Once you've lived with mountains
You will return
You will come back
To touch the tress and grass
And climb once more the windswept mountain pass.
- Ruskin Bond
After our last adventurous trek to Bara Bhangal in the October of 2006, we had decided that we would choose a moderate trek for our next adventure. However as I was recounting the Bara Bhangal experiences to one of our trekker friends JP, in the November of 2006, he suddenly asked me "Kalindi Chaloge? (Want to join us for Kalindi?)". Kalindi was in there in our list but I had never thought it would be added to my trekking resume so early. I was but three Himalayan treks old.
I had a discussion with Sandeep that evening and he was more than eager for Kalindi.
Kalindi Khal (“Khal” is a mountain pass in the local Garhwali language) is at an awesome altitude of 5947 meters (19600 feet). The trek connects the two Hindu holy shrines of Gangotri and Badrinath. The trek itself is in a very remote part of the Greater Himalayas in Garhwal. The legendary mountaineers Shipton and Tilman had discovered this route in 1934. Traversing the Kalindi Khal requires a fundamental understanding of mountains, glaciers and high altitude trekking in general.
So Kalindi Khal it was, for this year’s adventure, that’s what we decided.
Finally after all the preparation, we started for our dream trek on
JP, Harsh, Sandeep and Shilpa from
From left to right.
JP : Our leader - fondly called JP Bhai Yahoo waley , is a very experienced trekker.
Harsh : Our resident glacier expert .
Moiz : He is the boulder man, a mountain goat. He gets his energy from the surrounding boulders.
Sandeep : My husband - the motivator but always paranoid about AMS.
Yogesh : Our CFO and manager. Very enthusiastic about trekking.
Shilpa : Thats me.
All the members met in
We hired a Vikram (a six seater auto rickshaw) from Haridwar for Rishikesh, the foothills of
One of the things that had kept bothering us always had been the weather. We used to see reports of heavy rains in Uttarakhand. There were reports of landslides after Uttarkashi on the way to Gangotri, cutting of Gangotri from rest of
Because of the new Tehri Dam construction, there is now a new route from Rishikesh to Uttarkashi increasing the distance between the two towns by 40 km. On our way we stopped to admire the massive man made reservoir.
We reached Uttarkashi at
Shambhuji hugged JP and started talking to him in a manner as if he was his son-in-law. From this time, we started calling JP, "Uttarkashi kay jamai raja". This added to the one more moniker which JP had - "JP Bhai Yahoowaley" since he always carried the Yahoo flag with him.
We had to visit the district magistrate’s office for the permit. This process did not turnout to be complicated and we got our permits on the same day.
The next day was a protest strike in Uttarkashi because of construction of the Tehri Dam (this is quite a contentious issue in Uttarkhand with opinions divided as to whether the construction of the dam will bring prosperity to the local people). The six of us got on to another jeep for Gangotri. This route is really breath taking, but at quite a few places, the road had washed off due to the recent heavy rains in the region. Thankfully there were no road blocks due to landslides. We reached the scenic
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