Trek report Part 2
Day 5: Marapada to Bevra
After a rested and relaxed day 4, we started out early on
day 5, leaving the camp at 7:30. The initial walk took us through dense forest
and poor trail. It was completely downhill. We could hear Monal pheasants, but
couldn’t see any. But we did stumble upon a group of macaques (hanuman
langurs), these are very shy unlike monkeys in the plains and are not shutter
friendly. With just a 24-105 zoom, I couldn’t get good enough shots. |
| Swinging over the trail! |
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| Ranga negotiating the trail cautiously |
We came across the first of the major impacts of this year’s
monsoon cloud burst, a bridge over one of the rivers washed out. We had to
negotiate a landslide and cross a temporary bridge formed by a tree that had
fallen across the stream.
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| Temporary bridge |
Post the crossing, we had a very comfortable trail, a cheh
footiya or 6 foot path through the forest for a good 3 kms. After a quick tea
and refill of mineral water, we set out for another gruelling walk through poor
trail. We crossed a few villages and landed up on top of a cliff. The Assi
Ganga was roaring below and initially we could not see any trail down the 100m
drop! It dawned that the entire trail was below at the river bank, washed away
by the cloud burst. What was now a trail was a dizzying drop requiring
scrambling across rocks and nothing to hold. The 100m drop over 200m distance
took us a good 20mins to cover and left us shaking. We had to cross the river
over another fallen tree.
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| Climbing down towards Assi Ganga |
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| Can you see our trail? |
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| Bhagyan, our guide, negotiating a wooden bridge |
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| This was my way |
Having climbed down 500m so far we now had the task of climbing
up 400m. We realized that climbing up was far easier than climbing down. Once
we reached outside of Agoda, we had to walk the last 2kms on an almost flat
well laid trail. Just before Bevra campsite, the bridge was washed out and we had
the toughest of our river crossing over boulders and tree trunk.
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| Ramdhana field (Amaranthus) |
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| Bridge over a stream - only way to cross was over this log |
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| Ranga doing it his way |
We had our camp site well laid out and for the first time in
5 days had access to a proper toilet. We were resting and suddenly out of
nowhere, we were hit by a fierce hailstorm. In 20 minutes, the campsite was
covered with hail stones and was looking white. We then had our first camp fire
of the trek that night.
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| Our campsite after the hail |
Day 6: Bevra to Manjhi.
Today was an initial climb from 2400m to 2800m and then an
almost level walk to Manjhi at the same altitude, a distance of 9kms. Many a
group would trek straight to Dodital a further 5km. We chose to halt at Manjhi,
by now the plan to trek to Yamunotri was abandoned; 1) there was snow beyond
Darwa and 2) Ranga was not sure he was interested in any more tough experiments.
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| Courage the cowardly dog |
The trail was exposed to the sun and we made good use our
sun screen. Without any significant incident or spectacular experience, we
reached Manjhi campsite. Bevra, Manjhi and Dodital has campsites created by the
forest department. Unfortunately, the toilets are in terrible shape.
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| Camp fire at Manjhi |
Manjhi being at a higher altitude was much colder than
Bevra. We had a good fire going again. We soon realized that our dog was scared
of hamsters, which were plenty around.
Day 7: Manjhi to Dodital
Today was to be a short walk of 5km and 250m climb. We set
out from the camp again before 8 and again our guide was not with us. We saw
our first Monal. With the villagers having gone down for the winter and trekker
traffic being almost non-existent this year, Monal’s where plenty around here.
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| One of the many landslides between Manjhi and Dodital |
We saw more evidence of the ravages of the monsoon and
reached Dodital without incident. Dodital, that we encountered was very
different from the one I had visited 2 years ago. The heavy rain had brought
tons and tons of rocks and mud to the lake. As a result the lake looked muddy
grey as compared to the aquamarine blue water one normally encounters. Dodital
gets its name from “Dodi”, the Rainbow Trout that is plenty in its waters.
However, the heavy rain and flood had washed away the trout and we could only
catch the glimpse of a few young ones.
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| Dodital 2010 |
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| Dodital 2012 |
We had reached the campsite pretty early, by 10:30 and the
sun was up. Both of us then chose to have bath in the freezing water; it was
energizing and the sun made it possible. The rest of the day was for lazing
around before the eventual evening rain and the later camp fire
Day 8: Dodital – Darwa Pass – Dodital
Ranga was not joining us today and it would be Bhagyan, our
guide, me and the dog who we had named “Courage the cowardly dog”. We prepared
for an early start, 7:15 departure. That meant that it was pretty cold when we
started as the sun wasn’t out.
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| Dodital 2010 |
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| Dodital 2012 |
The initial 1.5 kms was navigating all the rocks brought
down by a landslide. I had a misstep and both my feet were in water. However,
the Quechua Forclaz 500 was doing a super job, water didn’t enter the shoes and
I had dry feet. The next 1 hour was slow progress and we were virtually jumping
rock to rock.
