ON THE EIGHT DAY...
We awoke early as usual, none of us having got much sleep over the past few nights what with the wedding excitement and all. Oh well! On we were to go... I had decided to join the majority for the 14 km trek to Kedarnath as I'd heard that the Shiva lingam up there was simply exquisite. I was slightly worried about my ankle, which had continued to hurt in the night but I strapped it up as best I could and resigned myself to the fact that I could rent a horse if things got too dire...
The roads were packed and any last minute hopes of a helicopter ride to our destination instead were quashed as we realised they were well booked up for days in advance. Bummer - I would have been quite happy to pay 7000 rupees to fly there in style, as I was anticipating the track was to be like the one to Yamonotri - full of donkey shit and tooo many pilgrims.
Yeah, the roads... PACKED!! We ended up being stuck in traffic for 5 km before the actual beginning of the trek, so decided to just start anyway, strapping our overnight bags on and expertly dodging the lines of cars, tourist busses, jeeps and taxis which were all lined up for what seemed like kilometres ahead of us. Our cars caught up with us a few times but needless to say, we reached the beginning point of the track much later than originally planned.
So... I prepared myself. Got my scarf and wrapped it to cover as much of my face as possible to protect me not only from the sun but from the fumes of manure already rising in steaming piles from the dirty concrete. Gena led us through the market place, calling "Chalo Chalo chalo!!" and "Side side side!!" just like a true Indian, but as he was setting a charging pace we soon tailed off into smaller groups.
The first few kilometres would have been okay if one had not needed to breathe in. We were all retching from the absolutely disgusting stench of murky black piles of shit, mud and water - I swear, the worst smell of my life and ten times worse than the Yamonotri trek, although the track was slightly less crowded. I told myself I'd walk as much as possible before renting a horse, mostly because I disagreed with their ill treatment. I swore that when I got one (and getting one was inevitable as my ankle wasn't so flash), I'd Reiki it all the way to the top and speak soothingly to the beast, bloody hippy... well, it was either that or be carried by a man much smaller than me squashed into a ball on a basket on his back, or on a litter looking like a ridiculous queen, so I chose the four legged option. At least they were stronger...
Vlad fell into line with me and after 5 kms we decided that the track was just too smelly and shitty to continue on foot much longer, and eventually found two horses being led down by their master. I managed to swallow my guilt and let the poor thing carry me for about 5 kms, where we stopped for our staple paratha and to buy some "horse khanna" of Parle-G biscuits. Mmm, I love those biscuits, and so did the horses, their snouts fighting to gobble them up.
We got off with about 4 kms to go and although I felt better ethically, we immediately regretted letting go of our mules! What followed was a beautiful walk though, as we took a shortcut over a field in sight of snowy mountains, both of us feeling the altitude by this point. At one point when we stopped, we were approached by a bent and wizened old man who took a liking to Vlad's many earrings. I always thought my Hindi was pretty reasonable, but reasoned that this man must have been speaking some local dialect cause I understood almost nothing of what he said, Vlad even less! It was lovely though - taking photos of the two of them and showing the man his own image, who responded with the usual Indian head wobble.
Eventually we reached our destination, and were probably the last to arrive as almost everyone else had opted for horses on that day also - guess the tiredness was starting to show... After a quick check in to our hotel, it was off to the magnificent Kedarnath Shiva lingam, and WOW....
5000 years of stone work stood at this height of 3,581 metres above sea level (I'm trying to find out the height of the actual temple but can't seem to find it anywhere on google) and it was UNBELIEVABLY stunning. There was no chance of us getting inside for hours, with pilgrims queuing, clutching their bags of sweets and coconuts to break for puja, so we had to be content with just wandering around and around the massive structure. Devotional music blared from speakers somewhere, and I remember a completely ancient feeling.... this was such a sacred place... with the Himalayas showing off their snowy white peaks behind us and the air cool and crisp on our reddened cheeks. In the temple grounds themselves were hundreds of babas all of who had done the sacred pilgrimage and were begging for alms, or expensive blankets depending on who they came across. Some of them weren't so content with the ten and twenty rupees I doled out, which always pisses me off - I mean, talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth! I sat with some babas for a while before I quickly twigged that their intentions were probably not so pure, all offering me a toke on their chillums which I politely declined. Nandi sat curled up outside as usual, staring devotedly up at his master Shiva, and he was shiny with recent puja - butter oil, curd, ghee, sandalwood paste had all been rubbed into his stone coat making him a multi coloured bull. He was beautiful. Ash smeared Naga Babas tried to convince me to part with large sums of cash, or buy them some chapati, a wish I was much more likely to oblige than the former. After wandering in a holy daze for a while, and meditating with Irina outside who was even more spellbound, I realise I'd lost everyone and knowing my terrible sense of direction, quickened my pace to try to retrace my steps as the sun was setting in the mountainous sky. I found some of the boys in a menu-less dhaba, all of us wrapped up as much as possible with glassy eyes from the cold. After a quick warming masala chai (oh how I love these simple things...) I tried to get an early night in recuperation for the trek down the next day.
