Himalayas - Trek to Dodital and beyond

View from Darba Pass (4100 mts, 13,500 ft)

'Life is Bigger! Much Bigger! You either believe it or come to the Himalayas!'

Resting enroute to our final campsite, Tapas and the Porter

I love to trek and I love the Himalayas. Trekking amongst these incredibly beautiful mountains has always been a blissful experience. I recently completed a five day trek of sheer bliss. I mantained a little diary on my trek. There were so many instances when i wanted to pen down a thought but i couldn't stop in the middle of the trail to pull my diary out. At the end of the day when i was at the campsite i was too exhausted to write. Hence i could only jot a few details and a few thoughts. I hope to use a few pictures, give a few details and share a few thougths to convey the essence of my trek to Dodital.


Day 1 Sangam Chatti (5000 ft)

Sangam Chatti is a little town hugging the river. It owes its existence to fact that the road ends there. The town is inhabited by people only during the day. Almost all of them are from Agora a village 7km away. Theres one litte shop/dhabba, three tables where you can get basic provisions and simple nutritous food i.e. dal rice and Maggie:-). The Dodital-Darba top trek starts from Sangam Chatti and hence you have a few locals of Agora who will hang around Sangam Chatti to be employed as guides cum porters. If you spend 15 mins in Sangam Chatti you'll know everyone in the town. The Dhabba is the centre point of the town ('town' is such a misnomer for this place), its where you sip chai and strike a deal with your porter or just check you equipment and supplies before you step off the road on the the trail.

For most trekkers Sangam Chatti is at the maximum a two hour stop. It's advised you trek 7kms to Agora the same day and set off for Dodital a beautiful Alpine lake at 3300 mts, 10,000 feet the next day (16kms). We bumped into Kunal a road contractor at the 'meeting place' , the dhabba. Kunal was an ex-Dosco (Doon school, Tapas my trekking campanion was from the same school). We ended up spending the night with Kunal in the little Goverment Rest house.

My friends think i'm crazy to travel alone. The notion of being alone terrifies people. It terrifies me too. But i only leave Mumbai alone and make friends on the road or on the trail. My interactions with people i've met on my travels have always been meaningful, added more knowledge or different perspectives to my life. Kunal is one of the friends i made on the road. Learnt about how the government issues tenders to build roads. The lowest bidder gets the contract. He inturn bribes officials to get various permissions. Road quality is always the casualty. He showed us a patch that they recently blasted using dynamites. Told us tales about how this old man was struck by a rock when he couldn't run off in time after igniting the explosives. Labour and manegerial problems. Kunal was really glad to have company after living there for 20 days with out a phone or internet connection. Sometimes your surroundings just help stimulate conversations. I've often had the most amazing conversations sitting on the beach or by the river. We were sitting around a candle in a little cabin just above the river, we spoke about school, family shared funny anecdotes and about this tiny but beautiful hamlet. Once the road is built to Agora i think the purpose of Sangam Chatti will be lost. Agora will become the starting point of the trek. As a trekker its always disheartening to see roads being built into the interiors of the mountains. However, once you trek to Agora one can understand that a road is a lifeline and it would certainly improve the standard of life of locals in Agora. They have to carry all supplies, building material etc and trek to the village. In the winters they are completely cut off. They need the road.

We had maggie in the little dhabba for dinner and chilled with the locals.

The River at Sangam Chatti

The little Cabin where we chilled at night

Day 2 Sangam Chatti - Agora - Dodital

Ideally we should have trekked the the seven kilometers to Agora the previous day. It meant we had to cover a mean 23 kms in one day and gain 5000 ft in altitute. Being the first day of our trek our sacks were at the heaviest as we hadn't used any of our supplies. The first seven kilometers was a gradual uphill and the sun made it a little uncomfortable. Then we reached Agora.

