Jess and I arrived in Nanital a couple of days ago, both of us pretty exhausted after a hard, but hugely satisfying walk up the Goriganga to the toe of the Milam Glacier. We were out for 14 days, 10 of which we walked. Not great luck, but from the night of the first day I started to feel sick, and the by the end of the second day, in which we walked 13 km, I was feeling truly awful. I'm quite sure it was the flu; I was aching all over, with a headache and a very sore throat, and by mid-afternoon of the third day, the medic from the nearby Indo Tibetan Border Police post measured my temperature at 102 degrees F! He gave me a fever reducing drug of some sort, and declared that if in half an hour it hadn't dropped, he was calling a helicopter!
Happily he didn't have to, but we stayed in the tiny village of Budgiar for four days until I felt (somewhat) better. On the third day a regiment of the Indian Army passed through, which included an actual medical doctor, and Captain (MD) Kumar gave me a thorough checking out, and though slightly concerned about my elevated blood pressure, gave me the okay to continue. The weather during these four days was pretty horrific so we might not have wanted to move anyway: driving rain, some really dramatic lightning and thunder and a fair amout of new snow on the mountains above us. When I was finally able to move on, it was a tough call whether we should go up or down - the weather was very iffy and there were reports of trails washed out further up the valley.
In the end we went, and though I was feeling much better, my belly still wasn't 100 percent, and I certainly didn't have full energy. Most days involved a fair amount of vertical gain, and without a full head of steam it was often a pretty tough push - but definitely worth it!
It really is an amazing walk. The Goriganga was a major trade route between India and Tibet prior to the India - China War of 1962; salt, sheep and wool from Tibet - rice and wheat from India. After the war this was entirely halted, and many of the villages along the way kind of died off - most of the villages now have far, far fewer inhabitants, and most of those are now only seasonal, and there are many abandoned stone buildings. These buildings are beautifully constructed drystone with a bit of mud caulking, with slate roofs. Most are two storey, with the lower levels either for cooking or keeping animals, and the upper for living. Many of these villages - Martoli, Burphu, Pacchu - have dozens and dozens of abandoned buildings in various states of ruin, and they make a beautiful sight below the snow-capped peaks that surround them.
We got our first look at Nanda Devi from the small temple above Martoli, a dramatic sight as it is clearly much, much taller than neigbouring snow peaks like Nanda Kot. But further up the valley, from Pacchu (actually the smaller village on the other side of the river) we got a really clear view of Nanda Devi East in the morning. That day we walked up the Pacchu valley where we got spectacular views of both Nanda Devi and Nanda Devi East - beautiful white goddesses towering over everything. We wanted to get all the way to the Pacchu Glacier, but only made it about three-quarters of the way there - at that point I was losing steam, and then it started to snow, so it seemed like a good point to turn back!
Another day up to the village of Milam, and the following morning we walked up the glacier. The last couple of kilometres were through a rubble field of moraine, and then we jumped along the boulders along the side of the river flowing out from the glacier right up to the snout - wiped off the gravel that covered it and peered into the clear, fissured ice, touching one of the less-celebrated sources of the Ganges.
We were getting pretty good weather up the valley, but by this point were wanting to get back. I'm sure Jess will blog on the amazing people we met in a lot of the villages - some really lovely individuals and they were pretty fascinated with this Canadian girl that was keen to squat by the smokey cooking fires and roll chapatis. We naturally got to know our guide and two porters pretty well in the two weeks that we were with them; and though we mostly liked and respected them, our estimation of our guide fell a bit when he got even drunker than usual in the village of Burphu and got into a fist fight with the owner of the house where we were staying. They seemed to patch things up in the morning, but it was kind of a drag to see him abuse a very kind and hospitable man.
From Burphu we booked it down the valley, covering about 42km in two days. This was really more than I was capable of - during the morning of the last day of walking I more or less collapsed on the trail from dehydration; it was hot and I wasn't consuming enough liquid, mostly because it tended to go right through me. A kind Gujarati trekker on his way up gave us some rehydration salts (ours was in our packs ahead with the porters) and that helped get me back on my feet. After a bit of a rest at mid-day, the weather became cooler and cloudy and I was able to continue at a better pace. Later in the afternoon it started to rain, first lightly, then very, very hard, with lots of lightning and thunder, and hail, mostly the size of peas, and occasionally the size of chick peas. We pressed on all the way to the trail head, making it in the falling dark. We had walked for about 11 hours, and by the time we made the road I was pretty shattered. Our guide Prem's son Darminder was one of our porters, and his cell phone (!) still worked and he was able to call a friend with a jeep to come pick us up, and by the time we made up the switchbacks through the driving rain to Munsyari, it was totally dark.
The power was out in Munsyari, but we managed to find some dank hole of a hotel room, ate in one of the little nearby eateries there by candlelight, and after finishing the inevitable negotiation over the fees for our guide and porters, I was utterly punched. We had almost completely run out of rupees because we weren't able to change money in Munsyari as we had expected, and only managed to barely scrounge enough to pay our porters by changing with a kind man from Mumbai (Srini) and a couple from Germany that we'd met on the trail. We had just enough left for a hotel room in Munsyari and two tickets on the chicken bus out.
As it happened, that bus left at 4:30am, so we were up in the dark after less than six hours sleep, and on the bus without even a cup of the mandatory chai. This bus followed the route down that we'd taken in a hired car up, and it is a very beautiful trip, but pretty hard in the back of bouncing, tightly packed Indian bus, with a fearful speaker pounding Bollywood tunes 18 inches above our heads - loud even with the really good earplugs that Jess had brought along. I suppose I'm getting a bit soft in my old age, but I'd say this would be a pretty punishing bus ride even for someone half my age. Jess seemed to have a harder time of it than me for the first few hours, but I sort of came apart after about 10 hours of it. By the 12-hour mark I was done - we were only about half an hour from our final destination but I hit the wall and just had to get off that thing. I sat on the sidewalk as Jess checked out the little town we were in for a hotel, and though she found a few, none were able to change money and we were almost rupeeless. I really have to hand it to Jess; I was pretty much useless at this point, but she totally hung together and got us sorted out - she really is an excellent traveler.
In the end, after a bit of a rest and something to drink, we pulled ourselves together, got on a shared taxi to Nanital half an hour away, walked into the first hotel we found - pricey but a great view of Nanital's famous lake - and crashed.
We've just spent the last couple of days strolling the famous mall along the lake with the many, many other Indian sightseers, enjoying the great food and recovering from our walk. An amazing place for people-watching and we even got a hazy, distant view of Nanda Devi from the top of the cable car that runs from the lake to the top of mountain. We both are now much restored from the walk and ready to move on to Hardwar tomorrow.
Much more to write, but I want to log off and eat more of the tasty food they have around here!
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