Finally, we reached Roopkund — the lake created by Shiv with his Trishul when a thirsty Parvati asked for water on their way to the Kailash. The last 700 steps to reach the lake situated just below the Trishul (23,000ft, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trisul) seemed an endless journey with its high gradient. The frozen lake denied us any view of the skulls and bones found scattered there. Some people say that the skulls and bones were of the Pandavas who could come only this far on their Mahaprasthan. The local people, like Mahendra, believe that the lake was created by the Nanda Devi king for his queen to use it as a mirror. But scientists had a different story to tell. With carbon-dating and other processes, they found the skulls and bones could not have been more than 900 years old. But how did they die there? Probably a severe snowstorm, with the hails as big as cricket balls, hit the people, who might be devotees of Nanda Devi. In fact, in October 2012, thousands of people would take the journey that will cross Roopkund and Junargali pass.
The descent from Roopkund was doubly dangerous with the surface getting more slippery. One of the best memories of this stretch was to get water from underground, rather under the snow. You can hear water flowing under the snow, but you can’t take it from everywhere. Only in two places, water was seeping by the rocks, and we collected two bottles full from there.
It took about another three hours to reach Pathar Nachani, from where we started early that morning only. The afternoon was sunny and the evening was brighter than Baidini with a late moonrise. We had a great dinner with payesh/kheer — made by Dhan Singh with MithaiMate and cashew nuts bought from Calcutta by Sabyasachi, who was absent at the tent though. Never did I imagine that I would ever have payesh at 14,000ft! Probably that’s the best part of trekking.
The next morning, we met Sabyasachi at Baidini again from where the journey downwards was through a dense forest. After an hour, we reached Gaurali Patal and Wan was quite far from there. The 13km trek from Baidini to Wan left our toes sore like never before, as the pressure is high on knees and toes while coming down. The night we stayed at the forest department rest house in Wan where Sabyasachi made wonderful khichdi. Wan is the last village on that road from Loharjung where vehicles can ply. But we chose to walk. It was a leisurely walk, as we didn’t have any target to reach a particular place at a specific time. The 14km walk was made easy and interesting with birds, flowers, orchids and trees. Late in the morning, we reached Kulling, a small village, from where we picked up some stuff for our lunch that we had planned to do it in a forest. For us, it was a no-cooking morning, as we still had a good stock of biscuits and other dry food. When we reached the GMVN guesthouse in Loharjung, it was almost dusk. We had a quick egg-toast and tea before trying to call up our anxious parents back home. Manas da and Sabyasachi joined hands to prepare a delicious dal, mixed with scrambled egg, that night, while I was as usual busy with the overshooting accounts!
The next day we did a 16km trek to Bekhal Taal through the forest, but memories of that trip I might scribble another day.
Pix at: 1. http://picasaweb.google.co.in/supratimtt/RoadToRoopkund#
2. http://www.facebook.com/reqs.php#/album.php?aid=117783&id=581712447
©Supratim Pal, 2009
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