Agora was alot different from Sangam Chatti there were tiny houses spread all over the slope. They use terrace farming technique. It makes me cringe that so many trees must have been axed, but the fields are beautiful add another dimension to the Himalayan landscape.

Our porter who we met in Sangam Chatti, but was from Agora wanted to pick a few things from his house. I saw the most beautiful kid on the steps of his house. She decided to climb on the wall and hang from the window rods. It seemed she was asking to be photographed. She kept looking back towards to me. I could have stayed there for hours just observing her.

Father and Daughter

We left Agora at 1030 am and followed a pretty well defined trail through the forests. I remember when i was in school and we learnt about lumberjacks in geography. They live in the coniferous belt and make a living out of axing the tall coniferous trees. I'd often fanatise about roaming through those forests surrounded by tall trees. The forest that we trekked through were not very different from the coniferous belt i'd imagined as a kid. The next four hours were fairly demanding but we had respite from the sun.

Tall trees!!

Locals at Manaji

The trail can look intimidating at points with a sheer drop, but it offers panaromic views of the mountains around


At the edge of the World

In all it took us little over eight hours to cover the mean 23kms and gain 5000 ft in altitute. We dint take too many breaks and most of them were fairly short. It got extremely overcast towards to end. I dint have any kind of protection from the rain. An extremely fool-hardy thing to do not carry a rain coat or 'pooncho'. There were instances when I allowed myself to drop to the ground too exhausted to keep walking. The weather got intimidating and I knew I had to pick up pace and run towards Dodi-tal where we'd have some kind of basic shelter. I barely made it into the dhabba at dodital and it started pouring. We wouldn't be equally lucky the next day.


Day 3 Dodital (10,000 ft) to stuck in a Hail storm at Darba Pass (13,500ft)

The Lake was like 25 yads away from where we spent the night. However, i was too tired to step out of the dhaba shelter at night to check it out. Ideally we would have camped around the lake, but the ground was wet and it was extremely dark by the time we reached. We decided to spend the night in a little 'dhabba', it's basically a three walled structure made out rocks placed one on top of the other. They have a fire going all day serve you watery chai and a simple dal rice, roti sabzi meal. You can also spread your sleeping mat and sleeping bag and sleep in the shelter for Rs 50 a night. Its a very simple set up, cosy and your treated to some great hospitality. A bunch of locals who run the dhabba live here all summer as its the trekking season. The locals are just characterised by simplicity in the way they live, speak and think. One of the locals (probably 15yrs old) was extremely excited to know i was from Mumbai. 'Sir aap Devang something ko Jaante hu' (do you know Mr Devang something). Appartently he was studying in Mumbai and for this little kid Mumbai was no bigger than a little town where everyone knew everyone. You can't laugh, you can only smile:-)

So on day 3 we set of at 830 am. It was a lovely morning and the trail went around the lake and then climbed into the hills. We were carrying our tent and ruck sack with half our supplies. We planned to pitch the tent at Darba pass leave half our supplies there. The next day we would pass the same spot on our route down to the other side of the valley. This is called a load ferry it makes it easier the next day as your sack is lighter and you can acclimitise as you gain 3500 ft that day.

Dodi tal (alpine lake at 10,000ft)

Trail around the lake

Rhododendrons

Its funny how in the mountains you become a great weather signs interpreter. It's such an important external variable. Your mood can often swing from 'hey this place is paradise' when its sunny and clear to 'what the hell am i doing here' when it starts hailing. The weather can change in the space of fifteen minutes. We'd barely reached Darba pass a beautiful green meadow when it starting showing signs of rain. The temperature must have plummeted a good 7 to 8 degrees and it started hailing. Little pieces of ice falling with great intensity and they can hurt. We pitched our tent, i dont know how we managed to do it and just climbed into it. Hail storming on your tent is much lounder than rain. We could not stay around in the tent until too long as we didn't have any food supplies. The intensity of hail dropped a little and we decided to make a run.

