As I gazed at the lofty mountains working as the abode of snow, I find my eyes blurry at beholding the wonderous sight. A stream of water flows below, carving its way out of the rocky mountains. To my left is Anuj, left spellbound at the sight all the while attending a meeting on the cosmic waves of space-time, while to my right is Bikram sharing his excitement with family through a video call. Some way ahead are two friends chatting, catching up after being separated by the great snow for more than 6 months. I take it all in, and think back to how things unfolded on our way from Rudraprayag to Auli.
We were moving to the hill top of Auli from Joshimath, with our very energetic driver Dillu. Dillu was basically a Bikram dialled to 9 – super energetic and super extroverted. He had earlier been a trekking instructor and carrier of goods, but has for many years now been ferrying passengers through the mountains. He told us that the place we were going to – CASA Himalaya – was actually a Ski resort. We were actually a bit surprised, and checked online – it was actually a resort. We were apprehensive on the costs, and also saw that our stay for the next day was also at a super costly place. We called up didi, who told us not to worry about the costs.
Wow!
And so we made our way to the resort. One word describes it – amazing! We were very high up in the mountains, and it would be amazing to go during snow times. This was how the rooms looked:
We met up with the local guy in-charge, and had a quick chat with him. Seems like didi had already talked with him early on to take care of us – we were going down in a heavy debt now! We were shown our room, and so the first thing we do is to have some tea. Oh well, this was the view we enjoyed:
After freshening up, on of the local guys told us that there is a temple, and a lake someways up. So we decided to walk uphill towards the unknown that awaits us.
We found the temple first. It was a quaint temple, perched at the edge of the mountain, overlooking all the creatures living below. From the temple we could see Nanda devi very clearly. The rays of the slowly setting Sun illuminated these snow-capped peaks, turning the mountains into mounds of gold. The temple itself was dedicated to Lord Hanuman, and was empty. Cold winds rattled through the windows, as we sat in silence.
Bikram and Anuj wanted to go to the lake. I, on the other hand, had found the spot I came to on this trip – a place to look inside me. The two adventurers moved ahead, while I sat for almost an hour, first in meditation and later uttering philosophical poetry from atleast 3000 years ago. As I chanted to the temple and the shrine, it chanted back to me, immersing me in the wonderous sounds of these mantras.
After the hour or so, I saw that I was still getting mobile network, and showed the temple and the surroundings through a video call to my family. This was their first sight:
For people of the sea, the mountains hold a special charm. Unmistakeably, this charm was experienced by my family too. After nearly another half an hour or so of chat, the wind started to get really cold and strong. The Sun was setting, and the air was thinner than what I was used to. I started making my way back to the room, only to stop on the way for some tea. My friends followed my in a couple of minutes, and they had seen the lake. While we sat down talking, I called up the friend whose query actually got all this arranged. We chat for quite some time, and we thanked them profusely. We had a good nice meal that night, but could quite sleep due to the super awesome night sky. At 3 a.m, we took out the One+ to get a long exposure of the Milky way, but we were too cold to even hold the phone! We did take some shaky pics, and then went back to sleep.
The next day we had to leave for Joshimath, dump our luggage there and make our way to Badrinath. So we needed a cab driver. Who would be the best person on board?
Dillu Negi was the man for the job!
Enroute to Badrinath
Dillu was very happy to take my call, and asked for a reasonable cost to drive us to Badrinath and back. We asked him to come over to our hotel, drop off our stuff at the hotel in Joshimath, and then proceed to Badrinath.
We started from Auli at around 8 a.m., and had breakfast at a roadside stall by 10. Then we started off the long road into the mountains towards Badrinath. Our first “checkpoint” was the final prayag of Alakananda – Vishnuprayag.
Vishnuprayag was actually closed – hardly anyone lived there. The government and a hydroelectric power station were building the roads with huge machine to prepare for the large footfall during the pilgrimage season. The roads were apparently filled with snow, and they would be regularly damaged as the snow melts every year. Hence, we saw the sangam from just over the bridge – and it was spellbinding:
From Vishnuprayag we moved on, with some nice music and Dillu’s stories accompanaying us. Finally, we reached the army checkpost, at a temple called Hanuman chatti. This marked the last spot any lay person could travel without documents in the non-tourist season. Beyond this point was full of danger, and only the folks making roads and our army would be present.
We showed our permissions, and the army man told us: “if you die or fall off, we won’t come to rescue you or reclaim your bodies!”. Some of us got slightly scared, but the guy was just fooling around a bit. Seeing some of us had gotten serious, he told us something quite profound: “Not many go to Badri, actually. You have come from very far away with many coincidences. Seems like its the will of the Lord Badrivishal – why would you chicken out after coming all the way here?”. He pointed to the small temple of Lord Hanuman nearby, and wished us well. Well, I was far too excited to be scared – I mean, look at this view:
We started moving upwards amongst the dirt and rocks, and at some places rocks had fallen down due to erosion. However, our driver soon stopped and pointed us to some snow – but all we could see was some dirt! It seems that the army had removed a lot of the snow, and the remaining was coated with a nice layer of dirt/sand. Don’t believe me? This was what we saw:
We kept forging ahead of melting ice and streams of water, and finally reached Badrinath. However, there is a village that lies ahead of Badri, named Mana. Mana is the last Indian village before the border with Tibet. And this place has a lot of mythology – it is the town from where the Pandavas of the Mahabharata start their ascent towards higher and higher peaks, and finally to the heaven. It is also the town which has a cave wherein the sage Veda Vyasa composed the Mahabharata. So we first went ahead to Mana, and then would visit Lord Badrivishal.
