The trek I thought won't happen

by Vibha Deshpande (India)

A leap into the unknown India

This was Nov 2019. Last week. I had booked for my first winter trek with a trekking company. It was a 5 days trek - Deoria taal, Tungnath- Chandrasheela. I very was excited. I collected everything that was necessary for round a temperature of about 0 degree C. My trek was to start the next morning after reaching Rishikesh. I was packing my backpack and my phone rings.... " Hi, is it xxxx ?" "Yes, tell me...." I already knew the number of this trekking company. " You have registered for this Chopta- Chnadrasheela trek on 29th Nov, right?" "Yeap... I am just packing my bags.... do I need anything specific apart from your given list?" " Well... no.... I called up to inform that the trek is cancelled. We got only 2 participants and it's not possible for us to continue this trek with just 2 people..., you can join us for the next trek, if you want... I am sorry for this..." " Oh no.... I have already booked my flight tickets and everything..." " I understand but can't do anything about that. Sorry"... she disconnects on this note!! So...? My son asks. I decide to go to Rishikesh, may be stay there or go to Lansdown for 2 days... just kept all the options open. One of which was also going for the trek with some local trekking company. So, now I reach Rishikesh , walking around to find if any tourist company is taking people to a 4 to 5 day long trek the next day. I reached out to 8-9 companies but none had any plans. They kept convincing me to visit Beetle Ashram or go for river rafting. I was almost hopeless about going to this trek by the time I reached the hostel. So, in the evening I was just sitting in the common area of the hostel, talking to random people and there comes a girl... well.. a woman in her thirties, speaking about her treks in Nepal..Nepaul as per her pronunciation.... I asked her if she was interested to go for another trek and YEAH..... she agreed. Then we sat reading blogs about how to go, where to stay, because now the whole responsibility came to ourselves, unlike going with a company. We inquired and we were told that it had rained and snowed in that area and it would not be possible to fallow the same route as given by the company. WE still decided to explore.... Thus, next morning we found ourselves sitting in local bus to reach Rudraprayag.... then another bus to Ukhimath... then a cab to Sari. We climbed till Deoriataal and spent the evening at this completely quiet and lonely place. There was no signal for cell phones due to which had some fun looking for each other and keeping messages with local people climbing up and down. The next day, we went to Chopta at 5.30 a.m. It was freezing cold, all covered by snow… the sun was about to rise... what a stunning sight. When we reached there, the cab driver said to me, that the shoes I was wearing wouldn't be okay for the ice and snow. So I rented a pair of shoes specially meant for this climb. We started ... but on the first step itself, it was so slippery that we couldn't walk. Decided to cancel climbing, we started back, when 2-3 local young men met us to tell that it's not so slippery after a few steps. We walked on the loose snow on the side till we found the right way. The shoes I wore did not have any cushioning to keep my feet warm. So I had to put all the tissue papers I had in them, but that too didn’t help. In spite of all that we kept walking and in 2.5 hours we were Tungnath. Thereafter, it was deep snow and only 2-3 professional trekkers went ahead. I just sat at Tungnath for a while and started climbing down, which was equally challenging as the snow started melting after sunrise making the steps extremely slippery. Somehow, slipping, falling a few times, finally we reached down to Chopta, hugged and screamed ….”yeeeeeee, we did it”