An Account Of Winter Trek-08 Part 2

Trip to Dalhousie & Acclimatization Day

Dear Diary,

We reached Pathankot early in the morning and got ourselves good hot parathas for breakfast. After an hour wait at the bus stand we finally boarded a bus to Dalhousie. Bad roads were a way of life in HP so we dug into the minimally cushioned seats and listened to music. After an uneventful bus ride we reached Dalhousie at around 5:00 pm. We reported to the base camp and took all our blankets and sleeping bags from the organizers.

The base camp at Dalhousie. You can decent facilities and good food. A nice lawn overlooking the camp is for exercising as well as relaxing. Photo taken by Varun

After our dinner which was pretty delicious we had a camp fire without fire. Participants from the previous batch entertained us with jokes and songs. I have to admit though they were fun, we were all in a different mood. The day ended and we retired to our bunks. The next day was Acclimatization day and we were made to get up and exercise at 5:00 am. There we met the rest of the gang (Mini and co, who had arrived late). Pande gave us some LMAO moments when the instructor caught him not exercising. After an hour of exercising, we were asked to go back to base camp for breakfast.

Stray Mountain Goat found roaming around in Dalhousie.
Picture taken by Cheezo

Aerosmith sang...

“I met a Blind Man
Who thought me how to see”,

I guess that applies to us except the fact that he didn’t teach us directions. We got lost yet again. All 5 of us took the wrong way and it took us 2km of walking to realize the mistake. Sure enough we were late for breakfast and also delayed the start of acclimatization day. After a hurried breakfast we were on our way to a 3km casual trek where we got to introduce ourselves and get to know others in the group. We had people from Maharastra, Gujarat and Tamilnadu. But the most misbehaved group was from Bangalore. It’s unfair to put that label on all the folks from Bangalore as it was us who were the hooligans. One useful thing we did when we returned from the trek was to clean up Dalhousie. We began collecting as many plastic bags lying around as possible and dumped them in bin. We were also able to inspire others to do similar act.







Cleaning up Dalhousie. Thats a stupid pose though ;)
Photo taken by Varun











This is about the time when Arun managed to get his new nickname. So back in the bunkers we already started off with ‘A’ jokes and were having a blast, we even came up with very funny patentable ideas. Click here for Part 3.