My eyes were starting to get blurry at beholding the wonderous sight of the mountains Nara and Narayana, overlooking the shrine of Badri, and bathed by the river Alakananda. Have a look:
We kept moving ahead, all the while Dillu telling us stories from mythology, stories from his childhood, and the stories of hardships and valour of the army-men who live there.
Mana was a desolate land – there were shops, houses and temples. But there was not a living soul to be seen – no one except the four of us. It was amazing and scary at the same time. While the Sun kept us company, we were in a great place. But when the Sun would call it a day, the moon would be in its early waxing phase, and it would be a dark place with cold, ominous winds to keep company. Nevertheless, we were able to get to places like the caves, the Bhimpul, and a bellowing river named Saraswati. We also visited the famous “Last Tea shop in India”, but there was no one!
We spent quite some time there, showing the wonder to our families. Then, we made our way back to Badrinath. We were met with the same sight – desolate land, melting snow, flowing river, all overlooked by gigantic mountains.
We then walked our way to the temple itself, which was obviously closed – but the beauty was too touching. We sat there for a while – I was left to my thoughts and songs, while I again called up my family, especially the older generation who may not be able to visit these places (shoutout to Reliance Jio for awesome telecom services, seriously). We stayed there for quite some time, and then Dillu requested that we start descending – it was 4 p.m, he hadn’t had lunch, and the snow would be melting very fast now. And so, we present our salutations to Lord Badrivishal, and make our way back down.
Back down from our high land
The trip down was very uneventful, except that we didn’t find anything to eat except some Maggie. The return trip didn’t take much time, and by 6 p.m. we were at the most famous temple of Joshimath, dedicated to Lord Narasimha.
This was a nice peaceful temple, but we wanted to visit the monastry of Adi Shankaracharya, so that was priority. We then proceeded to the monastry, and we relived many of the famous philosophers who were Shankaracharya’s students through their works and the places they lived.
We were famished, and Bikram was starting to feel sick due to the travelling. So we as Dillu to drop us off at the hotel, and bid him adeu – he still sends us some pictures of new places he goes to!
Route to the plains
We stayed the night at Joshimath, and started for the plains the next day at 4 a.m. My flight back home was on the next day, and we had a booking for a day at Rishikesh, so that was our plan. Bikram wanted to now continue with his plan to Agra (lol), so he would get down at Haridwar. We checked out early in the morning, sent a thank you note to didi because she was busy, and started our way back. This time, we didn’t sleep when the bus came to Nandaprayag:
After seeing Vishnuprayag, this seemed meh to us. But we kept going, hungry as we were (we just had one glass of tea at 6 a.m, and our breakfast was at 11). By the time we reached Rishikesh, we were exhausted and on the verge of puking. But we made it somehow to the zostel, which is a bagpacker’s hostel.
Zostel is similar to the “Generator” chain of bagpacker’s hostels. Basically its a bunch of dorm rooms with multiple bunker beds. This one in particular was quite shady but lively, so we dumped our stuff and freshed up. We started chatting with one of the dorm mates, a lawyer from Lucknow. We wanted to see the Ganga arti here, so we called him up for the same.
Rishikesh is an odd town. The Ganga in this town embraces both the spirituality at the traditional centers, and the masti at adventure centers. Foreigners and Indians, people performing their prayers and people just out to spend time - the ghats of the river accepts one and all. We waded our way through the river of crowds on the Ram Jhoola, and asked for where the Ganga arti is held. That particular day was Ugadi, the Telugu New year. Hence, the arti was supposed to be special, and we were asked to go to a ghat called Paramarth.
I found the arti to be underwhelming when compared to the arti at Haridwar. Following the arti, we just strolled around in the shops nearby, got some food to eat, and went to sleep.
The next day was quite uneventful, but I sensed that both me and Anuj were getting tired, which was coming out as irritation at each other. And so I decided to roam around at a book store, and got back for lunch. A simple meal, and I bid him farewell – Anuj was going to stay for a month, work, perform music, and have spiritual talks, while he scaled the Gaumukh glacier a month later.
I returned from this wonderful trip at 1 a.m early morning. On the way, I called Bikram to ask him how Taj Mahal was – turned out he never went to Agra. He was too exhausted, so he booked a ticket back to Pune. This would be a thing to talk about for the next one month!
As I look back on that week, I was put into the worst possible situation I imagine myself in – almost no planning, eating at random stalls outside with no concern for hygiene, and a general hesitancy to talk to people. All of these were struck down by a great measure in that one trip, and everything fell very much into place – maybe this was all a doing of someone or something?
Anyway, let me leave you with this wonderful pic we took while near the glacier – hoping that you too get to travel to these places some day!
