As we ascended up the mountains our camps got progressively cramped and crowded, we rarely found any plain grounds therefore most of our camps were on narrow ridges or in shallow niches. One night we camped right below a massive ice-fall which was several kms wide and several kms high. It was simply massive. Our camp was pitched diagonally opposite the ice-fall on the left lateral moraine of its glacier. So while technically we were literally at its feet but because of the intervening glacier which was a few hundred feet below us we were totally safe from any of its avalanches or ice falls. It was a lovely spot to camp.
When our guide had first pointed out the camp site to us we stared at him in total disbelief. Forget space for five odd tents, there didn't seem to be any place even to park our kits. It was just boulders, rocks and stones. But there was a trickling stream nearby and that's it. Fresh water was at hand and the rest would have to take care of itself. So all of us spent the next hour carving space for our tents, we heaved and hoed and dug out entrenched boulders, removed the rocks, scattered the stones and patted the ground with our feet. Slowly and laboriously we created five plain surfaces, barely large enough to fit the tents and barely plain enough to give us a sense that we weren't sleeping on a bed of stones.
So there it was, a camp site where none existed just an hour ago. With due respect to the old adage, where there is a will there is a sleeping place.
Once the tents were up we sent a few porters to collect water from the trickling stream and the rest of us sat back and enjoyed the view of the glorious Rataban Ice Fall spread out in front for us like an IMAX cinema screen. As we chatted we wondered if we would see an avalanche and as if on que, just a few minutes later, a large overhanging shelf of ice dislodged itself and tumbled down the ice face, hundreds of tonnes of ice and snow hurtling down in a true blue avalanche. It was awe inspiring as well as frightening, but what I remember the most about the avalanche was the sound. It was like nothing I had ever heard before, a thunder, a roar, so profound, so loud, so booming that it seemed to come from all sides all at once, a 360 degree sound. A sound that not just crashed into you but also seemed to shake the very earth beneath your feet. A sound so piercing that it not only jangled your nerves but stirred your whole being till your head was swimming and you could barely keep your balance. Stunned into total inaction we stood and watched. The avalanche lasted no more than a minute, but for several minutes afterwards we stayed stunned.
When words fail to describe an experience the mind automatically searches for images it immediately remembered the time my grandmother used to tell us stories of the epic battle at Kurukshetra. She would describe the moment that epic battle began and the two armies, consisting of several thousand horses and elephants, thundered towards each other. She used to say the sound of the armies hurtling towards each other was heard in all the 'tino lok' (the three worlds).
After hearing the avalanche, I got an sense of what it must have sounded like, these two armies hurtling towards each other. The sound of 100,000 stampeding horses, I would like to call it.
When our guide had first pointed out the camp site to us we stared at him in total disbelief. Forget space for five odd tents, there didn't seem to be any place even to park our kits. It was just boulders, rocks and stones. But there was a trickling stream nearby and that's it. Fresh water was at hand and the rest would have to take care of itself. So all of us spent the next hour carving space for our tents, we heaved and hoed and dug out entrenched boulders, removed the rocks, scattered the stones and patted the ground with our feet. Slowly and laboriously we created five plain surfaces, barely large enough to fit the tents and barely plain enough to give us a sense that we weren't sleeping on a bed of stones.
So there it was, a camp site where none existed just an hour ago. With due respect to the old adage, where there is a will there is a sleeping place.
Once the tents were up we sent a few porters to collect water from the trickling stream and the rest of us sat back and enjoyed the view of the glorious Rataban Ice Fall spread out in front for us like an IMAX cinema screen. As we chatted we wondered if we would see an avalanche and as if on que, just a few minutes later, a large overhanging shelf of ice dislodged itself and tumbled down the ice face, hundreds of tonnes of ice and snow hurtling down in a true blue avalanche. It was awe inspiring as well as frightening, but what I remember the most about the avalanche was the sound. It was like nothing I had ever heard before, a thunder, a roar, so profound, so loud, so booming that it seemed to come from all sides all at once, a 360 degree sound. A sound that not just crashed into you but also seemed to shake the very earth beneath your feet. A sound so piercing that it not only jangled your nerves but stirred your whole being till your head was swimming and you could barely keep your balance. Stunned into total inaction we stood and watched. The avalanche lasted no more than a minute, but for several minutes afterwards we stayed stunned.
When words fail to describe an experience the mind automatically searches for images it immediately remembered the time my grandmother used to tell us stories of the epic battle at Kurukshetra. She would describe the moment that epic battle began and the two armies, consisting of several thousand horses and elephants, thundered towards each other. She used to say the sound of the armies hurtling towards each other was heard in all the 'tino lok' (the three worlds).
After hearing the avalanche, I got an sense of what it must have sounded like, these two armies hurtling towards each other. The sound of 100,000 stampeding horses, I would like to call it.
