Travelogue : Nanda Devi East Base Camp

Author: Vishwesha Guttal

Nanda Devi West (7816mts) is the highest peak completely in India (PoK not included). It is surrounded by dozen of peaks each not less than 6200mts forming a amphitheatre with circumference of nearly 70 miles. Nanda Devi east(7454) connected to Nanda Devi by a ridge of 3kms long, It took a long time to explore this region; when the Europeans first tried to measure the height, they couldn't believe that there could exist a peak of that height on earth!

The name of the trek itself was awesome and expectedly, we had huge number of people turning up for conditioning. After about 18 days of conditioning, we were a group of 18, which subsequently reduced to 14. Despite the fact that we were three (myself, pushpender chhillar and amar) leading the team, packing etc went on to last minute (nothing unusual about it!). We left the campus on 5th May 2003 afternoon. We reached Tanakpur via Lucknow-Pilibhit in train, we spent most of our time without sleep, fighting with mosquitoes about berths. In between, we had usual Ch(h)illar stunt of loosing his bag containing nothing more than a camera and binocular.

Tanakpur is in Uttaranchal, just at the base of Sivalik range of Indian Himalayas. After hiring two jeeps, we left to our destination of the day - Munsiari (2300mts), the starting point of trek. Having nice lunch at Thalsi and dinner at ......(oops I forgot), and passing through forest fires, it was 2am when we were knocking the doors of KMVN (Kumaon Mandal Vikas Nigam) at
Munsyari!

When I got up at around 5:30am in morning, the fantastic view of Panchhuli West face (a massif with five peaks, each above 7000mts) greeted with golden rays of sun. For those who got up late, Sun behind the peaks completely hid the view. Many localites told that the route to Nanda Devi is closed after Bogdiar due to landslides. We were a bit worried as what to do till we found from Indo-Tibetian Border Police in-charge of the Munsiari that it's risky, but not impossible. That was just what we wanted and after some reshuffling of our luggage, each carrying around 15-16 kgs per head, we started our trek with four Porters at 12 noon. Initial strech (of about 5-6 kms) was steep down into the valley till we reached the river Gauri Ganga. Found couple of nice water falls on the way. The later stretch was moderate climb and it was about 6pm when we reached our destination Lilam (1850 mts).

We started the trail for next day at 8 am. Lots and lots of lizards were waiting to greet us on the way. As soon as it sensed our steps, they used to give way for us. We crossed couple of snow bridges (or Snow-slides) on the way, for many in the team it was first time snow experience (rather slippery!). Though it was fun for first timers to see snow, I was apprehensive about The trail was rather steep and tiring. At around one o'clock, after having trekked for 7-8 kms, we had reached a nice place known as 'Raidgaaadi', which we initially confused to be Rail-gaadi. Some rest, then left along further steep path to reach Bogdiar at 5pm in evening. It was a great sigh of relief to see camping site.  We had to take permission from ITBP to proceed further for trek, who initially refused to give us the permission showing apprehensions about what if we intruded to China!

We stayed right on the bank of river. The wind was blowing at high velocity, had problems in tenting. Inside the tent it was like empty drum with beats with all night. Unfortunately, PP fell ill by morning. Since he didn't recover by morning, Chhillar and Raju stayed with him to see if he can recover in a day, and the rest of the team started proceeding at 9am.

The trail seemed to get tougher as we proceeded. Soon our water bottles got empty. The pace became terribly slow because of the snow-slides. Some of these were as long as 200-300 mts, as steep as 50-60 degrees.  Added to that all water streams were drowned in snow! When the elixir of life was out of reach, we filled our bottles with snow and let it melt to drink! At last, when we found a small stream of water it was like 'Amrita'.

The later stretch was no easier. If it was snow that caused problems in the initial part, now it was the time for landslides. Intimidating landslides took lot of time and demanded courage to cross. A slight misjudgement in stepping would lead us hundreds of meters down into debris. We sent a message through a villager for Chhillar to go back with PP. Covering a distance of 14 kms, we finally reached Railkot (3300 mts) at 7pm. In between Paari's left leg was off, but thanks to his will power, he dragged himself slowly, steadily. It was a terrible day for all of us and will surely remember throughout our lives!

There is a huge ITBP camp here at Railkot. Its a meadow (or 'bugyal' in local language) offering beautiful views of peaks of realtives smaller heights (~ 5000mts). We had a great sleep that night and woke up late in morning. This was a rest day, to help realx and enjoy the nature as well as to acclimatize at high altitude. At 12 o'clock, we left for short trail for the day, to Martoli (3300 mts and 3kms from Railkot). It was a pleasant walk along the widened valley. We suddenly discovered that youngest boy in the group, Bhutani (just for clarification - he has nothing to do with Bhutan), is missing! That added a bit of spice to otherwise cool day and of course, he had reached the destination much earlier.

Martoli is a deserted village on a huge beautiful meadow, with stunning views of various peaks, like Martoli Peak , Nanda Devi East, Nanda Devi, Longstaff Col, Trisul (not the Roop-kund Trisul; interestingly both peaks look very much the same, and we had lots of confusion how come that Trisul has come here!) and couple of other smaller peaks.  Since we reached pretty early we had lot of time to roam around, most of us were trying to understand what's the topology of Nanda-Devi peak. We visited the Nanda Devi temple there. About sunset time, the clouds paved way for us to have a glimpse of Nanda Devi and Nanda Devi East. Raju reached us from Bogdiar late evening. (Since PP didn't recover, chhillar accompanied him back to home). We slept that night in one of the house. It was very cold that night. The small water stream near our house was frozen by morning.

Next day we headed for Ghanghar, slight change from initial plan of going to Shama kharak since we came to know that the bridge on the way was broken. The route was awesome, absolutely majestic. The path was mostly on soft green grass, with views of several peaks all around us. Wherever there was some climb we could feel the lack of oxygen.  We reached our destination quite early by around 1pm. Rest of the time we spent fixing pipe to get water from a rather far water stream. It was very windy, we had a tough time in tenting.

The next day morning the weather was not good. It was cloudy. We started a bit late. Within an hour of our departure, we witnessed slight snowfall. I was reminded of snowfall on the roopkund trek, though it was not that intensive. We played cards for an hour, and proceeded further when clouds were receding after snowfall. The route was very bad with several landslides on the way. Finally, we reached our destination at 1pm. It was like HEAVEN on EARTH. We were standing right in front of Nanda Devi! We were at around 4000mts, and Nanda Devi was nearly 3.5 kms stretching up right in front of us! It was an eternal experience, something which cannot be written in words. The clouds were blocking our view of peak of Nanda Devi for long time. Just before we were planning to leave, the weather gods were gracious enough on us to have a Glimpse of Nanda Devi.

As always, the return journey started. We reached down very fast, seemed very easy with reduced load on our backpack and downward climb. We took two days less compared to our upward journey. With one day in spare, we decided to goto Dharchula, a town on the bank of river Kali. On the other bank of river is Darchula, a small town - but not in INDIA! If you guessed rightly, it's in NEPAL. This was my Third trip to Nepal. You can get a number of things here for slightly cheaper rate, but most of these items are available in India too. We roamed around in Nepal, called home to surprise that parents we are in Nepal.

Back from Dharchula, reached Tanakpur. Same train, another war with mosquitoes, same HOT planes, same lucknow, same LC, same HOT Kanpur at 45 degrees. I also had a difficult time, especially with my sun burnt face, in convincing people out there that I was at freezing cold some 4 days back. The next ten days were last days in IIT Kanpur, it was difficult to leave the place where you learnt, enjoyed  so much, so much that I may have to write another article to bore you!