Saturday, January 10, 2009

An Account Of Winter Trek-08 Part 3

The Trek (4 days)

Dear Diary,

We started off at 7:00 am to our first destination Kalatop. The trek was pretty easy and most first timers can pull it off. Kalatop is around 8000ft. Kunfu Pande has got the nack of taking decent photographs and we managed to get some really good pics here. Munching the chikkis given to us we made way through the forest. We had to wait once in a while to let others catch up. By 10:00 am1:00 pm.


Pir Panjal Ranges is the part of the middle himalayas.
This Beautiful mountain ranges can be seen on the way to Kalatop.
With a average height of 13,000 ft it a beautiful site to see.
Photo : Varun More info

The next part of the journey was much more beautiful. We again walked through the woods and it was simply amazing. Pande got used to camera settings so we decided to take our own time and were last in the group. In spite of the delays we reached the camp 2 hours early and spent sometime lying around in the sun and then we were allotted rooms to stay. I must admit it was damn cold and we had really small rooms to fit 15 people in.

Evening at Kalatop. With a height of 8500 ft its a stunning
location. The sky as seen from here is a sight to cherish.
Photo By Cheezo. More info

Despite the initial discomfort we were awed by the beauty of the place. The sky was so clear and we could see millions of stars. If only my child hood dream had come true this would have been the place to setup the research centre. Reading the previous line I am sure Pande and Cheezo would point me to a video of Randy Pausch. We were asked to join the camp fire for some rounds of singing / talent show. We were not really keen on this as were having a lot of fun pulling each others legs. We ditched it and went strolling in the park. This is when Hemanth enlightened us with some Cheezo blunders in Sar-Pass trek. The next day, was a long trek to Khajjiar, also known as the mini-Swiss of India. This turned out to be a slightly tough trek.

Route To Khajjiar. 12km trek in the thick forest is good experience
Photo By Varun

Again most of the journey was through the forest. We saw kids selling flowers on the pathway. They would wait till the full group passes by and then take a shortcut to intercept us in the next stop. Cheezo was in a race with these kids, and it was a funny sight. Our hero lost badly. Again we were the last in the group, and took our time for photographs. All along we had kids running around offering porter services to trekkers. Some of the older people did use the service but rest of us refused.

Young entrepreneurs : Kids living in jungle provide various
services like tea stalls, snacks, souvenirs, and porter.
Photo By Uttaran

We reached Khajjiar in the evening and enjoyed roaming around. It’s a commercial tourist place with nothing interesting there. The camp was slightly bigger than the previous one and we had enough space in the room.

Khajjiar: Also know as the mini-swiss of India. This place was
created by an asteroid. This is a busy tourist location. More info
Photo By Cheezo

You must understand that it’s inevitable for a group of guys to stop discussing ‘A’ jokes and so the saga continued. The pinnacle was reached when there was a joke about fruits, at that moment we decided to shut up and go to bed. Ozzy realized that I was snoring and wanted to record my snore. Alas I don’t snore it was the guy next to me. They were disappointed with their failure and finally went to bed.

A beautiful island enroute Chamba valley. Chamba is little
town near Khajjiar. Chamba is a district and a commercial place
for the tourists. Photo By Arun

Chamba, our next camp was relatively close and it was all downhill. Our camp leader told us to take our time to climb down as we have small distance to cover. We were last once again. We started to pace up towards the end, not because of fear of being left behind but more so to do with the intense discussion between Myself, Cheezo and Pande.

City of Chamba. More info
Photo By Varun

Chamba valley, a big town, was our last camp. We were asked to go around Chamba and shop if needed. Once in the market area the girls did all the shopping and we were busy hunting for non-veg. We spotted a decent hotel and had our early dinner. This end of our trek, and most of the folks left to Delhi from Dalhousie the next day. We had an extended holiday and we had no idea where we want to spend the next 3 days. We reached Dalhousie at 11:00 am and got ready for our extended vacation. The only problem was where? Click here for part 4 .

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