Colours of the fall.

I have always envied the American fall season. What little I saw of it always took my breath away, the sheer explosion of colours. I so wished we too had a similar season.

It turns out we do.

We were on a trek into the Hathi Parbat valley. It’s off the beaten track and not many know much about this valley. Which is all that much the better for us as we are happy being just by ourselves.

So here we were, having just spent our first night under the stars, ready to head out into the wilderness. The trail led into a lush forest and as soon as we crossed a stream I saw the valley on the other side. It was the same explosion of colour. The fall running riot among the leaves.

As we entered the valley I was surrounded by the same hues, the oranges, the browns, the deep reds and the mottled yellows. The path was littered with the leaves, softly crunching underfoot, the air suffused with the fragrance of the pine, the maple and the oak.

I had my wish. This was way better than what I had imagined. I sat on a rock and soaked it in. I saw a leaf, a dried maple, and on it were three water droplets, like three little pearls, the remains of the overnight dew. I saw a little lizard scampering across looking for a morning meal, and a beetle nearby fleeing hoping not to be the one.

I got up to carry on with the trek, the leaves softly crunching underfoot.

The tale of the rolling stone

It was surprisingly quite and I lay sleeping under the tent. It was absolutely still. No wind flapping at the tent, no stream gurgling nearby, nothing at all. Just then I heard an almost imperceptible hiss followed by a slight scrapping sound.

I was immediately alert. My first thought, it’s a Bear. But then bears don’t hiss, do they? They don’t. Then I figured it out. We had camped at the bottom of a massive glacier and the sound that I had heard was the sound of the glacier on the move. I was immediately reminded of John Muir who once said that everything in this world was on its way somewhere. So was this rock solid piece of ice.

Isn’t it interesting that it’s only us humans who attach so much importance to permanence, to having roots. It’s always about my hometown, my region, my state, my house, my this and my that and what not. But the fact is that no matter what, even that which is most dear to us, is always on the move and will eventually be gone.

Winter wars

It had been an exceedingly cold night. I hadn’t slept much and the watch finally showed me that it was time to get up and get out of the cosy tent. I reached over for my headlamp, clamped it to my head and snapped it on. As its light spread I saw many hundreds of tiny sparkling stars above me and I wondered whatever had happened to my tent. Actually the tent dome had frosted over and the tiny stars were infact frozen droplets that had ascended from my damp breath and my warm body.

I zipped on my heavy jacket, slipped into my shoes and unzipped the tent. The moment I poked my head out, the cold outside simply took my breath away. The grass crunched under my step, the frost making each stalk brittle. The stream had iced over and I had to crack the thin ice layer with my heel. I scooped a little water in my hand and splashed it on to my face. My face felt as if it had smashed into a wall. It was numb for a minute. I looked around and saw that everything had a patina of ice. Every stalk, every shrub, every leaf was glossed over, shining and stiff. I went over to the campfire and it too looked stone cold, the ash from last night’s fire all dry and grey.

I took a stick and poked around the ashes. At first I saw nothing but when I looked closer I saw a faint orange glimmer, a tiny sign that somewhere in this vast coldness heat had survived.

I quickly gathered tiny sticks, some dry grass and tuffs of juniper and I was immediately on my knees, my face close to the ashes as I blew at them. Gently at first and later, as the embers glowed a bit, I blew harder and longer till the little sticks and the grass and the juniper began to smoke. I blew harder still and suddenly tiny flames flickered to life and I had a fire going. I got up with a smile.

Yet again the heat had won over the frost in this eternal ding dong battle of the winter.

Full moon delights

One of the most fascinating aspects of trekking is to experience the full moon. Most of my treks are therefore planned with the full moon in mind.

It was therefore by design that we camped amidst a glacier on a full moon night. All around us towered the mighty Himalayas, the Hathi Parbat ahead of us, Kagbushandi peak next to it, the Ghodi Parbat on the other side and the majestic Neelkanth completing a near circle of mighty peaks. Somewhere in the middle of this circle was our tiny campsite. Since the mountains were towering all around us, the moon didn’t appear till it was practically overhead, but when it did its brightness was incredible. It lit up the snow caps and we could see things as clearly as day. I switched off the headlamp and went for a walk, stepping as surely among the boulders as I would during day.

The next morning I woke up as usual well before dawn and stepped out to read. I had my headlamp clamped on but as I opened the book to read I might as well have left the lamp back in the tent. The moon was now close to the top of the ridge behind me and its light was hitting the snow capped mountains ahead of me. I don’t know how but in some way the snow was amplifying the moonlight many times the original and I could read the book comfortably. Then I glanced around and it was not just the book that was lit up, so was the juniper, and the campfire, and the tents and the stream and the boulders and the heap of drift wood beside the kitchen tent. Every detail was sharp and clear.

I felt my breath catch, I bowed humbly and whispered a silent prayer acknowledging the sheer magic of the moment.

The ways of nature

As I was walking along the narrow trail, I came across a tiny alcove, a shrine of sorts. It was carefully tended and there was a marble plaque at its center. This plaque commemorated the brave efforts of the five soldiers of the Garwal Scouts who had, on a September morning in 1990, reached the summit of Hathi Parbat only to be lost to an avalanche the very next day.

I sat beside the plaque, reading the names and trying to flesh out the men behind those names. It struck me how often fate did the thing it had done to these five men. It handed them their dream and then rashly took away the very means to enjoy that dream.

I felt nature had somehow cheated on them but I know enough to know that nature may not always be fair but it never cheats. Its every act is part of a larger purpose, a higher design that may or may not be immediately visible. The five brave men lost their lives only because they were are the wrong place at the wrong time.