Himalayan Trekking

I arrived in Delhi on Saturday morning and spent half the day trying to book a train to Agra for the next day to see the Taj Mahal. I failed, because I needed to have Matt's passport in order to buy him a ticket. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Matt missed his connecting flight in London, and the next flight was delayed, so he arrived Sunday morning rather than Saturday night. So instead of meeting Matt at the airport, on Saturday night, I had some drinks with my friend Mansoor who works in Delhi. When Matt arrived Sunday morning he was in rough shape. He had been pretty sick during his layover at Heathrow and on the plane, so we laid low for a few hours before taking a night bus north to McLeod Ganj, a mountain town in Himachal Pradesh.

McLeod Ganj is the residence of the Dalai Lama in exile from Tibet. Perched at the foot of the Himalayan range, it is also home to many Tibetan refugees. Many foreigners come to find spiritual healing through yoga or meditation and the place is popular with backpackers as you can chill out in town or trek through the surrounding mountains. We arrived in town after a slow and shaky 12 hour bus ride and met up with a guy named Chris from Montreal who was also looking for a guesthouse. We ended up finding a cheap room for the three of us and set out on a hike to Bhagsu, a small waterfall a few kilometers from town. The waterfall itself wasn't too impressive but we found a nice place to hang out at Shiva Cafe on the hill just past the falls. It began to rain heavily so we waited out the storm before heading back to town and crashing for the rest of the day.

Yesterday, we walked to Dharamkot, a small town next to McLeod Ganj, and began trekking up Dhauladhar. Our destination was Triund, a small camping ground 2800 meters above sea level and 9 kilometers from Dharamkot. When we were about halfway up, a teashop owner told us that from Triund it would only take one hour or so to reach a cafe at the snow line where we could rent tents and sleeping bags.
The hike up took us a few hours and we stopped a lot, so by the time we reached Triund it was already the late afternoon. We decided we'd done enough hiking for one day. Triund has a guesthouse and a few basic huts that rent out camping gear, sell supplies, and cook hot meals.

But the lone guesthouse was booked to capacity with a local high school group, and all of the tents had already been rented out to other campers. We were able to rent three sleeping bags and some blankets...and we were given the advice to hike up a bit further to find a nice cave to sleep in. No joke.

So we set up camp in the "cave", which was more like a small clearing on the side of the mountain protected by a giant overhanging rock. The place was fine for shelter and it seemed as if others had slept there before so we set down our things. When we returned to Triund to get some dinner, we heard that a woman had been mauled by a giant brown bear the morning before and was now in the hospital. Very encouraging to hear this when you're sleeping in a cave. But anyway, dinner consisted of rice and dal, which is gluten-free and kind of like a lentil curry, and was pretty good considering the size and location of the kitchen it was cooked in. We met a group of university students from Delhi who were also spending the night at Triund but had been fortunate enough to rent some tents. We got along really well, so we all chilled around a fire listening to music.

The whole sky was flashing with lightning for a while. All of a sudden, it started to downpour rain and everyone kind of scrambled back to their tents. We ran up the side of the mountain, flashing our torches up into the trees and trying to find our cave, a task that was not so easy in the pitch black of night. All of the trees and rocks suddenly looked the same...

Thankfully, the smartest dog ever came to our rescue and somehow led us all the way back to our cave. The dog had not seen us there before or really even been around us at all. I don't know how the dog knew where we were headed...but he knew. He even stuck around until we got a fire going. What a great dog.

Today, we woke up with the sun and packed up our things to take back down to Triund. I had some oat porridge with honey for breakfast...it was surprisingly simple staying gluten-free on the mountain. Together with all of our new friends we set out to hike to the snow line and glaciers at Ilaqua Got, which is about 3300 meters above sea level and four kilometers past Triund.

After nearly two hours we reached the snow line and glaciers. We were hanging out there and sliding in the snow when some ominous clouds moved in and forced us to scramble back toward Triund. This involved us taking a few wrong turns and nearly heading further up the Indrahar Pass, a trek that none of us were prepared for. We didn't even have any more water. Thankfully, heavy rain never came and we found our way back to the right trail and to Triund. We had some lunch and descended the mountain all the way back to McLeod Ganj. In total, we probably hiked about 30 kilometers in the past two days and I am pretty exhausted. But I'm a caveman now. Definitely worth it.