Himalayas!!.. and a short story!!

This Blog my friends is something very close to my heart. I thought of writing this long back; but the funny thing about writing something is; you cant write whenever you like; and it should just happen by itself and we need to wait for it!! I dont say its the same for everyone; atleast its the way I write.

Most of my stories start with my father’s story; he is a man who left his job in SHAR and took a job in Railways so that he can travel places!! I think I too got this love for travelling from him. When
ever he used to go to a new place I used to run along with him (thanks to indian railways for the free pass) and there were days I to used cry when my father didnt take to some place ha ha.. When I got placed in campus my father came to congratulate me and we just visited Nepal on a weekend!! You can understand how freakish we are to travel.
This started when I completed my Btech( actually my professors threw out of college giving me pass marks so that they wont have to bear me for one more year) and I am free for 2 months before I join IBM. And my father came up with this ingenious Idea of visiting Himalayas. There was only one problem with that idea ; I heard only old people visited those places not youngsters; and some people started laughing at me when I told them about the visit to Himalayas.
One and the same we decided to go!! Route is Andhra ; Orissa ; Mp and then delhi finally haridwar via roorkee. Its a 2 day train journey!! And you will start enjoying the journey right from the time u enter Mp; they place is full of forests and occasionally u can see small villages along the way!! If you stand at the door of the coach ; u can feel the cool breeze from the trees in the forests and then train passes through some caves and you will be left in total darkness for sometime!! Life time experience guys and the most relaxed journey you can ever have. Then comes Jhansi; agra; delhi.
By the time you reach haridwar u spent 2 days in train with no bath and ur obviously tired!! Right away you can go and take a bath in the cool water of ganga. You will be almost back to life and the ganga harthi ( thousands of devotees will be there for that event) rocks. And then next day morning take a bus to Himalayas and the place u wanna go there. I visited Char dams ( Gangothri; yamunothri; kedranath and badrinath) it was almost four visits and each visit gave a new experience!! But when I travelled for the first time I am almost certain that I am going to die in a bus accident; paths are so narrow and you can see from bus the tires almost at the edge of the road and next to you there is a big valley one wrong step u are gone!! But believe me guys that’s worth it. Ofcourse because of my frequent visits I almost got used to it now.
In my first Visit I visited Kedarnath and you need to trek for 14kms in between forests and a river follows you all the way and nothing beats the sound of water from a river ( very soothing sound) and it Ice rain started when we were standing before the temple; we had a stick in our hands and standing on a single foot we cleared space for another foot and then did the same again!! Some how survived it; but by the time the rain stopped all the mountains surrounding us were covered with ice; its like ice toppings on a green blanket of mountains.
Second visit is to Gangothri; and from gangothri to gaumukh you need to trek for 21 Kms. This was the best trek I ever had; you can see some deers on the way and some creatures almost like antilopes!! And the forest is real dense and the flowers on the mountains really refreshes ofcourse ganga will be following you all the way. Nothing to eat on the way till you travel 14 kms apart from the food you carry. And finally observing the glacier where gaumukh starts is a life time experience!!
On my third visit we went to Yamunothri; it’s a 7 km trek became pretty easy for us; but we reached a particular place ; its almost like a valley surrounded by mountains very very closely; and suddenly some 50 parrots flew from a tree and started flying in the sky in circles; I still how beautiful it was… my father was saying we should have shot this scene!! But then some things happem so fast u just need to keep them in you and there is no other way to store them!!
And then we will get back to Rishikesh; and a perfect end for this ten day journey will be the ganga harthi in rishikesh. In haridwar harthi has so many people that u feel it a bit congested; but in rishikesh its totally different; you can sit relax and allow the chant to sink into you; they prey to a big statue of shiva who himself is in a meditating position. So beautifully young kids chant “ Hare rama Hare Krishna” it takes you to another world!! And you will be in perfect peace. And this ends the awesome journey!!
And everytime I go there ; I say to myself some day I am going to stay in Rishikesh for two months attend ganga harthi daily!!
Regarding the story I was mentioning!! I visited uttarkhand again ; the plan is to visit valley of flowers!!
We reached Haridwar finally and we are eager to take a bath in ganga!! And tell you what when I went there is no river out there . I see most of you wont believe these words and think of me when I really saw that !! what would be my reaction?.Unbelievable!! It seems they are cleaning the river itself and they diverted the river ( some big government proect). I was a bit dejected not to have a bath in ganga. Okay move on atleast we will visit valley of flowers; and we went to govind ghat and trekked 16 kms to reach valley of flowers and the worst thing is there isn’t a single blossomed flower out there!! We went in the wrong season!! This is too much; its like “ He went He saw He lost” no we wont make this happen;
What ever it is we must do something before we go!! If not total trip is lost!! we came back 3 kms and trekked up 6 kms again in different route and visited Hemkund ( frozen lake ) and gurudwara. And we almost reached the top of the snow capped mountains. We told ourselves what ever it is we won… and came back!! ( funnily they are going to close that gurudwara from the next day; till winter ends!!) at last fate does show us some mercy
3 cheers
Yours
Srikanth