7 APRIL 2023 FRIDAY - CHHISTIBANG TO KHOPARA
Altitude Gain : 9,678 ft to 11,975 ft
Trek Distance: 3.5 km | Trek Duration: 3 hours
A family member who has been following my writing since past 20 years feels this blog is becoming a very serious piece of writing, like a thesis. His opinion is that a blog unless it belongs to the academic type, should include some humour, else who ever it is who are reading may lose interest. So at this point of time, let me see if I am able to bring a smile to those who have read this far & continue to do so.....
Today was the last day of ascent, the day we would reach the summit, the highest point of our trek. I have heard trekkers (literally) behaving as though they have reached a "high" when they reach the summit. However all that is for a bit later. This is just the beginning of the day, another 3.5 km or 3 hours of teetering along remains...
Having managed to take care of my stomach without getting it upset with the variety of foods that I have been stuffing down my throat in the past 7 days, I decided to have a bowl of porridge with honey, a relatively safe candidate as far as breakfast goes. Having packed the luggage which the sturdy Nepali porters would lug around, I started the walk with my fellow trekkers, royally carrying along my small backpack containing only the bare necessities & swinging the trek pole like a stylish walking stick.
The four of us - Sridhar, Swamy, Sumathi & yours truly seemed to have taken this quote of John Mackey seriously, “I slow down when hiking. The rhythm of nature is more leisurely. The sun comes up, it moves across the sky, and you begin to synchronize to that rhythm.” Of course, each one of us were having own reason for doing so. My legs were aching, Sridhar supposedly wanted to give me company, but I suspect he was in the same boat as I was. Swamy & Sumathi were making the most of the new mobile which Swamy had purchased. This latest Vivo mobile had an app which could fuse videos together. It could also add music and text to the video. One got the feeling that he/she were starring in a movie, when you saw yourself in the video generated by this smart phone. Swamy also seemed to have taken some crash course in movie direction. He sincerely guided everyone how to pose for a shot, which direction to look, in which angle to wear the hat or glares, etc. To be fair to him Swamy made sure that he generated atleast one video each of all the group members.
To continue with the beginning of the earlier paragraph, the pace of walking today especially for the 4 of us was very slow. This was not because of a difficult terrain, more because Vivek had promised that the trek would be a very short one & we would have a very good rest after that. The trail by itself was quite ok, except for one stretch towards the end. This stretch was particularly nasty, with a valley on the left side. The trail in this portion consisted of muddy slush and snow mixing with each other to give a minimum 2 inch coating to everyone's shoes.
We reached the camp site by 11 AM.
3 adventorous group members - Banny, Yogesh & Avinash - along with the local guide Shure apparently completed the distance (which took us around 3.5 hrs to complete) in 70 minutes, as they wanted to try going to a higher level. In fact they did trek to a higher level, much above where the tea house was located. But having reached a stage where the trail was so narrow that one had to keep one's left foot in front of the right to proceed further, that too on a snowy path, with a deeeep valley on one side, they returned without proceeding further as they felt it was very risky.
Continuing my
precaution where my stomach was concerned, I opted for dal rice for
lunch. And of course karuveppilai podi (curry leaves powder) mixed with
plain rice. If one could could google & check about curry leaves one
would find that the 2 leading benefits are "effective against morning
sickness" & "help deal with stomach ailments"!
The afternoon
was spent lazing around, with the peaceful feeling that tomorrow onwards
no more ascents, no more having to carrying your body weight against
the gravity. Tea was served at 5 PM. As there was no more ascent, and
fortunately all group members in good health, the oxymeter test was not
required. More lazing around, this time at the dining area, which was
kept nicely warm. Dinner was served at 730 PM. I repeated dal rice with
curry leaves powder and was looking forward to a cozy hour with my e
reader, but a small surprise was in store for us. It was Choten's 22nd
birthday, and his proud father had arranged a cake cutting ceremony. All
group members participated whole heartedly in this happy moment. So it
was dinner, dessert and then reading for me.
As we get ready to descend from tomorrow, having reached the summit today, let me close today's chapter with the following quote : "We always discuss reaching the top of the mountain as the challenge. But those that have been there know coming back down is the hardest part"
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