I guess I should digress from my original plan of writing about elitists and all that. Maybe I should reserve it for next time. There was a most remarkable trip that I ‘undertook’ over the last three days. It was probably singular, for the following reasons : One, It was totally unplanned. Two, It was not formally endorsed by my folks, “not obtained clearance for” in more precise terms from Dad. Three, the whole trip was not exorbitant, not fantastic, not breathtaking enough and certainly not one of the best I had in terms of the completeness I am usually suffused after a really good travel trip. Travelling and photography are two things which are almost ‘inscribed’ in my blood, I guess! But this one was different. Well, it’s time I went on.

It was at 8 in the evening when I was in the CC, waltzing away to some brilliant music on my Mammu ( I’ve a bad habit of naming things which I own. Picked that habit off my best friend though. Mammu is some kinda acronym for MAverick’s Music player. Ofcourse the p in the player is silent, so it’s not Mammup. :p ) talking to three of my real good pals when some guy pops up from somewhere and asks me if I’m interested in coming to this place called Auli. Actually I’m on a be-polite-to-people-come-what-may unconscious drive, after getting blasted by a lady that I was too quick on my temper. So, I only just asked him, when they were about to start. The answer, I guess, never reached my ears, as I was replying to some chat message I got on the screen when he told me. I have such a bad memory I can only take a good shot at what MY answer must’ve been to him. And I swear it was totally absent-minded. Let’s see…it must’ve been something like…”Yeah”?? :D

What followed was a haze. My net server fucked up, they guy went on a crazy number punching spree on his mobile and in some sly undercover-mafia type shady covert tone, just says to the guy on the other line “He’s in.” and hangs up. Now that’s when my ears automatically cocked up and asked him further details. Well the weird part was that he wasn’t in the trip-group in the first place, and was only looking to increase the party size so that the ‘effective’ cost could come down per capita. So much for the ‘invitation’! So I was a bit skeptic, and went on to ask him when we were starting. He said, in a half hour from then. I simply HAD to do a double-take to check if the guy wasn’t doped. After being satisfied that he was sober enough, I proceeded to find who were in along with me. Strange how people feel real cocky on being invited. Anyway I found that there were 7 others. I’ll let the introductions of al those chaps be. They would present themselves in order anyway.

Sami is the first you should know. He’s this gregarious, big time ghissu (read muggu, padhaku, picchi kukka, whatever, according to your comfort), and a ‘mass’ guy to boot. After a huge rigmarole I was finally roped in by this chap. By the time I went to his room all packed at about 1, this chap is half-naked in his shorts and is dancing to this extremely eyebrow-raising ‘mass/”beat” song’ called Ossa Re, from an i-dunno-which telugu movie. Imagine my plight. After I recovered meekly, this guy looks at me like some weird earthworm-in-the-size-of-a-human look and wonders why I ain’t groovin’ yet to it. Yo. :-s

He finally went for his bath and after a half hour, returned, did the gig AGAIN to the same song and after loads of goodbyes all over the place, we set off to find the other blokes who were in the party. We reached Govind hostel only to find it empty with only one of them waiting for us. We were informed that the others were nowhere to be seen and left in frustration because Sami apparently promised that he’d be there by 11. Trouble smelt never clearer. And so began a mad rush for finding the goddamn escapists. We picked up Vijay (alias C.C.- the naming is apt. He’s short, thus the first C in his nick corresponds to ‘Chota’. The other C, I leave to your imagination :D ) and he looked totally flushed. Picked up Bharat Gattu (Gattu for us now) and left with Sreeram. The other three, we tried to get for 3 excruciating hours coz of Sami’s bloody ego getting sploshed all over the place. Finally we discovered CC was doped with Charas. And also that he had nothing but his dick in his pants. Not a penny if you turned him upside down, and the bugger romped about that he’d come along no matter what. Couldn’t refuse. Sigh.

We took the first bus to Rishikesh. Sami had it all figured out. Or probably not. W were just too sleepy to debate the issue. At 6 we reached the place. We tried to talk some taxi guy into getting us till Joshimath, the foothills of Auli. A piece of advice here. Never try to outsmart a taxi guy when he’s a pahadi and your Hindi vocab doesn’t stretch beyond the elementary foul words. It’s in their basic disposition to knock the living daylights out of you in a fury if you don’t concur with him, his charges or his vehicle. They ferry people every damned day of their lives, and would care a fig about a bunch of chaps with light pockets out on a tour. I guess the point was conveyed though. We got jacked. By the Press at that. I’m probably vindictive because these rascals are supposed to deliver newspapers to the hapless souls living in the mountains, and so they hit upon the brilliant plan of taking in ‘savaari’ like a bunch of pigs in a stile. In normal circumstances, where 5 people in a Sumo is considered barely comfortable, we were made to put up with ten. Shit. And made us pay through our noses for that!

Probably our onward journey would have been much more pleasant had it not been for the driver of our sumo. He looked strangely like a hybrid between a mole and a dog. Well, he looked strange man! Like he had his beak (read nose) and his mouth and that HUGE forehead of his butting out of his skull as if screaming to transform into a freaking wolf-man or something. Well, he did the part very well too. He was definitely one of the most surly customers I’ve handled so far. I distinctly remember remarking to my friend that the principle of “Give respect, take respect thereafter” seemingly never applied itself to that creature. But the journey by itself was magnificent.