Thats hail all around the tent, we left our tent on top by the next day the poles of the tent were badly bent, Luckily it dint hail for 30 mins but it remained really dark as we tried running down.


Once it started hailing again we took shelter under a rock. Its amazing how you can actually remain completely sheltered under a huge rock. Another local porter who'd trekked about 20 kilometers from another valley crossed us and decided to stop and start a fire. I tried to be of help while he tried to get a fire going, I pride myself in being an outdoor guy. However, you aren't of any comparision in ability or attitude with the locals when in the moutains. This guy was hungry and tired, but still so optimistic and started a fire when virtually everything around him was wet. ' Ho ga aag chalu, Kyu nahi' (ofcourse the fire will start why not). And it did and we chilled for a good two hours drying ourselves. 'Campfire' another simple joy of life.

That's the rock where we took 'shelter from the storm'

Day 4 Dodital - Darba pass (White peaks forever) - Gujjar Hut campsite

5:45 am :- New day, its cold...but its a beautiful morning. He's making us some tea, I'm packing my sleeping bag, cleared my intestines after two days, the radio's playing slow Hindi tracks.... Life is Beautiful (Journal entry)

We decided to start early today should the weather decide to deteriorate again. We had to climb again to Darba Pass pick our stuff and then trek over to the other side into another valley. I felt alot stronger today covered the distance that had taken us over three hours the previous day in 1 and a half hours. The weather remained clear all through. Typical in the mountains a day after a storm.

My camera batteries started running out and the lens wouldn't open fully, and they say 'wow what a picture'

There's something about sheding a tear, just how it makes you feel. Be it due to alot of pain or just being overwhelmed by a moment, a sight, SHEER JOY. I shed a tear when i saw the snow clad Himalayan peaks had taken us three days of trekking. These mountains just mean so much to me. (journal entry, at Darba pass)

We trekked another 3 hours to get to our last camping site. It was beautiful and we had a lovely decent to a beautiful meadow where we'd camp for the night. I'll let the pictures do the talking.

It was all Downhill from here


Gujjar Hut Campsite









'A home within a home' since our poles were bent we had to pitch tent in a gujjar hut.


View from our tent


This is an interesting picture, it got really mistly in the valley as you can see in the background but was still sunny in the foreground. Made an interesting picture


Just being stupid, but Tapas looks like an apparition




My favourite worldy possession

Day 5 Gujjar Huts to Hanuman Chatti, road head(14 kms)

As the pictures suggest the gujjar hut campsite was beautiful. A lovely green meadow peppered with tiny yellow flowers criss-crossed by little streams of water. The gujjars (shephards) would use this meadow later in the summer for now the meadow was only shared between us and a Swiss couple. We just relaxed in the evening had a fire going made maggie, soup and some more maggie.

Day 5, another beautiful morning. We took it slow just enjoying the campsite. Finally left at 9pm to trek towards Hanuman Chatti. We would eventually get lost as we wandered of the trail looking for a short cut. A scary experience for a couple of hours. Luckily we climbed a little higher and found the trail.

I really felt my knees age on the last day. They'd hurt as we kept descending as much as i enjoyed the views i just wanted the trek to end. We reached Hanuman Chatti at 230 pm too late for any public transport.

Fortunately for us the Swiss couple had to get back the same evening so they rented out an entire Sumo (Jeep) and we chipped in the same fare we would pay for a bus ride.

Ironically the most hair-raising experience on the trek would not be the hail storm or getting lost in the forests but the Sumo ride home. It started pouring on the way back, Mumbai like thundershows. The rains just washed out patches of the road, i remembered Kunal and how many bribes it takes to build a road. We had a couple of instances where there was just enought road for the jeep to barely go through. The driver asked all of us to sit on the left (away from the valley facing side) of the jeep. We made to Dehradun at 10pm, we also crossed a bridge where a huge chunk of road had fallen out from inbetween.

And then once again life became ordinary, warm water, warm food and a warm bed:-)