One hour to dusk and no clue as to where to head. I mean, we knew we had to go downhill. After all, we were almost atop a Himalayan mountain for crying out loud! But that was all we knew. We walked around trying to find a trail, not with the detective seriousness of course, with the laughing chatter of what a mess we are in, the kind of lunacy that takes you over when you are royally screwed with or without being responsible for it… though the lunacy is much stronger when you are not the reason for the mess!
Finally the dude remembered of a place where he thought was a trail and although we (including him) could only find one stone that looked like somewhat cut by humans of eons ago, it was a good enough for us and we headed, like I said before, downhill. I have never really climbed down or up any hill in a completely random manner (that is without a trail to guide) but considering moving down this newfound “trail” meant we had to sit down and push thorny bushes aside with sticks meant it was pretty much the similar to having no trail to begin with. Anyways, an hour and some scary wild sounds later (one of which we were pretty sure was a bear’s), we came down to the valley. And the relief was much increased when we saw a shepherd tending to his cattle. We were still not lost to the wilderness!
What the shepherd told us was the plain and simple – you city-dwellers cannot make it to Kareri. We have wondered and discussed quite a few times since then whether we would have been better off if we had just ignored his advice. Nobody has a clue. In fact, I have even wondered if it would have been even more adventurous…
So we took his advice that we should head to the village about a couple of miles south and started walking single file on the narrow comfortable path towards the village. By the time we got there, we were starving strangers coming in from the darkness with a single flashlight (yes, we still didn’t have the sanity to buy more at Mcleodganj) with huge bags on their backs and sun burnt faces that couldn’t be seen. In short, it was dark and we were hungry. The village was as primitive as I would ever see, that is, it had no electricity. Am not exaggerating and I can’t explain more, after all we didn’t really get a chance to explore it! The guy we stopped gave us even better news, namely – “This is harvest season and everybody is busy. We can get you a place to stay but apologies we wouldn’t be able to give you any food”. We had a tent for crying out loud! One we just hadn’t used all these days! But he didn’t budge and said maybe the next village a further down the path. And we didn’t really have a choice.
I was a strict vegetarian back then (now a vegetarian by choice) and the most difficult part for me on that entire trip was when we found a dead cow in the middle of the only trail we had. No, we did not try to cook it! The bad and stinking part was that she had been dead at least a fortnight and the pungent smell from her rotting body was filling up the nose a hundred yards away. And you really can’t hold your breath that long, especially when you have to run and jump over a dead cow with a rucksack on your back. It was indeed the worst experience of the trip for all others turned into good memories once we were past them, this one didn’t.
The conspiracy was widespread. Conspiracy because I still can’t understand why they couldn’t take pity on us and give us anything to eat. We were offering to sleep in the fields! Anyways, the next village had the same offer and we had no other choice than to keep walking south. Even our so-close-to-the-heart-by-now torch was taking her last breaths as we walked on hopelessly… and then we saw light!
It is difficult to understand the feeling of relief that a bunch of guys feel upon seeing a tube light after being in the darkness for a few hours. I am not exaggerating and I will not exaggerate when I say even the dismay was tremendous when we found out that the lights were of an inlet station of a dam. The dreams of shops and food disappeared as we sensed nobody might be there at all! But thank god for making burglars burglars because had they not wandered our society, nor would have the security guards!
The two guards at the station were good human beings. They didn’t have any food (it was still eluding us) but they made tea for us and gave us the good news that there might be a way out. All we had to do was to ask the driver of the vehicle which came in during shift change to double back and drop us to the town. That was our only hope for the night and when he came, we should have fallen to his feet if the need be and given him as much money as he asked for but what we did (and I will remove myself from we here) was to try and negotiate with him to come down from 300 bucks to 200 bucks. Imagine getting stuck, hungry and cold (and maybe even dead) for a mere 20 bucks per person! And that too, Indian currency!
Good sense prevailed amongst us and the driver didn’t get too pissed (although we thought he had when it took him more than an hour to come back) and we reached back to Mcleodganj an hour after we boarded the jeep. Nobody had imagined we had crossed so many mountains and covered so much road-miles that even I was filled with guilt about thinking of the driver as greedy when he had asked for those 300 bucks. Sixty bucks well spent indeed… best spent indeed…
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