Travelogue : Khatling Trek ( October 9th - 16th, 2005)

Author: Niranjan Srinivas

Day Zero :

All of us were in SAC, getting ready to leave. For some of us, the mid semester exams had just ended in the afternoon, and we were frantically packing our rucksacks, as the plan was to leave by 17:30 hrs. Our original plan was to go to the base of a peak called Deo Tibba ,in Himachal Pradesh. The peak is at an altitude of 6000 m, and we planned to trek till 4800m. However, there had been an earthquake that morning with the epicentre in POK, and this quake had an effect in Himachal Pradesh as well .So, the Dean of Student's Affairs, after speaking to the parents of some students going on the trek, advised us not to go to Deo Tibba. My worst fear was that the plan would be cancelled and we would have to stay in Kanpur for a whole week !That would have been awful, considering that all my wingmates had already left for home. Bhuts (Gaurav Bhutani, our team leader and coordinator of the Adventure Club) informed us at around 15:00 hours that the trek would have to be cancelled,and that he would try his best to form a backup plan. Within half an hour, he decided that we would go on another trek that he had considered earlier : the trek to Khatling glacier, Uttaranchal, in the Garwhal Himalaya, which is quite far from the epicentre.We decided to leave at around 20:00 hours from the campus. Since we did not have train reservation, we went from Kanpur to Bareilly by bus (around eleven hours) and from there to Dehradun (took us around twelve hours from Bareilly.)

Day One :

The Dehradun bus terminus was modern and very tourist friendly - we stayed for the night in tourist accommodation at the terminus - pretty decent. It was good to sleep in a firm, stationary bed after nearly twenty four hours in the bus ! The bus journey itself was pretty good fun, since we were such a large group (nineteen)

Day Two :

After picking up some new rucksacks from Dehradun, we left for Gutthu in two jeeps. Gutthu was to be the starting point of our trek. On the way to Gutthu, we passed through Tehri - where the Tehri Dam Project is going on. Had a look at all the houses that had to be abandoned because of the project - they had deteriorated to such an extent that it looked as if they had been through a natural disaster. Stopped at a nice little restaurant for lunch - and had fun with in the river flowing just behind it. We reached Gutthu by 18:00 hours. Quite a few people threw up on the way, and surprisingly, I did not (I have a history of motion sickness !) It was a bit chill in Gutthu. The Belengana river, whose source is the Khatling glacier, flows through the town. The river was with us for most of the trek, though at some points we were far above it.
 

The whole town had a blackout and the only light available was candlelight. There was no pollution and no interfering light so I could see an amazing number of stars - it was breath taking. I finally understood what "star-studded sky" meant. We had dinner at a really small shop with just a candle to provide light and it was great. After dinner we went for a stroll. There was a bridge over the river and as we stood on the bridge, there was a really bright moon above, the star-studded sky and the water of the Belengana was gushing below, the foam glistening in the moonlight. It was so serene and beautiful. Pity there was no way I could photograph it, and even if I could, there was no way it could capture the magic of the moment. I'm not much of a poet, but the scene almost made me one.

Day Three :

We started our trek from Gutthu at around 09:20 hours. Beyond Gutthu, there were no phone lines so we were cut-off from civilisation in some sense. FM radio signals were not very strong in Gutthu, but beyond Gutthu the reception was surprisingly good - because of a telecommunication tower maintained by the ITBP (Indo-Tibetan Border police.)

For most of the first day's trek, the river was flowing alongside. We went through dense forest - crossing several small streams on the way. Halfway through the trek it started raining very heavily - didn't last too long, but it caused a dip in temperature and also made us feel like we were in a rainforest ;-) At some points we were enveloped by greenery on all sides - only the trail was barren.

The first day was largely uneventful…and we reached Reeh by around 15:30 hours, after covering ten kilometres.

Day Four :

Rhee is surrounded on all sides by mountains - it felt great to wake up and have a look around. The second day's trek was the hardest - the first hour and half being specially steep and tiring. After that it was still tough, but quite not as bad. There was a beautiful, plain trail passing right across the faces of adjacent mountains. These mountains were covered with lush grass and with a few trees here and there. We passed a heard of mountain goats as well - the kids of the herd were amazingly cute.

Our next stop was at Gangi - a really beautiful place surrounded by snow-capped peaks.

Day Five :

Very interesting day's trek. Saw my first landslide on this day - the whole face of the mountain had become like one huge inclined plane - pretty steep too. There were two landslides, very close to each other, right in the middle of our path. Within minutes of seeing my first landslide, I had to cross it ! We had to walk right across it - this was difficult for several reasons - balancing a pretty heavy rucksack, for one. I made the mistake of looking down and the sight of the river gushing away to glory below was not very encouraging ;-)

But the scariest part is when you put your foot on a stone, and it starts wobbling, or worse, slides down into the river ! Anyway, I was pretty nervous while crossing the landslides.

In the afternoon we stopped for a couple of hours on the riverside after a fair bit of descent. There were the usual pebbles on the river side, and quite a few big rocks as well. There were a few spots where the rocks and pebbles had been ground to really fine grains of sand and this was really beautiful. This place where we stopped was really serene - the mountains, the river, the rocks, the pebbles, the sun, the sand. No other sound but that of the frothy river flowing.
 

Then we began our ascent and the last one hour or so was very steep and tiring. Finally, we reached our campsite (Kalyani) in the afternoon, and set up our tents. This place was just a (fairly large) clearing in the forest. The porters warned us that bears and tigers might be around and that we must be very careful, specially while venturing out at night.They said that about a couple of days ago a tiger had killed a buffalo there.
We sat huddled around a campfire for most of the evening, and cooked over one as well. It was great fun - and atleast for me, a totally new experience.

Day Six :

The first thing I saw after stepping out of our tent in the morning was the frost on the ground - indicating that the temperature must have been well below zero the previous night. On walking around a bit, we saw the pug marks of a bear as well - leading into the jungle. Our original plan was to spread our descent to Gutthu over two days - days six and seven. However, here we decided to go on a hike to a nearby peak and
then compress our descent to day seven. I was a bit apprehensive about this idea because that meant descending twenty eight kilometres in one day !

We left our rucksacks in the tents and this made our hike a lot easier. We did not have a very well-defined trail this time and just climbed up a (pretty steep!) mountain face. We went through thick vegetation as well. At the top we had a really good view of the snow-capped peaks surrounding our campsite - would have been even better if only there had been fewer clouds though ;-(
Soon, we began our descent to the campsite - since it was very muddy, slippery and steep it was good fun - practically slid down to the campsite ;-)

Day Seven :

Started at 09:00 hours in the morning. Had to cross the two landslides we crossed while on our way up - only this time I had absolutely no problems whatsoever. I knew that even if I slipped, I woudn't keep on sliding, I'd be able hold onto some rock anyway. So the worst thing that could happen was that I could get bruised ;-) Once I understood this crossing the landslide was no big deal.Descending is much faster than ascending, though it does exert the knees a bit, specially if its very steep. We reached Gangi at around 11:30 hours and
Rhee by 15:00 hours. Managed to reach Gutthu in one piece by 18:30 hours, although my legs weren't too happy with me. Made one phone call to tell my family that I was fine.
 

Day Eight and after :

We started from Gutthu by bus at around 07:30 hours and reached Dehradun by the evening, from where we caught a train to Lucknow. Reached Lucknow at around 08:30 hours, and was in campus by noon.

To sum up - "What a pity… to see the view, one has to climb the mountain !!!"