Thursday, October 22, 2015

A Tent, Dog, four of us, and the Kareri Lake( Himachal Pradesh) - Part I

Hi,

It's been exactly five days less than three months, since I wrote anything here in my Travelogue. I was busy with my guitar and singing, and my regular college. I missed writing sometimes.

Reaching Ghera

In this post, I am going to share a short story of the trekking from Ghera-near to Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh to Kareri lake. Deepak, Roushan, Avdesh and I made a group of four, but none of us had gone earlier on this trek.
 "What if we find bear up there in the dark?", it was not only Avdesh who was worried about it, because first the villagers at Kareri and then later Ranu Ram (Gaddi- shepherd) also told us about the wild animals on this trek.
I had a talk with some of my friends and searched the internet, so with all the information we reached Ghera in afternoon.

Ghera To Kareri Village

The road is damaged after Ghera, so we walked on this steep road to reach the higher elevation of the Kareri village. The tent that we carried was the courtesy of my dear friend Krishan Verma from Kangra, who also had guided me about the trek and this whole idea.
Somewhere on road between Ghera and Kareri Village.

We rented two other sleeping bags, two we already had and started at four o'clock in evening. Along with the tents and sleeping bags they suggested us to stay at the village overnight and start the trek in the next morning.
But we wanted to camp up there, and hoped that it won't be possible if we started the next day, due to time constraints, so we ignored all their advices.

Kareri Village to Camping site :

They said it would take at least six hours to reach up there, and it looked true for a sweaty and panting young man, who walked down the road. He also advised us the same, but because of his fatty looks we ignored him too, we all were fit and healthy, we thought.

I was blabbering the most among the four, claimed to reach the top within next two and half hours. It turned out that we only reached the midway till eight o'clock at night and luckily we met a Gaddi named Ranu Ram, who showed us place to camp. It was already dark and we were tired.

deepak, me and Ranu Ram at his stone cave shelter.
No one among us knew how to raise a tent, but we were excited to raise one. Using two torches, Roshan and Deepak worked on tent. I and Avdesh took the job of what it looked as easy, to fire up the remains of the camp pyre. I almost burnt my hand while holding up the lighter against the cold wood piece.

I could have given up, until I took the help of a synthetic carry bag, which I emptied by throwing the tids and bits into my main bag. It burned well, and heated up the bigger logs, and finally it was on. It relieved me and made me feel successful. Till then Avdesh had gone to the other side and three of them had almost reached midway on their job. Finally our bags were inside the tent. The dog who had accompanied us since the dusk was still with us, and comforted our anxiety of the animals.

He would go to search around and area and come back to us few times. Finally he rested too, unfortunately we had not carried much to offer him to eat. The Niyund stream flowed quite angrily at the downstream and upstream, however a little slow and gentle at the camping site as if welcoming the new guests.

The site around the campsite was not visible in the night, though none of us worried about it at that time, because we were tired, hungry and a little fearful of the unknown. We ate whatever we had - the biscuit pack, the milk pack and one or two small cakes. It was not sufficient, but it was something. At night it rained.

The dog who was sitting just outside the tent, made a shelter at the entrance of the tent and sat there. He sensed my left arm from outside and I think it comforted him. Roushan had his birthday to be started at twelve at night, but no one was that much energetic to wait. We slept somewhere between ten and twelve.

The morning light unveiled the surprise for us -the beauty of nature. The site was serene and beautiful. More than transparent water of the niyund, the pebbles and big stones to crossover to the other side, the two rising terrains on both of its banks thus making it a V-shaped valley, and the sky touching Deodar trees, everything was so quite, fresh and beautiful. The small plain ground on the left side of the stream, made our camping site.
Team working to raise the Tent.

The dog had gone somewhere, it was only four of us and the morning beauty of the place. Finally, the Sun also showed its part of face from behind of one of the high mountain peaks.......     (to be continued to part two)

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