The Trek - Part 1: Triund and the Thunderstorm

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The feet screamed, the lungs sighed and the mind cursed as I dragged myself up the rocky trek which would lead our gang of five to Triund, apparently a nice place. The rucksack made things worse and it sure was not my idea of fun, at least back then. It’s not like I would be satisfied with just sitting at a foothill restaurant taking in the view while I wined and dined but I could definitely take things a little slower! Alas, being the youngest member of the group, I was being bullied into pushing myself to the limit. Thank god they realized that it would be simply impossible for me to carry the 20 extra pounds (in the form of a tent) and I was to drag myself and my rucksack with a hateful bottle of rum, shoved in at the last moment, to the top. Every extra kilo mattered and I didn’t even have the capacity to claim my fair share of it!

Slowly and not so steadily I managed to keep pace (by reducing theirs at times) and approximately an hour before sunset we reached Triund. That was one hell of a first impression! After the rocky climb, sweet green grass welcomed us atop the mountain with the huge one-piece rocks giving it a pre-historic feel. Amazing would be an understatement for the beautiful sight and the relief of finally being there combined to raise my mood to the extreme. Standing on the green lawn and staring at the ice-laden mountain right in front released an adventurous yet peaceful smile from deep within. The country’s nearest snowline that felt so far away while sweating on the trek now seemed just an arm’s length away.

There were just two small shacks which served basic food and a mini-cottage of the tourism department up there. Most climbers apparently trekked up in the morning and went back towards the evening. There was just one more tent on the ground, a brother-sister duo. We finished our tea and started our amateurish attempt at erecting our own. The wind was a bit strong but with the help of stones we were almost finished (after all, amateur we might be but we were 5!) when the brother-sister pair started dismantling their own. On enquiring we found that a storm was coming. What? We didn’t see any sign of it. The wind was strong but not so strong! And we were anyways erecting our tent in a safer place. But since we also knew our expertise on the matter, we decided to undo all the hard-work and dismantle our tent lest we lose the tent and with it the security deposit. And then it came!

The storm was fierce and it didn’t take more than a couple of minutes to reach full strength. We ran and took shelter inside the smaller-than-a-car shack, laying our rucksacks one on top of the other and huddling together in more or less the same way albeit horizontally. Then we finally realized that after all it might not be that most climbers “liked” to go back in the evening, there was only one cottage and hence only one tent when we reached. The cottage was an alternative, a very important alternative, in case of a storm. So essentially, we were a stranded lot. But that didn’t stop us from enjoying our soup and maggi and laughing out loud about the situation we were in. I don’t know why but it has been a habit of the gang to laugh harder and harder with every increase in the degree of screw-up we find ourselves in. I guess we find the “what a fool we are!” realization quite amusing.

By god’s grace, the brother-sister duo was nice and they took pity on us. On the other hand, considering the mess we had landed ourselves in, it would take a monster not to help us. Anyways, they gave us a small room where we could drop dead for the night in our sleeping bags. So we struggled through the rain to the cottage and lay down our stuff. The night set in and brought with it another realization – we had just one torch and that too good enough only to find a matchbox during blackouts in the city! For the dinner (dal rice at the shack) we had to again go through the hard rain and strong winds. Imagine walking amidst this weather on a rock strewn path when all you can see is the faint outline of the person ahead you and that too intermittently. It does build trust, well at least upon successful completion! So one person with the torch in front, we charged towards the shack, reached, had food, and charged back. We were going to get a lot of this trust based walk on a thin line of the trek in the next couple of nights…

Fear is one thing, free-riding is another and I just hope people don’t act like how we did that night in apparently emergency scenarios and rather give priority to the fear. The cottage was all of wood and through the window all that the 5 sleeping-bagged exhausted guys could see were signs of a fire – bright red flakes of ash fiercely kissing the window. It was cold alright, we were tired alright, all of us might also be afraid but we spend quite some time debating who would get out of his sleeping bag and check out what’s wrong. After a few rounds of pleading and cursing and what not, I finally gave up and rose only to find the wind playing in circles with the leftovers of a campfire. But what if it had really been a fire and even I didn’t give up in time? We were one hell of risk-takers. Grown up we have, hopefully…

Thanks to the storm and slippery terrain, we would not be able to trek further up to the snowline. And so the first day ended and with it the adventure. At least that’s what we thought…