Call from my junior, Kishore, woke me up at 6 in the morning.
“Hello”, I said, fighting back the grogginess of morning.
He asked me if I was ready. I wondered what the best reply would be. But before I could come to any decision I replied that I was. I don’t know why I always do that.
Well he told me come to gate 2 in ten minutes. I was supposed wake up Rajeev, one of my friends, and others. It was 6:15 I had set an alarm of 5 in the morning. The alarm obviously did not wake me up. I rushed to Rajeev’s room to wake him up. He had been sick the night before and getting him ready was my responsibility.
Rajeev was fast asleep when I entered his room. I took me some time to wake him up. Though Rajeev kept saying that he didn’t want to come I made him get ready. Mean while I kept receiving calls from seniors to hurry up as we were already late. In the end Rajeev refused to go locking his bag inside his room. I decided not to waste any more time and rushed to the gate where seniors were seated in cab and ready to go.
Dharamsala is just a few kilometers before McLeodganj, nine kilometers to be exact. As we passed Dharamsala I was reminded of my previous visit here. I had seen the famous temple and gone for small hike above the waterfall. I remembered where I had gone to play playstation and where I and Varun had had a fabulous dinner and few expensive drinks. I remembered how surprised I had been last time on reaching Dharamsala and not seeing any Tibetans. Being the home of Tibetans in exile I expected a lot more Tibetans. But later I realized my mistake. McLeodganj is the home of famous Dalai Lama and Government of Tibet in Exile.
A lot of foreigners could be seen in McLeodganj. I was in particular fascinated by a shoe polisher, a kid, who seemed to be very interested in foreigners. We were sitting in front of a monastery when I noticed the kid talking animatedly to a foreigner. I could not hear the phrases but from a distance his English sounded rather unaccented (for us Indians that is) and grammatically correct. The kid seemed to be asking the foreigner a lot of questions. Finally the kid offered to shake with the foreigner who was a guy in his early thirties, around six feet and smartly dressed. A trait common in foreigners is that they do not want to offend the natives, mostly. They seem to be very obliging and condensing. The foreigners shook the kids hand without a moment’s thought. Shaking hands with a dirty kid is not something many Indian will do. A few minutes I saw the kid come back the same road with two middle aged lady foreigners, chatting animatedly.
After shopping for glucose, water, tuna, cheese, bread and the like we started our hike. My breathing became heavy just after walking a hundred meter, making me wonder how I was going to travel the 10 kilometers hike to Triund. I was really tired after covering a distance of 2 kilometers when our senior and trip organizer Abhinab Sir made a halt at a shop, aptly named “Rest A While”. Price of things was double here. A bottle of mineral water was priced at 20Rs as compared to 10-12Rs in town. We bought just a bottle form the shop as we had our own bottles. We drank glucose solutions and had some chocolates. After that I was able to travel quite quickly and somewhat easily. It may be due to all the time spent in gym or the energy food but I think it was due to the mental training in the gym. It felt like I had just completed two reps and I had eight more reps to go.
My mind was buzzing all the way with the thoughts that I had brought from civilization. I tried to shake them and just concentrate on the path and the fauna but mind would invariably begin to wander. I did not have to try for long though because after travelling for five kilometers my mind became calm by itself. I felt quite at peace and it was very relaxing. It felt like I could be myself without worrying about the consequences.
It started to snow just before reaching Triund. Though I have always lived in cold places at high altitude, it was the first snowfall of my life and I loved it. We stayed at the guest house and ever the fore planner Abhinab Sir had already booked the cabin.
At night we had a bonfire. With all of us surrounding the fire, a full moon night and an exhausting day, it was a perfect scenario for talks of heart, love, secrets and ghosts. A circle of trust was established there and everyone trusted the other person at the moment but sooner or later the sun would shine the exhaustion and darkness would end, as will the ‘circle of trust’ with anger, regret and bitterness.
The next day one of my third year senior, Himal Prasad and a fellow second year stayed back and rest of us headed for snowline. The air was so thin at the top that walking even a small distance uphill left us breathless. The place where we had put up had a shop (double priced of course) and the owner had a dog. This dog accompanied us on our trip to snowline. I almost quit just after starting but after resting for just a short time I felt refreshed and decided to push on. Later I just followed the dog and without realizing I moved far ahead of the others. After walking for sometime the dog left me and I was left clueless as to proceed further or not and if to proceed then, in which direction. I climbed a bit higher on the cliff to get an idea as to where I should proceed. I could not see any of my group members from the top. I wondered if had come a wrong way. I need not have fretted though, as the others soon joined me. The snowline was in fact just a short distance ahead and that is why my hairy friend had left me.
We had a snow fight at snow line, took some snaps and I decided to quit smoking as I was feeling too breathless; as I hadn’t smoked for last hours it seemed the right place to quit. I wanted to go back to civilization as tension free and unassuming as I had been on the high altitude but soon bitterness and stupidity seemed to creep back into my friends. Besides I too sprained my ankle on the hike down making me grumbly.
Well they say “All’s well that ends well” in that case let’s take reaching the snowline as the happy ending cause it was a picture perfect moment on the top of world.
