Sometime during the
last couple of days of the trek, Emily asked me, “If given a chance to do this
trek again for free, would you be up for it?” Even though the relentless cold
was becoming unbearable to me, and I was waiting to get back to warmer locales,
I hesitated only a moment before replying, “Well, I would think twice about it;
but in the end, I definitely would.”
The truth was that
the rewards on this trek had been infinitely more than the hardships we faced.
The visual wonders of this kingdom of ice would make us forget the freezing and
aching limbs. Here are some of those moments which took my breath away.
The Happiest Kid
This snapshot on the Chadar was
captured with a high shutter speed. Head slightly tilted, eyes narrowed to
slits because of the grin spread from ear to ear, a kid, about 5 or 6, sitting
on a sledge being speedily pulled by a porter along the icy Chadar, zipped past
me. I can never forget the sheer joy on his face as he held on with all his
might to the ropes of the sledge. His plump cheeks were rendered rosy pink with
the cold. He was covered with so many layers of clothes that he looked more
like a stuffed sack with a head sticking out at one end.
We saw many children accompanied
by their parents on the Chadar who were on their way back to schools in Leh
after the winter vacation. All of them bright little things excited to be
meeting their class-mates soon, and they seemed to be handling the adversities
of the Chadar really well. Now I am in no doubt what absolute happiness looks like,
I just have to close my eyes and recall the image of the kid, which I saw but
for a fraction of a second.
The Porters
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| A porter walking bare-foot through ice cold water |
This one is more of a video clip
than a snapshot. Watching the porters do seemingly superhuman things day in and
day out on the Chadar sometimes made me drop my jaw in awe. How could they pull
sledges laden with 60 to 70 kgs load throughout the day? How could they piggy-back
some of the trekkers who did not have water-proof shoes through watery patches
on the Chadar? How could they walk down to the icy cold river and fetch, with
bare hands, water for our consumption? How could they tug at ropes and pitch
tents when we were too numb to even lift a finger? I remember making no effort
to get out of my sleeping bag each morning till there was a call of ‘Madam ji!!
Chai!’ from outside the tent. And I never stopped wondering that the porters,
who also doubled as cooks, have been up hours before, preparing chai and
breakfast and winding up the camp.
One evening when some of us were
in the mess tent, one of the porters came in with a really nasty bruise on his
cheek. He said he fell down while looking for firewood. And let me tell you,
the pain intensifies in subzero temperature. There were a couple of doctors in
our trekking group who had a first-aid kit ready at hand, and they dressed up
his wound quickly. They gave him an antibiotic to prevent infection, and a
painkiller to reduce the pain. Though I don’t think he needed all this.
Throughout the whole process, he had a bemused little smile on his face looking
at all the fuss that was being made around him.
At the end of the trek, one of
the porters asked me for my pair of gum-boots, because his were torn. I would
not find them of any use after going back home, and I happily gave him the
boots. He was most grateful and had a look as if I had just saved his life. But
the fact was just the opposite – there was no chance for us to have survived
the Chadar for a week without their support. It was the porters who saved our
lives.
‘Kitney Aadmi The’!!
One day walking among the rocky
mountains around the Zanskar, we felt as if we were on the sets of the movie
Sholey, where Gabbar Singh used to walk up and down slapping his belt against
his legs. The fun began when my trek-mates started repeating the iconic
dialogues from the movie – “Are o Samba!! Kitney aadmi the?” And I was
surprised when one of the porters also joined in – “Sardar, 2”!
A few days ago, I had found
myself thinking whether the Indian spirit could have traveled all the way
across the mountains to these far flung parts of our country. And now I got the
answer. If they knew the dialogues of this movie by heart, they were very much
the same people as me. I had always heard, but never quite believed, that
Bollywood and cricket are the connector threads that bind a country of distinct
religions and traditions together.
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| And then there were 20 |
Postscript
In the week spent on the Chadar,
I saw forces of nature at their colossal best. Enormous volumes of rapidly
flowing water petrified to eerie stillness, huge blocks of ice being pulverized
in the river as if they were mere swabs of cotton; these sights made me laugh
out loud at mankind’s arrogance. If human beings think they can keep taking
advantage of the earth’s patience with their idiotic disregard for nature, it
won’t be long before we are brushed off from the face of the earth. This trek,
apart from everything else, has given me a great feeling of accomplishment.
Feel proud and lucky to have been on the Cahdar J
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