the mis-adventure

as promised in one of the episodes of my travelogue, here is an account of the great adventure that some of us had while returning back from chandrtal. this is a bit long covering a time span of about 2 hours of our trek, so please be a little patient. for your visual assistance, i refer to some pics from time to time, these can be accessed here

GET, SET, GO.

starring: pal,jugnu,niranjan,avneet,palit,deepankar & myself

everything was going well. the seven of us were walking in a group on our back-trek from chandrtal when deepankar gave this idea. "yaar kyon na neeche utar kar along the river walk karen". since most of us were really bored of walking, we thought that this will be a real fun and so agreed instantaneously. to give the readers some idea of the distance we had to climb down, the pic titled "river bed from the road" will be of some assistance. at start the climb was very easy because we were moving down on rocks. but after a point we had to walk sideways since it was no more possible to walk down and we had to get to the other side of the rock to walk along the river. this was when the trouble first started. there were no rocks to hold on while moving sideways, so at each step we were slipping down if we didn't move from that position fast. you can get a better picture of the scene from the pic titled "climbing down to the river bed", there are only small stones and pebbles not the big rocks. the guy in red is niranjan and the guy behind him is jugnu.

what happened next could be described as funny but nevertheless it was really dangerous. at a point, niranjan stopped for some seconds and he actually started slipping. he tried hard to stop by getting into a spiderman kind of position but couldn't help much. since me and palit were close to him, we moved down and asked him to hold his hand. assured that help is there, niranjan now started asking others to take a snap of him in that "hangman" pose. it was really funny, all of us asking him to give his hand and he shouting for photo. anyways, we managed to get him up and it was all well again. for the next 45 minutes, we simply walked across the boulders next to the river Beas taking frequent breaks. all this time, we were just inches away from the river and the flow of water was so fast that if someone accidently slips and lands into the water, he couldn't do anything irrespective of how good a swimmer he was. this gave me a little reassurance that all of us are on equal footings since i don't know swimming and so was apprehensive at the start.

the pic titled "walking along the river" was taken at the end of river walk. in the pic the path looks very easy and even the water flow looks almost nil, don't get misled as that was simply because river takes a sideways turn at this point. niranjan is the front guy followed by pal and deepankar in that order. it was only after reaching this quiet river bed that we realized that our task is just 50% done, oh pardon me, actually just 35% done. our hopes of moving along the river and then climbing the road at an easy incline were shattered, when we realized that we couldn't move any further without crossing the river which in turn would be the most reckless decision of our lives. now the only option was to climb up the mountain (around 200 meters i guess) and reach the road. the pic titled "at the river bed" features palit and we had to climb half the height of the structure that you see to his left in the pic (actually that looks like a continous range till the very top, but there is a road there at half the distance, between the place where brown sand ends and greyish white sand starts).

so while jugnu and avneet decided to look around for the best place to start the climb, the rest of us decided to take a break. they zeroed down on 2 places which could best be seen in the pic titled "now how do we climb up". the first is the greyish smooth slope you can see just behind aveent in the pic and the other is at the rightmost end of the pic which also had some rocks/boulders. the first one was approximately 45 degrees slope all through but looked difficult to climb because of the absence of rocks and other things that we could hold onto in case of slipping. at the same time, the second one was also 45 degrees for most of its length except last 75 meters or so (where it looked steeper) and in addition it had big boulders all along. so all except deepankar (who went for the first one) agreed to climb the second one. it would be only later that we would regret doing so because as i had already said about distances in mountains, the same also holds true for heights, you can never say anything for sure just from a distant view, deepankar's climb which looked tougher turned out to be very easy in comparison to ours. anyways so now it was for the 6 of us to defy all odds and climb that mountain.

so we started with jugnu and avneet in the lead, me and palit following them and in the end niranjan and pal. it was a tedious but still an easy walk for first 50 meters after which it started getting difficult. the main problem we were facing was that as the person in front was climbing, many loose rocks were coming out and falling down, so the person down had to be on constant lookout of things happening above him. we kept moving this way till we reached the half-way in about 20 minutes and then took a 5 minute break pondering how to proceed further. the reason being that till now it was almost a 45 degrees slope, but all of sudden we were facing a good 65-70 degrees slope for the next 70 meters or so. at this point we also changed our order a bit. me and palit decided to take the lead leaving jugnu and avneet (the good trekkers among us) for the assistance of niranjan and pal who were trailing behind. their situation had been best captured in the pic titled "climbing our way up". this pic was taken from the above-mentioned half-way and at the bottom you can see the river beas. i was happy that in case i fall at least i won't die of drowning, the sharp rocks will do the needful much before i fall in the river.

the next 30 minutes that followed can be described as one of the most difficult and exhausting time of my life. the rocks and boulders were very very loose and i was afraid that by mistake i would let some loose. in fact what followed was exactly what i was dreading. i grabbed up one boulder (which looked to be stable) with one hand and just as i was about to catch hold of the other one, the first one came out and started to roll down. i almost started slipping and with all last ditch efforts stopped myself by digging both of my palms in the sand. (this later became a nice lesson of climbing: rely more on gripping sand by the palms rather than by the rocks). at this point let me shift to what was happening with others. the boulder that i had let loose had started to fall at full speed and as i was told later by others, they heard some rock falling from above and it went down bisecting the points at which pal and niranjan were standing. pal later recollected, that he was multitasking at that point: saying his prayers to all possible gods that came to his mind. after this incidence, niranjan declined to budge from his position and had to coaxed by avneet by promising the remaining pepsi when they reach the road (at this point let me tell you that niranjan is a real pepsi freak, he can do anything for a pepsi). the greed for pepsi set niranjan in real motion and the four of them started again. in the meantime, i heard a big "YO" from palit. he had completed this steep climb, from his position he could see the road and it was now a mere 30 degree climb for another 30 meters or so. this really boosted my spirits and i started climbing real fast. finally we reached the road, thanked god and congratulated each other. this was followed by a long 15 min break (in which we actually started worrying a little about others but were sure that jugnu and avneet would prevent any mishap) before pal appeared and then the remaining three joined after 5 min. after all of us had taken sufficient long break, we started for our destination, this time on road, with smiles and a sense of accomplishment on our faces.

now when i think about that climb, i feel that i mightn't have been able to do that in case i was alone. it was because i had friends around me and the mutual inspiration that we were sharing that helped us climb that feet. also i would like to thank farhan akhtar for the concluding rock climbing scene in the movie Lakshya, i was remembering that scene all through my climb. it's just a matter of coincidence that i don't have a single pic of mine in this climbing experience, would have treasured it for the rest of my life.