One feature that the Himalayas impose upon you the minute you enter their midst is their sheer, grotesque immenseness. As you begin the treacherous ghat-road climb up the hills of the Lesser Himalayas, there’s a queer phenomenon that never ceases to catch my eye. If you fix your gaze on a farther mountain, the nearer ones seem to move away and digress royally, as if welcoming you into their fold. The higher you go, the steeper the fall, the more regal the snow caps appear in all their splendour. At one point, though we were sleepy and groggy with no sleep the previous night, the driver was whipping the vehicle so much that we wondered if we could ever make it out of there alive. CC is some kinda rascal who revels in freaking people out. This guy stops the sumo coz he had to pee, then takes a pebble and chucks into the valley below, and says gleefully, “That’s where we’re going”. I swore I should have killed him then, when I still had the chance…

Anyway after treading our way through narrow, spiralling roads and frightening yet wonderfully admirable valleys, we finally reached the foothills of Auli, Joshimath, by about 5 in the evening. By sheer coincidence we found a couple of rooms at throwaway rent – 150 bucks for a double bedroom room, all facilities included. Determined not to have the worst possible PJs cracked all about me all night, I retired with Gattu to the room on the ground floor while the others snuggled in to the room on the top floor. It’s strange why the most corny most-repeated-cliché type of jokes occur when a bunch of males go out together, It’s almost inevitable to find lewd, unpalatable jokes involving each others’ dicks, wives and asses popping up in the usually-unwelcome places. This time around Sreeram’s toilet had no proper latch. The rest, again, I leave to your imagination, providing you ofcourse with the fact that CC has some kinda obsession with him, and CC, is the quintessential dirty Jaba the Hutt strangely popped out of Start Wars to terrorize mankind. Any sneaking suspicion those two might not be gay are easily dispelled and dealt with aplomb. K

I had poor Gattu’s brains for dinner when we rested together for the night. (He he…Hentai!! No sleeping together for ya! :D ) There are some charters which are best left unexplored while you are with another person, depending on the ‘attributes’ he possesses. I am figuring this is one reason why most tongue-tie or ass-whup situations arise. Poor li’l dude simply HAD to bring love as a topic and got his living wits knocked out of him. Ofcourse, I made peace by giving him the chance to do almost something similar to me, when we started talking of Acads. So, well, the point, I think, is made.

We woke up at about 6:30 to find Sreeram taking about 20 minutes to do his bog thing. It’s really painful when you wake up so early, wash yourself with freezing water only to find someone peacefully keeping you waiting. Believe me, it WAS hard to keep my impulse of locking him inside for the rest of his cursed life in check. The whole journey was also tough to me for one singular reason – All of them were chain smokers/drunkard/dopers. Thankfully for me, apart from CC’s entry-level gimmicks, there weren’t any other form of obnoxiousness other than their continual sutta-baazi. It’s another matter why I don’t indulge myself in any of those, but anyway, their problem was that if you smoked one too many fags, you’d get shitty, literally. I told myself not to be surprised whenever one of these idiots started piping up “Shit!” not as a swear word, but as a literal noun.

We took the road to this place called Tapovan, which apparently had ‘hot springs’, by another Sumo. The journey was a really memorable one. Too picturesque to be described, actually. But the place itself was a big disappointment. We stopped right next to what smelt to be a water-pumping rig. And found that the ‘spring’ was a small dribble of sulphur-concentrated water springing out of a hole in the ground with the diameter of my freakin’ fist. Anyway, took ample shots of it on cam and set off.

We were greeted by a host of Pahaadi people working on the stones by the mountainside and chipping away the bigger ones with hammers and laying the smaller ones evenly on the side of the road for embanking it. There was a sight I’d probably not forget. A little baby, not more than half a year to one at most, was wrapped around in a soft violet velvet shawl one sees there often, and was propped up against a big stone. The expression on her face was so serene and so out of place – a half-smile, with her eyes twinkling, half with glee, half with wait for her mum - with the pieces of stones flying about dangerously about her, that left me speechless for a moment. It was unfortunate I wasn’t able to whip my camera out right in time, but I have a feeling she’ll be engraved somewhere in my head as the Lady in violet, high in the mountains…

The journey was also the first time we got an almost-full view of the snow caps in the distance. Man…Majesty is the one word which props up in your head at that sight. Not only are they beautiful, they almost give you that feeling of overbearing that you would have to ‘look up’ to them. Sort of. Anyway, they’re damn good. Can’t find anybody who’d deny that anyway.

