Footprints on the Mountainside

I saw Charu sir on TV!!! He is on the Army escorted civilian team. The first goup of civilian trekkers on Siachen left on the 19th September as planned, even as we were wondering if Pakistan’s opposition would cause it to be canceled.

From next year, I bet we will be looking at the same rush of people heading to Siachen that once hit Ladakh and Spiti. I only hope that in that frozen environment, where not much is going to degrade, waste management policies are applied and enforced from the start, as with strict rules to prevent damage to the natural resources of the region.

Though, I guess anything will be better than war.

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Heh. This is an easy one for me to write, and if you really think about it, it is all stuff you know anyway. How many points for betting that you may not have thought of things like that?

One of the best ways of knowing if the promotion material’s claims and the experience match is hindsight. *ducks under the table*

Ok. I’m serious now. What follows are the real ways to tell.

1. Count the number of destinations offered, deduct 2 and divide by the number of days of your tour. If the number you get is greater than one, your tour is going to be too hectic to really see anything. The lower the number, the better. I like 0.7ish
2. Sleeping in a new hill station every night is not seeing the Himalaya. If you don’t have the time to do something special in each place, the pace is too fast.
3. Does your guide love the place he is showing you? If he doesn’t, you’re missing out on insights collected over years of experience - which is something you are paying for when you ask for a guide.
4. Ask to meet the guide before you pay. If your guide doesn’t go all enthusiastic about the place in ways not mentioned on the brouchre, you might as well save the money and travel with a road map and brouchre.
5. Does your guide speak the language of the place - even a little is good - but do you have someone handy to communicate with the locals?
6. Read what is being offered in the tour carefully. How much of it is statistics and luxury descriptions and how much is local information? You can be sure that the same will be reflected in your tour most of the time. So, if you want luxury, or if you want interesting stuff, or something else, reading up befopre paying up can be a good idea.
7. Ask questions. Before you pay, make an effort to read up about the place and ask questions in the meeting. Knowledge shows - even if it means admitting ignorance, but having a good idea on where to find out.
8. Do the people have a sense of fun? Self-explanatory.
9. Find out about other people on the tour and ideally, attend a group meeting to make your payments to get a good idea of whether you will gel with the group or not.
10. To find out if an operator is reliable - simply show an interest in an unlikely variety of tours anthropology and pilgrimage, for example. If they want to sell you anything you point at, get out fast. They don’t really care what your interests are, as long as you buy a tour.

Or come to Wide Aware

I just love how the net connects people. I was spending some time reading around, and headed across to Mridula’s blog - Travel Tales from India. Most of her recent posts are about Nainital.

Honestly, I hadn’t given much of a thought to Nainital, as to many mountaineers, “hill stations” are like the plague, unless they are access points to outstanding trekking routes or peaks. I’d been to Nainital, pretty much like I go to a railway station. But when I looked at the blog, I felt so connected, that I felt a sharp pang of regret, that my snobbish attitude had blinded me to the beauty of the “regular haunts”. There is a reason Nainital is a well loved hill station, and in my thirst for adventure, I had missed it entirely. Speaking of not bothering to stand and stare!

Then of course, I was in a Nainital mood, and found another blog - this time by Lokesh Shah and had my fill of looking at Nainital pictures. He has some really nice pictures, and the whole feel of it is one of familiar fondness.

Now I’m off to see what else I can find. I have two hours before heading off for a climbing session at Kanheri, and I plan to put them to good use.

This post will be split into two, as there is plenty of content. I’ll focus this on the travel and the people and the next can be about the religious experience.

Getting from Sangli to Kule Narshingpur is a pain. First, there is a state transport bus journey to Islampur, which takes about an hour, and then there is the further journey by bus/rickshaw to Kule Narchingpur, which takes another half-an-hour.

We were lucky to find a luxury bus waiting as we reached the bus station at Sangli, and the journey to Islampur was comfortable and quick. Not much to do, except watch the kilometers tick by, and the wierd little conductor interact with the people on the bus in his singsong voice.

This region is all about sugarcane production, and we passed fields with sugarcane standing, or in various stages of being harvested, sugarcane loaded on tractors, bullockcarts, being stored….. whatever - sugarcane - and loads of it.

In Islampur, we gave up trying to figure out further state transport and simply hired a rickshaw to take us to our destination. The road was now bumpy. I guess the parents in law were not exactly comfortable. Raka was sitting on half the driver’s seat in the front, as these rickshaws are designed to seat only three, so I guess he wasn’t too comfortable either, but I was enjoying the ride through the countryside.

Narrow bumpy roads, blocked with bullock cart traffic - pretty heavy - we seemed to be waiting more than moving. Charming glimpses of the river, and all kinds of people chattering with our rickshaw man as we passed them. Very charmingly rural, if you overlook the not-so-charming ruts on the road.

Bullocks and goats seemed to be all over the place. Parked in front of homes having lunch, yoked, pulling carts, being loaded, unloaded…… I’ve never seen so many bullocks in one day.

We reached the home of the pujaris at our destination. Actually, the pujari on duty was someone else, but my parents in law had good relations with another, who wasn’t on duty, but we stayed with them anyway. I was surprised to find a Marathi family - I was expecting Kannada Brahmins (my in-laws are Kannada) like in Sangli. Apparently there are historical migrations and stuff involved and the seeming discrepancy was a normal state of affairs in such issues.

At least I could understand what was being said. I found myself feeling at home. The family were really charming people, complete with a really charming old widow grandmother - a typical joint family.

We visited the temple in the evening, and I have never seen such a charming location in this region (plenty in the Himalaya). What can I say, I’ll let the pics do the talking.

We left Mumbai by train and travelled overnight to reach Sangli. Uneventful, except for a hugely pregnant and very charming lady and husband occupying the remaining two berths in our “room”. We reached Sangli early in the morning and headed to the home of the priest in the temple we were visiting. We got refreshed (bath and silk clothes, etc) and went to the temple.

The temple is at a charming location on the banks of the river, that looks pretty nice, but smells something awful. The priests actually bathe in it as a part of their ritual cleansing - a thought enough to give me the jitters - it is probably cleaner not to bathe. Anyway, we bathed in a bathroom, so life was good.

Leaving the parents with their God, Raka and I skipped off for a quick tea and food break and discovered a restaurant called Swagat (meaning “welcome”) which was amazing for incredibly delicious food, and the lowest bill (Rs.54/- that’s less than a dollar and a half) for two people I have ever encountered for stuffing myself till I had vadas coming out of my ears. Overall, pretty good.

Floating along in the bliss of a stomach full of extremely desirable food, Raka and I returned to the temple to find that the puja was already over. That is really quick and efficient for these temples. We did the obligatory bowing and donations etc and it was time for lunch! I could swear that I couldn’t eat a bite, after what we were just returning from.

Fortunately, lunch at the pujari’s home involved a significant delay as it was prepared. Then it was time to give a “supache vaan” which is something I cannot describe. Suffice it to say that it is a collection of assorted items related with a female’s fortune in Hinduism, that we gave to the pujari’s wife. What I remember is a sari, comb, coconut, betel nut, betel leaves, kaja, rice, dal, jaggery, salt, some money, mirror, etc. Then it was Raka’s turn to give a dhoti and stuff to the pujari, and we were “clear”. Time to eat.

Food was good, except that there was a massive quantity of rice to consume with assorted dals and vegetables followed by sweet rice, spiced rice and finally curd and rice. I’d had enough ric for a lifetime by the time I was done with that meal.

After this meal, the only thing possible was sleep and all the four of us crashed for a nap in unworded agreemment.