what with the trail breaking at every step. One of the sections was
so steep that we had to use the rope here.
After a long and
treacherous descent we were at the river bed. The guide decided to
put a camp here itself as the weather had started to turn sour. To
add to our consternation, we could see the now see a log bridge on
this side which we could have easily crossed in the morning to reach
Jadunga. However, we were on the side where we wanted to be.
This was supposed to be an easy day
which turned to be tough due to the unnecessary climbs. But thats
what trekking is all about. A bad trail, a river in spate, a bad
weather can turn your plans topsyturvy. There was no height gain
today, we were at the same altitude and about 300 meters from where
we started. The rest of the evening was spent in talking to Sathya
and checking his maps. We had a fair idea of the route from his maps.
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