“Never trust the mountains”
One night with the elements…
It was finally the June I had waited for for at least three years. June, that small window of opportunity for someone on a motorbike to cross the two highest motor-able passes in the himalayas of Himachal Pradesh India, before the road gets either too wet or too crowded with tourists.
I remember looking at the tourism posters as a kid. That beautiful silver of the lake ‘Chandratal’, or the moon lake, nestled in the center of a lush green meadow, surrounded by the sharp grey and white of the snow patched himalayan sierra. I always knew I would go there someday. The adventurism of being a twenty-something egged me to go on a motor bike and ride on roads not meant for such a thing. I would not call myself of those days, either a great planner or a good listener. I was averse to advice, any advice and just nodded my head when someone much wiser than me said “never trust the mountains”.
The great thing about this trip was that I had my best friend for company. We rode on great roads, bad roads and no roads for a week. Saw vistas and valleys of unimaginable beauty. Devoured food we could barely recognize and ‘chai’ we could hardly drink. Met people who despite being from the same state as us, were so different, in dress, language and humbleness. By the end of that week, with 80% of the trip behind us, we had a certain smugness for how well we had managed so far. In my mind, I had almost trashed every article and piece of advice I had received on preparedness. People talked of motorbike servicing kits, first aid kits, food provisions, special tents, extra petrol and so on. And, here we were just two guys on motorbikes, without a tyre puncture kit or even a spare empty canister for extra fuel.
Every night over dinner and before retiring to our beds, we talked, dreamy eyed about ‘Chandratal’ our next big stop, overnight camping in the lush green meadow and a starry night to complete the picture. It was planned as a sort of capstone of our ten day long trip. Everything after ‘Chandratal’ was supposed to be boring and mundane.
Cloudy and frigid, the day did not start out as expected. We pushed on. Crossed the highest motor-able himalayan pass in the region without incident and started our descent towards the lake. Taking a mud path, barely ready for motorbikes, off the main ‘road’. It was maybe a few kilometers before we had to shun our motorbikes because of a landslide and walk the remaining 8 kilometers on foot. Hardly an easy task for a good day at around 5000 feet. We inched our way towards the lake. The eternal hope of a human mind still making me think only about the tourism poster I saw as a kid and not about that huge cloud buildup on the almost pitch dark horizon.
Looking at the lake, when we reached there exhausted and thirsty, was heart breaking. It was all cold, grey and the meadow didn't have a single blade of grass. We couldn't have gone back those 8 kilometers to the motorbikes or many many more kilometers after that to the nearest hint of humanity. It was dark already when my eyeglasses registered the first snowflakes. We started erecting our tent, a skill neither of us had an idea about. While the instructor at that store was demonstrating erecting the tent to me a month ago, I was still thinking about the tourism poster, nodding nonetheless. It was a blizzard and within 30 minutes, we were almost buried inside our ill-erected tent. I had never experienced that feeling, either before that night or after it till today. The feeling of helplessness, of imminent death, of how much I loved and longed for my parents and loved ones, of being minutes away from certain death. I prayed to almost all the Gods I could think of, desperately wished for a phone signal to make that final call home. And, while being slowly frozen to death we heard someone happily whistling outside our tent. We rushed, suddenly overcome with a feeling of security, as if the gunman suddenly pulled the barrel away from our heads. There was another tent some distance from ours; the weight of our broken ‘Chandratal’ dreams hadn't let us notice it. They were good people, mountain regulars who had camped in the meadow a day earlier than they used to every year. We were extremely lucky.
Over ‘chai’ and hot food in their tent and with a sense of relief, of not just being saved from frozen death but also of losing the arrogance we had gathered over the last week, I heard that phrase again — “never trust the mountains”. I nodded again, but only after that phrase was etched permanently in my memory.
Everything after ‘Chandratal’ was boring and mundane, the long ride back home. ‘Never trust the mountains” kept ringing in my ears and echoing in my mind. That June day in 2008, it had snowed in ‘Chandratal’ after more than a decade.