Ohhh, such wishful thinking my child... for the room that Vitaly and I were sharing was right next to the road, and various unenlightened pilgrims had obviously lost their friend Ashish and decided to knock on our door very loudly every hour and bellow his name from 1 a.m till about 4. It was either that or they were trying to get rid of some Hashish, although I think it was the former. I opened the door twice, first to a young beshawled girl and then to a skinny young man who simply gave a nod in apology and stepped backwards. Oh how I wish he'd understood what I said in English - being assertive certainly wasn't a problem for me at 4 in the morning as I hissed and spat at him from the half open door. No wonder he backed off as soon as possible.
When we were woken at about 6.30 again I let Vitaly do the honours this time, and a good thing because it was only one of our crew checking that he'd set his alarm. Unfortunately Vitaly didn't speak more than a few words of English, for if he did I would have known to get up and join them all on a trek to a beautiful crystal clear lake... such are the perils of being in a language minority where certain instructions are lost in translation, but I suppose my body needed the extra hours of sleep... I woke up anyway and did a solo trek to the temple, wondering if I could possibly get inside this time but no, the lines were even longer. I think the most popular time for puja was at 4 a.m and on my return, I met my darling Irina who had to leave early to catch her flight from Delhi the following day. She had tried and tried to get inside but to no avail, and her forehead was smeared in shiny red paste. I knew how important this temple had been to her so shared in her disappointment not to be able to get inside, even with the help of a kindly priest! It seems no-one took to line jumping though, and they had kicked up enough fuss that she had had to turn back. I was happy to get another chance to say goodbye, as she left early with Chandan in order to get her taxi, then a bus, then another bus, then a hotel in Rishikesh and then a taxi back to Delhi before a 4 a.m flight. What a journey! But what a way to finish a trip to this crazy and wonderful country.... I hope to meet her in Moscow one day...
My friends returned a few hours later and I tried to swallow my envy at what I'd missed out on - it was okay... the world was filled with beautiful places and I'm lucky enough to come from a country that is teeming with them. So that was that. We left quickly and all seemed to tear down that hill, sometimes one handedly to leave the other one free to cover our faces form the stench. Vlad and Gena and I stopped for a beautiful swim in the Mandakini river after taking lots of short cuts, me scrambling to keep up with my slightly impractical running shoes rather than boots. Next time, I'll make sure I have boots... next time...
It began to pour for the last kilometre. We were mostly separated by this point and I for one was charging, taking the weight on my thighs and hamstrings as I careered down the slopes doing my best not to trip in the shit - a worst nightmare! By the time we all had reached the bottom (funny how that 14 km distance only took a couple of hours at most?) it was bucketing down. How funny we must have looked with our long faces and multi coloured raincoats over the humps of our packs. Thank goodness Chandan and Mahesh thought to hail down a jeep for us, and amazingly enough we squeezed all twelve of (some had stayed behind in Okkimot, including the newly wedded couple) into the jeep, leaving just enough space for the driver and hoping our sweet smiles would placate any policemen. There was no room for awkwardness here, and I squeezed between the two Vitalys in the back side seat, resting my arms around both of their necks, our knees taking the weight of Sergei's pack. Luckily we reached our own cars soon enough which had been gridlocked in the pilgrims rush. As we drove I did a swift change of clothes in the back and it wasn't long before we were back in Okkimot. Actually, it probably was a few hours, but time is relative in India - after stopping for some (extremely oily) okra and rice I was content to be in a warm car with Bollywood music blaring as usual out of the crappy little speakers...
I checked into my ashram alone this time, only discovering later how absolutely filthy the room was. I did manage to get to their arti this time around though (the wedding had prevented Irina and I attending last time), a beautiful small affair of songs and prayers to their Calcutta based teacher who had set up ashrams and schools around India to provide free education and spiritual guidance to many. Beautiful... Back in the hotel cafe, one of our drivers was doubling as a waiter. They had organised amongst themselves some great menu options for us - fresh Russian salad, potato, and the same delicious rice pudding we had enjoyed two nights before at the wedding. A truly sweet gesture, and my stomach was happy by the time I crawled off to ignore the dirty state of my room... shudder...