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| Start of route from Dodital to Darwa Pass 2012 |
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| Same route in 2010 |
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| Route to Darwa |
Once we crossed the rock fall area, we started our tough and
steep climb to the Darwa pass. This is a tough stretch and requires good
fitness from the trekkers. Also the air is thin and cold by now > 3200m. As we
climbed up we were getting glimpses of the Gangotri ranges, but clouds were moving
in faster. We were now beginning to see patches of snow and the last 300m or so
to Darwa pass which is a tough one was beginning to look even tougher.
We reached the Darwa pass and found that it had snowed
there. The route to Yamunotri was completely covered in snow and if we had
stuck to our original schedule, we would never have made it past atleast a foot
of snow if not more. Also it was bitterly cold, even with the sun out we
required two sweaters despite us being warm after a 2 hour walk. The views were
getting blocked by clouds and ominous clouds were moving in. We decided to walk
back before fresh snow falls.
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| At Darwa Pass |
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| Yamunotri route ahead |
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| Bandarpoonch seen from Darwa Pass |
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| Relaxing at Darwa |
All treks down are tough and this was no exception. The
boulder hopping was even more tough during the return. We stumbled onto two
Bharral’s grazing on our path, my first sighting of fauna in the mountains.
Just as we reached the campsite, it began to rain and a
heavy hailstorm started. It was becoming cold and the hail went on for the next
5 hours, really scaring us. We wanted to be able to get back the next day and
realized only too well that walking in snow was not such a pleasure. We took
refuge in the ancient Ganesh temple. I must explain the mythological background
of Dodital.
Dodital is considered the Janmasthal of Lord Ganesh.
Mythology is that Parvati was taking bath in Dodital and Ganesh was guarding the
lake. As he refused to allow Shiva as per orders of his mother, an enraged
Shiva beheaded Ganesh. To appease Parvati, Shiva sent his troops to find the
head of the first animal, an elephant, which is how apparently Ganesh got his
elephant face. The lake purportedly has a shivling in the middle and no one is
allowed to take bath in the lake. Bathing is allowed only in the overflowing
Assi Ganga.
The hail relented by 6pm and we had another cold night in
front of the camp fire.
Day 9: Dodital to Bevra
The start of the return journey was a long walk of 14km. It
was going to be a 7hr day, most of it downhill. We saw hordes of Monal
pheasants and a Bharal as well. After we reached Manjhi, we met the owners of
our guide dog, courage. It was a shepherd dog; our guess is that it was born
among sheep and believes it is a sheep. We had never seen a dog so scared of
everything from monkeys, hamsters and even doves.
As we were going down, we saw groups of locals working on
making the trail easier to walk. Thanks to such people, these trails are
doable. An uneventful day brought us to Bevra campsite
Day 10: Bevra – Sangamchatti – Uttarkashi (drive on the last
leg)
This was supposedly the easy day and we started out on the
homeleg. The first 2 km brought us to Agora, Bhagyan’s village. After a tea with
him and interactions we started our walk downhill. Plenty of opportunity to
photograph colourful fields of Ramdhana ready for harvesting. These villagers
grow potato, ramdhana and rajma as staple food. However, their profitability is
hit hard by the difficulty in transporting the produce to Uttarkashi; mules
charge Rs 400 for transporting around 80kgs, a whooping Rs 5/kg cost of
transportation!
5km into the walk, we began to see the devastation of the
cloudburst this monsoon. There was no trail, where once there was a fairly easy
trail. We had to climb up and to our shock walk like spiderman hanging to
mountainsides. The trail was non-existent and we were walking across mountain
face. A number of places, we could see cracks in the ground and our guide was
saying that another rain would cause further lanslides.
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| Where is our trail? Slipped down to the river |
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| Spiderman Ranga |
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| The rubble you see has to be crossed and its ready to slip any moment |
The village of Sangam Chatti, which is also the last road head
in these parts, has been destroyed. There are no traces of the village at all
and it has been wiped clean of the mountain. Two steel bridges that used to be
across the river are mangled and washed away. Roads have been destroyed and new
road head created a further kilometre away. The last 3 kms were horrible, any misstep
meant serious injury and took us 2 hours to cover. We saw the power of nature
all the way; completely washed out roads, a ruined JCB, a mini hydel plant
destroyed (it was ready for inauguration), the trout fishery at Kalyani
completely destroyed. Locals say that the disaster of this scale has never been
seen before. The entire disaster happened on Aug 3, a fierce cloud burst that started
early in the morning. Many locals started moving to safer locations looking at
the intensity. Loss of life was quite minimal considering the intensity.
Unfortunately none of the dead bodies have been recovered; they are probably
washed into the Tehri Dam.
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| This and following pictures show what remains of Sangam Chetti. |
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| This is what remains of a hydel project power house |
Do check out details of the Tehri Dam project; it’s a very
contentious project, which has harmed the locals. We can hope that its well
designed and constructed to withstand potentially very severe earthquakes. If
it were to fail during earthquake, I can tell you, there will be nothing left
on the banks of Ganges till Meerut.
Day 11: Return trip
We chose to return from Uttarkashi via Mussoorie to
Dehradun, a 5hr drive through scenic mountains; take this route if you ever
travel to Uttarkashi. We took the night train from Dehradun to Delhi and Delhi
Chennai by flight
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