On our return to Joshimath we started off to Auli on the longest and highest ropeway in India. Some weird ass location though. It was beautiful though I should admit a tad not matching up to expectations. There are stages there, ten in all, and there was Auli village on station 8 and a skiing resort on station 10. We headed straight to 10. It wasn’t like there was much choice. There was one building, one room, and one guy to handle it all. It’s like they first break your teeth as you walk in and ask you in the most unctuous tones, “Do you need a dental check-up?” Anyway we HAD to take that room, and after the payment, we set off for the skiing part. They made us trek for about a half hour to get to the flat terrain with some soft snow, ideal for skiing. I got the first signs of breathlessness there, as I had to stop for quite a lot of times to clutch a stitch n my chest. I would’ve probably been on more snow expeditions than any of my pals there, but I must say I’m not in fighting fit conditions these days. Made me regret all my fat collection over the last six months. Gone were the days when Murali-sama was seen running around the stadium. Perhaps it’s just my bean bag. Man…I’ve got to get some fat knocked off and some muskules pumping..Heh!! That’s what I call cocky :P

Anyways, after much difficulty we got to the spot. It would’ve been much easier without those damned skiing shoes. They’re large and unduly and are made so that the leg doesn’t move one bit inside the shoe. Although they made me sigh for relief for having been designed so. They sure gave me some scraped heels by the time I got started. Learning skiing isn’t too difficult, I thought, if it weren’t for idiots on your tail baying for guffaws if you fell and nearly fractured your ass bones, and the guy teaching you, giving you horrified looks and “informing” you politely of how much the equipment costs. And especially if the others aren’t doing any better in the falling and you take turns in laffing your knickers off. And the amount of clothing I wore..Brr!! One tight t-shirt, one inner vest, one full shirt, one sweat shirt and one warm jacket, one pair of Lee jeans and shoes as heavy as the damned mountains themselves! I’m already on the verge of being called fat. God knows what I’d be called if they weighed me then!

We got off the snow after 4, also having coffee costing 25 bucks each. (Yeah yeah, it’s insane, but you’re at fuckin’ 21,000 feet above sea level, and William Wordsworth’s principle – Mouke pe faida uthao – (Make hay while the sun shines, for the Firangs) applies fully) ) and headed back to the room. There we yapped for hours together, with topics as bizarre as love-arranged-marriage-justification to which religion permitted what kind of sex. Everything went fine until about 11. I don’t know if it was the lack of any sort of humidity in the room, or if it was the stuffiness getting to me, but I had a searing pain beginning to start in my chest, in a region which wouldn’t be too far from the heart. Shit, wasn’t it painful!! At that moment, all sorts of weird things entered my head. What would happen if it were really a cardiac arrest and I died there, not being able to HOPE for the least medical attention? What difference would there be in the world if I just disappeared right then? What was my contribution? And whatever happened to my eternal belief that I’m not going to go down in history as just some another spark of life that was? For two hours I battled it out, inside that razai getting hotter every minute. The silence in my head was too frightening. I couldn’t believe music came to my rescue then. Perhaps music isn’t just another noise wavelet. For about a half hour, I could feel some energy flow in along with the music notes. Maybe it was psychological. Maybe it was just my mind being deviated from the pain itself but I don’t care. My love for music will remain. Forever.

We were supposed to go to the mountain peak to see their local temple. The guys all slept their asses off and didn’t wake up, so we happily woke up at 9 and realized that if we wanted to reach Roorkee and attend DKash’s lecture the following day and escape getting a suppli in the last sem, we had to get ready and push by the first return ropeway in fifteen minutes. Funny how people in desperation act. We made it in thirteen minutes, and spent the remaining two getting a good video of the peaks now in sight, that morning luckily being an extremely clear one. We saw Nanda Devi (7016 m, the world’s 5^th tallest peak), Mana (a most strikingly beautiful peak I liked – Flat nosed at the very tip, and at 7000 m altitude, dazzlingly elegant skirting the morning sun’s rays) and also a few locally named snow-caps. Badrinath was apparently right behind Mana. We then hopped on and got ready to push.

The return journey was turbulent too, almost on similar terms, though we decided that we would follow the Alaknanda’s path to glory, till it merged with the Ganga at Rishikesh, from Joshimath. It starts with a hardly-noticeable trickle to a proud river tributary with a width of well over a kilometer at this place called Srinagar. Well, Uttaranchal has its own Srinagar and isn’t the Kashmiri version.

But one thing that might appall you is the night journey. Generally on mountainous terrain, you expect accompanying vehicles, and a decent hungama time. But the one thing that is frighteningly amazing is the darkness. What you can see is the road in front of you, until it turns away somewhere, and nothing else. The divergent light from the headlights, once it crosses the un-barricaded road, disappears into eternity. It gives you a feeling that you are at the dividing wall between two worlds, the other promising you absolute darkness. Unnerving. The incredibly few houses in the long distance so far away on the peaks shone like stars, and there was literally no way you could differentiate them. It’s totally spellbinding, I tell you!

We reached Roorkee finally at about 11 in the night. This wasn’t a trip I would probably want to make again, nor one so poor that I don’t long for the mad speed I alone tried out while skiing on the snow. It was just…mixed. And one of the very, very few places where I didn’t bring back a souveneir. At 1700 bucks per head, we were nearly paltry all the way. The trip gave me the feeling of a good friend forged out of an enemy. There are aspects of it I haven’t written down here, but will stay with me. And until the next time, Sayonara!

BTW My customary song-advice – “She’s always a woman to me” – by Billy Joel.

:D