Snapshots from the Chadar Trek - Shelf 2

The good thing about having a photo-shelf one’s mind is that it is a self-purging space. The worth-while moments automatically stick with you. Here are some more moments which have survived the purge and claimed a more permanent spot…

Ice on my face

Day time temperature stood at -11 centigrade

Since I am an early-riser by nature, my Mom never had to resort to desperate measures like sprinkling water on my face to get me out of bed. But that morning, I was in for a rude shock when I was woken up by a sprinkle of ice on my face. I got up to find a fine dusting of ice crystals on my sleeping bag, and the entire inner wall of the tent covered with a layer of ice. When the wind shook the tent, some of that ice had fallen on my face and forced me to get up.

The extreme cold made sure that many of the tasks I usually did intuitively became something which needed a lot of jugaad. The toothpaste was frozen in its tube, and all I could do was to dunk my toothbrush in a mouthwash and brush my teeth with it. The sunscreen had to be dipped in a pitcher of hot water before it became pliable enough to be applied. At night, I would remove the battery out of the camera and tuck it inside a roll of socks. This roll of socks would then sit at the bottom of my sleeping bag at night, and thus I ensured that the battery would  not run out before the trek was over. Stuffing the snowy sleeping bags and mattress in the bag became a herculean task. If somehow the socks or the gloves would get damp, they would get frozen and stiff in minutes, and would stick to the skin. Everyone had runny noses, and after a couple of days, had given up wiping their drippy noses because the frequent contact with tissue paper bruised the skin. The hands and feet would get painfully numb for so long that sometimes I forgot they even existed.

It had not happened to me before, but I was driven close to tears multiple times during the week. When I had dreamt about being on the Chadar while sitting in my air-conditioned office, I had considered only the exciting and adventurous aspect of it. The physical hardships were taking over the senses, and the romance of the situation slowly froze off.  I really wondered if I would ever sweat again, if the thought of drinking a glass of water would not seem like a punishment to me….

Gangnam Style

20 adults on a trek... respectable and dignified - standing inside a tent at dusk - dancing to ‘Gangnam Style’ with a most earnest look on their faces. I cannot get over the humor of the situation now, but it was impossible that any of us felt funny about it at that time, because we were chilled down to the bone, and would have done anything to get a little warmer. The chilly wind slapped away at the walls of the mess tent, threatening to uproot it any minute. It started off with a little spot jogging and some school style PT inside the tent to stay warm as we waited for dinner to be served; and before we knew it, we went Gangnam Style, singing ‘bop – bop bop’, and imitating Psy’s moves. :)

The Kitchen tent

All through the week, the kitchen tent was the warmest place to be wherever we camped. And it was not just because of the heat from the stoves. The smiling faces and the sense of humor of our cooks used to warm the spirits up. There was always an excuse to linger in the kitchen tent – to ask for hot drinking water, or to dry off a wet sock or a glove, or sit around for a game of cards. I would shamelessly hang around in the kitchen, getting in everybody’s way. But the cooks were too polite to tell me to get the hell out of there. They would not only put up with me, they would also offer me salty butter-tea whenever they had some. Life was good in the Kitchen tent; it was like a little oasis of warmth in this icy desert.    

The Fall

I am not one of those skidding sliding trekkers; I am a person who usually sacrifices speed for the want of a good grip and good balance. This is what had kept me from slipping and falling on the Chadar so far. The thought of a fall was terrifying, especially when the snow had frozen off, and all below our feet there was a layer of thin, razor sharp wafers of ice. 

One afternoon on the way back from Naerak to Tibb, I was walking with my sunglasses on and a muffler around my ears and nose. The glasses were continuously getting fogged up, and blurred my vision. At one point, when I thought I was stepping on slushy ice (which is less slippery), I actually stepped on a patch of smooth slithery ice and I fell down with a thud. The cold hard surface of the Chadar hit me smack on my left cheek, as if the river was reprimanding me for my audacity of walking on it. My trekking pole slipped out of my hand and was slowly advancing sown the slope towards the center of the river. I caught it just in time before it reached the fast flowing water in the middle. The left half of my face was swollen for quite some time after, I could tell by the way my sunglasses sat on my face. The porters had said earlier that you have not really done the Chadar trek till you’ve slipped on it once. Well, I guess I earned this honor too. :)