THE TENTH DAY - ANOTHER LOOONG DRIVE BEFORE WE REACH THE MOUNTAIN PARADISE OF BADRINATH
I was used to rising early at this point and was even perky as I swallowed my chai and Parle-G. As Irina had left, I had the backseat of the small car to myself and my i-pod in my ears as I left Chandan and our driver Balveer to do the talking amongst themselves today. Not much of interest happened to be honest, except a pretty nice hilltop breakfast in which we pulled out plastic chairs and table to a flat grassy plain and sat eating our curd and paratha to the sound of birdsong and the occasional tourist bus honk - can't really get away from this unfortunately.... I was aware that within a few days this journey would come to an end so was quietly trying to enjoy everyone's presence as much as possible... and tried to create mental pictures of Lena's yellow shirt and shoes (very cool shoes...), Kolya's love of tea drinking, Gari and Zuhara's quietly newly wed bliss...
We drove on.... and unfortunately, the small car I was in started to pack in. We ended up leaving it with driver Balveer in a small town to be fixed overnight as I squeezed into the backseat of another air-con mobile, not really designed for three in a row! But anyway, we did what needed to be done, and besides a lunch stop at a terrible restaurant that didn't know good service from bad, and told us certain items were off the menu half an hour after we'd ordered them, we simply drove most of the day, or waited for the mountain roads to open. Some of the passes were pretty treacherous so I was happy to wait rather than to be punted off the sides of those massive cliffs...
We got to Badrinath when it was already dark and the power still out in the ashram (much cleaner this time thankfully!), and I did a quick solo mission to the famous Vishnu temple (again, queues of 2 kilometres making it impossible to get inside) and tried unsuccessfully to source some sunglasses to replace my broken Rayban ripoffs. And then simply slept...
Morning came, the crisp mountain air keeping us fresh. We drove to the Chinese border and after buying chocolate at the 'last Indian tea stall', set off on a beautiful mountain path. The others all managed to reach the waterfall but I was sluggish and not quite warm enough, and struggling with the altitude again so instead had a beautiful solo walk, finding various rocks to meditate on and watching donkeys scrabble through the snow. Again, I was realising that it's about the journey, not the destination and I was happy with my limits on this final morning after a massive ten days of Himalayan beauty.
The chai and chocolate were good back at the 'last post' tea stand, and we enjoyed our last stop for a while, none of us looking forward to the long drive back to Rishikesh that day - a massive journey! But, most of the group had flights to catch from Delhi in a couple of days so our options were limited... it was road or bust, I'm afraid...
Another day in the car.... I was thankful for my i-pod and actually enjoyed the journey for the most part, especially as the sun went down and I could hang out the window and let the breeze wash my face. My small car broke down AGAIN only a few kilometres from Rishikesh, and most of the nearest car were asleep as I crawled in for the last leg, leaving Chandan and Balveer to do the walking / towing / mechanic calling.
And then, at 11.30 pm, after a massive day of driving, we were back at Ishan hotel, where it had all begun... along with my exhaustion I felt a strange sense of loss, as everyone made for the nearest bed... my Himalayan holiday had come to an end, and as usual my heart was still firmly with this group I'd been living with for the past eleven days....
Two days later, Mahesh organised a beautiful last meeting for us, with a deliciously iced cake reading 'Happy Himalayas Tour 2011'. A gorgeous gesture, and as everyone stood and spoke one by one around the table, I soon gave up asking for translations as by the amount of times the words 'Spicybar' (Russian for thank you) was repeated I could get a strong sense of what was being said. Beautiful people, beautiful moments... I have tried to capture them in words, but they will live on in my heart for a long long time... I can't rememebr what I said at that table, but i knew it didn't do justice to what I really felt... never mind...
Dima, Lena and I were the only ones to stay on in Rishikesh for a few days, so we waved the others off as they made for Delhi at around 4 pm the following day. Vitaly (one of them) simply put his hand on my heart and drew mine to his, and I knew I was able to be understood. A sweet, sweet man, that one. Sergei tried it on one last time to much laughter, Gari and Zuhara had their last glasses of mosambi juice, and I'm SURE Gena and Vlad had plastic bags full of mangoes stuffed into their car for the road too. We stood for our final group photos, with various Indian tourists jumping in at the sides and trying to shake our hands. I blew kisses to the cars, and then, they were gone...
I'm finishing this blog almost a week after the fact but still with the same sense of loss. I'll always be grateful to Mahesh in particular for inviting me along at the last minute at a time where I'd been feeling particularly lonely and out of sorts with travelling. I had no idea that being with a group of non-English speaking Russians / Ukrainians was exactly what my soul needed at the time, but now I'm all the wiser... Having finally left the heat of Rishikesh, I'm ready for the next adventure in some equally beautiful Himachal Pradesh mountains, but I must say that if I ever get an opportunity like this again, I'll dive straight in... although next time with better shoes. And maybe less paratha. xxxxxxx
Posted by Sharona79 at 5:43 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment